Pelmeni is the type of restaurant that gives you a story with your meal.
This little gem of the 500 block of State Street is the place to go for dumplings and a tale or two on the side. The reason it's so good is because it makes you remember your visit.
When I walked in, a bored cashier asking if he could take my order didn't greet me. I was behind another customer who turned, looked at me with a long gaze and then shouted, \Hey, there's somebody else here!"" Apparently the woman in front of me was only standing in front of the cash register, not actually ordering. But it's not every day my presence is announced with such forcefulness.
An employee, Paul Schoerer, came up with a smirk and a little bit of haste. He greeted me with a bit of jolliness that goes beyond pasting on a smile. He was cordial in the way that happy grandmothers are, which just isn't something you expect to see from a college-aged kid. He explained Pelmeni's menu.
""Well,"" he smiled even more cheekily, ""we just have dumplings.""
This is something that didn't seem to sit right. ONLY dumplings? How could a place that sells one type of food, and not the most fascinating food, hope to keep its place on Madison's finest street? As food goes, dumplings are more exciting than oatmeal but less appealing than zucchini.
Being a man of titanic appetites, I decided to go with two full orders, one of potato dumplings and the other of steak. They were five dollars a piece and you get a free drink with each order, plus as much sour cream as you can stomach.
The potato dumplings offered themselves up like little oversized peas in a pod on steroids. Like a pea, they find your teeth, settle in the groove and wait to explode. When I bit into the first one, a flood of unexpected flavor washed over my molars. The dumplings had me swallowing quickly to get to the next one.
The second selection was better than the first. The steak fell apart easily but retained great reserves of flavor. The only better treatment of steak involves open flames.
I moved back to the potato dumplings and finished them off with a speedy spoon and not enough time between the two. To let the taste leave my mouth would have been a betrayal of these small wonders. These dumplings couldn't be maligned by nibbling or cutting. They needed to be taken whole and enjoyed in their entirety.
Aside from the food itself, the atmosphere of Pelmeni offers something that's slipping away on State Street-a funky, quirky and down-to-earth little cove where good food and good music collide.
Pelmeni fits into State Street because it's outstanding. It may not have much, but what it does is fantastic. Besides a good story, Pelmeni has great food to back it up.
Ben Schultz is a senior majoring in English and history. He can be reached at blschultz@wisc.edu.
