What’s on the Menu?

Summer weather brings picnics and patios back to life, as well as cold treats and sweet eats.

New spots have opened offering ice cream, live music, beer and local favorites.

Brennan’s Skip’s After-Market opens with bar, cheese and ambition

Tim Mulcahy, owner of Brennan’s Market at 8210 Watts Road, is slowly and quietly rolling out Skip’s After-Market.

The new restaurant is being treated as another section of Brennan’s. It showcases food and drinks sold in the store, which sells high-end products like cheese, meat, produce, chocolate, wine and beer.

Skip’s — named after Brennan’s founder Skip Brennan — pours some of that very same beer from tap lines and mixes craft cocktails like an Old Fashioned with Berens Old Fashioned Brandy.

While a full menu is still to come — food like sandwiches can be purchased from the deli at the moment — appetizers like Honeycrisp apples paired with Abergele cheese and Fortune Favors candied pecans are being served alongside Silver Moon Springs smoked trout and Terrapin Ridge apple and horseradish jam.

The elevated market replaces the Cider Farm as tenants, which vacated the location toward the end of 2024 to move its taproom to Verona to open Orchard, a farm-to-table gastropub.

Mulcahy said he wanted to extend Brennan’s into the vacant space to create another reason to visit.

“We really wanted it to highlight the best of Brennan’s,” Mulcay said. “The idea wasn’t to add a separate business. This is just a separate department as if we were going to add another extension or product offering.”

So now, Skip’s offers “the best of Brennan’s.”

A full-service bar, appetizers, bar plates, outdoor patio, firepits, live music and eventually full food service will exist in the location.
Mulcahy hopes like Brennan’s, Skip’s becomes a destination.

“We understand that we’re a destination shopping experience for most of our customers,” he said. “We’re not an all-inclusive, one-stop shop.

“So, we understand people are shopping here because they want to be.”

Mulcahy said initially they were playing with the idea of a Wisconsin beer garden that is family friendly and a sort of hybrid with private dinners and events.

“We’re still in our infancy,” as far as planning and events go, he said. “We want it to grow, and morph and develop through the summer and seasonally.”

Skip’s has been open for three months, but Mulcahy already likes what Brennan’s is building.

He hired a chef, a food service coordinator and a general manager for Skip’s. Outside consultants were also hired in the planning phase, and the space was reshaped to be more acoustically friendly.

“Along with my staff, we’ve put a lot of effort and thought into the buildout itself,” Mulcahy said. “We’ve put a lot of capital into this space.”

He calls it a work in progress, an ongoing evolution. He’s been slow to get word out and has not done any advertising, but on a recent random evening, tables were steadily filled.

“It’s gaining traction a little each week,” Mulcahy said. “We’re really happy with the result.”

Asteria offers scoops in Sun Prairie

Asteria Ice Cream & Soda opened June 11 in Sun Prairie with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Located at 111 W. Main St., the ice cream shop scoops housemade ice cream, desserts and craft sodas.

Some of the ice cream flavors on the menu include strawberry crunch, once in a blue moon, and blueberry goat cheese.

Asteria uses local ingredients in its ice cream, mentioning businesses like Heartland Craft Grains from Lodi, and Sassy Cow Creamery and Beans n Cream Coffee, both in Sun Prairie, on its website.

Young Blood opens flagship brewery in DeForest

Taps are flowing with double IPAs, fruited sours and more since Young Blood Beer Co. opened its new brewery and taproom in DeForest at the end of May.

The new location, the brewery’s third, is serving as its flagship location, the Cap Times reported.

The brewery is 6,500 square feet and is located off Route 51 at 4181 Savannah Drive at the DeForest Yards mixed-used development. The development will also be home to LEGACY20 Arena, an indoor and outdoor ice rink that will host events in the summer.

Sun Prairie’s Sonic closes

Another drive-in diner bites the dust as 1950s nostalgia takes a hit.

Sun Prairie’s Sonic Drive-In closed its doors June 7. The 2564 Ironwood Drive location is set to become a Tommy’s Express Car Wash, The Star reported.

The building will be replaced with a 3,850 square-foot structure to accommodate the car wash, which is part of a national chain.

Marigold Kitchen expands with food cart

After a successful test pop-up at Wingra Boats last year, Marigold Kitchen is bullish on lakeside food.

It debuted its Marigold Golden Flash Cart in May at Brittingham Boats on Lake Monona, the rental business under the same ownership as Wingra Boats.

“(The pop-up) was really popular, and we kind of wanted to go all in on lakeside dining,” said owner Clark Heine, who owns the business with his wife Kristy.

The Heines hope to fill a gap in the food scene by offering lakeside eats.

“We think it really fills a hole in the city that needs accessible food by the water, close to the bike paths,” Clark Heine said. “We don’t really have a lot of that around here.”

On the menu are breakfast burritos, baked goods, coffee and rotating specials like the recent baja hamburger and strawberry lemonade.
The cart will stay focused on food that leans a little bit more mobile and easier to eat lakeside, as well as fresh juices.

The vibe on a recent Thursday afternoon at Brittingham Boats was chill. People rented kayaks and pedal boats. Others grabbed iced coffee from Marigold. And some families and friends enjoyed food from the cart.

Heine is seeing more people each week as word-of-mouth builds, and the weather becomes sunnier.

The cart will be on Lake Monona at Brittingham Boats for the rest of the summer, Thursday through Sunday, from 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Marigold is also serving food at Wingra Boats on Tuesdays from 7 a.m.-2 p.m.

Heine said he isn’t opposed to someday having multiple food carts in operation at each Madison Boats location, of which there are four.

“There needs to be more smaller food on the water and stuff that’s great for families,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be overpriced or anything like that.

“And we’re just really excited to be here. We think it’s a positive thing for the community and a service that we really want to be a part of.”