Mount Horeb has been blessed for years with a fantastic Italian restaurant, Sole e Sapori, that is well worth the 17-mile trip from Madison. Now it has a second restaurant worthy of the drive.

Bistro 101 opened May 6 in the small indoor Hoff Mall on Main Street. It's a casual place, even though all of the seats are covered in gorgeous, supple leather. The menu consists of 10 "items to share" or tapas, and five grilled panini. There are also two soups and a number of salads.

A recent meal was without fault, starting with the dazzling house-cured salmon ($11), served on toast points with creme fraiche, mustard sauce, red onion and fresh dill. There were five of them and two of us, which created a bit of an inequity. My companion, who only got two, wanted a second plate.

The CBT panini ($8) was also worthwhile with chicken, bacon, tomato, Cheddar cheese, red onion, herbed mayo and Dijon mustard sandwiched between two slices of grilled bread. Panini are served with a choice of potato chips, couscous, red potato salad or a house salad. The couscous, with tomato and celery, was a perfect side dish. The house salad is also a wise choice.

We also split the fantastic harvest spinach salad with toasted pecans, cranberries, goat cheese, crisped prosciutto and Granny Smith apples. It was tossed with an inviting apple cider Dijon vinaigrette. The salad was a nice mix of sweet and savory, and tasted as wonderful as it looked.

While portions at Bistro 101 are reasonable, they are not huge, which makes getting dessert a viable option. This meal ended with a flawless creme brulee ($4.50), that had a thick, caramelized exterior.

"I loved everything. There wasn't one thing I didn't like," said my companion as we were leaving.

My first visit, about a week earlier, wasn't as successful. Our starter, the tortilla Espanola ($6), made with layers of potatoes and eggs, supposedly had onions, but they weren't prevalent. It looked appealing but lacked any flavor whatsoever.

Our extremely friendly waitress let me order the "The Bistro Lunch Duet" at night, even though it's normally offered only between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The version I had was a cup of soup and a half panini, but there are other combinations. She recommended the spring pea, which was bright green but rather lackluster. The wild mushroom and leek soup ($4.50 for a bowl) was better, but it was awfully watery.

The panini are thin and not very filling. The vegetable panini had all my favorite vegetables -- eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, red onion -- along with goat cheese, but it was lacking something. Maybe an aioli would have helped. I tried my companion's roast turkey panini with bacon, provolone, tomato, red onion, herbed mayo and Dijon mustard and enjoyed that a lot more.

Another companion got the special, two tacos ($8.50) with ground beef, lettuce, shredded Cheddar, homemade salsa and sour cream in a flour tortilla. It came with some very good black beans on the side. I tried the tacos and they tasted kind of greasy and rather average to me, but she had no complaints.

We couldn't pass up the two-for-one mojitos, which are a bargain anyway at $4. They were so refreshing and went down so easy we had a second round.

The chocolate hazelnut mousse ($4) we shared for dessert made up for some of the disappointments of the meal.

The restaurant isn't that big. One room houses the bar and a few tables, while a second room has a couple more tables along with elegant leather lounge furniture, a flatscreen TV and a fireplace. The walls are decorated with enlarged historical photos of the street corner where the restaurant sits, and an old photo of skiers at nearby Tyrol Basin.

There are four extra tables in the sunny mall area outside of the restaurant. It's almost like eating outside, and there are a couple of tables on the sidewalk when it's nice.

Chef Lisa Bote, one of the restaurant's owners, and Bistro 101 deserve the attention of Mount Horeb's captive audience of some seven thousand residents, but also the half million or so people who live in the Madison metropolitan area.

BISTRO 101

Address: 101 E. Main St., Mount Horeb, inside the Hoff Mall

Phone: 437-WINE (9463)

Web site: www.hoffbistro101.com

Hours: Sunday and Monday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. (The kitchen closes at 10 p.m.).

Notes: Ample street parking; wheelchair accessible; no reservations; no smoking -- even at the few tables outside; credit cards and personal checks accepted