HopCat draws a big crowd for its grand opening in Madison

130 taps and “crack fries” bring ‘em in

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Madison’s a pretty beer-crazy town, but if there’s one thing that can trump beer, it’s the possibility of free food. A line started forming in front of HopCat, Madison’s newest draft beer mecca, in the early hours of Saturday morning, and by the first official doors-open at 11 a.m., it had swelled to close to 300 hungry souls. The things some folks will do for a year’s worth of free crack fries.

Crack fries require a little explanation for the uninitiated. They’re HopCat’s signature french fries, dusted with cracked black pepper (though it’s no secret they’re named for how badly HopCat wants you to crave them). As part of the grand opening festivities for HopCat’s Madison branch, the first 250 people in the door would receive a card granting them a free order of crack fries per week for a whole year. Anecdotal evidence and good old-fashioned common sense indicates this was what drove a lot of people to line up.

Of course, the business isn’t named for french fries; it’s name for beer, and the 130 tap lines the Madison location boasts are easily the most in town. To further fire the hype machine, HopCat ( a Michigan-based chain) acquired kegs of fellow Michigander Founders Brewing’s all-star KBS and CBS stouts to tap for the grand opening. These Kentucky and Canadian variants of Founders’ popular Breakfast Stout are barrel-aged with coffee and chocolate; KBS gets straight bourbon barrels, while CBS employs bourbon barrels that had previously aged maple syrup. Both beers are highly sought after, and surely accounted for some of that line running up Gorham and onto Henry.

HopCat had tuned the engine with a couple of soft openings on Thursday and Friday night, allowing a limited number of people into the restaurant to test but not immediately swamp the staff. Some people received email invitations, others saw the restaurant post the announcement to Twitter. By Saturday, people were moving from line to bar to table with noticeably greater speed and efficiency.

The space HopCat built out for this location, which had formerly been the Quaker Steak and Lube restaurant and Bop boutique clothing shop, is massive and can accommodate 355 according to staff working the line. I managed to find a seat at the bar right away -- a benefit of going solo -- and ordered a CBS and a burger.

Burgers drive the majority of the HopCat menu, with ten different menu combinations and nine different optional cheeses for the Classic burger. Both during the soft open on Thursday and the grand open on Saturday, my burgers were cooked exactly to medium, with ample seasoning in the patty. Toppings can be a little crazy -- bacon, ham, cheese curds, and fried egg salad on the Barnyard, for example -- but hey, what falls off can be bonus toppings for your crack fries.

I have to say, I thought we were maybe a decade past saying things that are craveable are “like crack,” but HopCat, born in 2008, is rolling with it. HopCat makes a lot of the fries being named to Food Network’s “America’s 10 Best French Fries” list, but I think the restaurant bought a bit of its own hype by naming them “crack fries.” They’re good, fried to bubbling and almost resembling battered fries, and the pepper isn’t as strong as one might worry. America’s 10 Best, though? Ehh.

I chatted a bit with my neighbor at the bar, who was one of the throng lining up specifically for CBS. He managed to land somewhere in the 60’s, getting to HopCat a couple hours before opening. He figured more people would be there especially considering the CBS, but that people around him in line didn’t even know what it was. When he left, he accidentally left behind his commemorative HopCat glass, so if you’re reading this, Mr. Walters, ping me on Twitter; I have it for you.

Taking his place was a young woman named Vanessa, who it turned out is a HopCat employee. One of the bartenders joked she must have been the only one not scheduled to work today. Vanessa said she has worked as a server at a couple spots in town, but that this was already more fun than the others. She ordered a Lakefront Fuel Cafe stout, commenting that she’d been selling people on it for the last two days and hadn’t been able to order one for herself yet.

Up at the front of the cavernous first floor space (HopCat renovated a second floor bar that pours the Local 30 tap list, while the first floor offers the full 130), HopCat owner Mark Sellers thanked his staff and the customers, and then went off-script. He said he hadn’t told anyone he was going to do this, and asked his girlfriend to join him up front. Knowing murmurs in the crowd turned to outright cheers as he took a knee and proposed. I couldn’t see through the crowd, but after a moment he stood up and said through his microphone, “She said yes.” He might have been the only person at HopCat that day with grander intentions than free fries and rare beer, but it seemed to be a pretty successful day for everyone.