The space at 10 W. Mifflin St., most recently home to Sunprint Cafe, is in the process of being revamped as a restaurant/local food quick market/coffeeshop/bar.
André Darlington, long an Isthmus food and drink contributor, is a consultant on the restaurant, working on everything from menu planning and drinks to the choice of architect. The restaurant will be owned by several investors, the principal one being local entrepreneur Patricia Davis.
Darlington describes the new venture as bringing fresh and local foods to downtown. “I live downtown, and right now people have to run to the Willy Street Co-op or Whole Foods,” he says.
The new restaurant (the name is being kept under wraps until a trademark check is finalized) will open around 6:30 a.m., serving breakfast items and “third wave” coffees by Ruby Colorful Coffees of Nelsonville, Wis. “This will be [coffee roaster] Jared Linzmeier’s first full Ruby shop nationally,” says Darlington. The group chose Linzmeier after considering national powerhouses Intelligentsia and Counter Culture.
Lunch will also be served, with an emphasis on healthy items like collard wraps and bowls; these will also be available from a grab-n-go cooler.
The market space will work to “fill in need gaps” for downtown dwellers and office workers with staples like milk and eggs, locally sourced. “Items for the home cook,” says Darlington.
In the evening, the coffee/market emphasis will shift to dinner and drinks. There will be a natural wine bar (focus on biodynamic, organic, sustainable wines) and beer, cocktails, kombucha, even fermented sodas.
The restaurant is being designed by Heliotrope Architects of Seattle, which has worked on The Whale Wins, Trove and other high-profile dining destinations in that city.
The smaller rooms that divided the space when it was Cameo Day Spa have been removed — “it’s bigger than it looks,” says Darlington. The 5,400-square-foot space should seat about 90. A brick wall — the one remaining piece of a 19th-century opera house that was once on the site — will be preserved and showcased.
The project will go before the Alcohol License Review Committee in January, with a projected opening date sometime in spring.
“It will be a place that feels really Madison,” says Darlington, “something low-key and not fussy.”
Editor’s note: Darlington ceased reviewing restaurants for Isthmus when he took on the consulting job.
