Bob Hemauer
Casetta employees Nick Larke, left, and Seanna Whalen are behind the Lady Bird dinners held there nearly every Saturday.
On Saturday nights at Casetta Kitchen, employees Seanna Whalen and Nick Larke transform the bustling, subway-tiled lunchtime sandwich spot into Lady Bird, their recurring pop-up dinner. These ephemeral candlelit parties offer a five-course prix fixe menu for $50, a reasonably priced and interesting selection of wines, and one of the most exciting dining experiences in Madison.
The Lady Bird concept was born in Chicago, where Whalen and Larke were laid off from their restaurant jobs at the start of the pandemic. Looking for a sense of community in the isolation of lockdown, they hosted dinner parties in their apartment building’s backyard. After the city’s lockdown ended, they both worked to open Rose Mary restaurant in the West Loop, but still longed for the sense of connection that their backyard dinners provided.
In July 2021, they sat in the same backyard and wondered, in Whalen’s words, “Why are we working so hard for someone else when we used to do these dinners that brought us so much joy?” Like many in the restaurant industry during the pandemic, they were asking themselves what mattered most. Larke said he wanted time to be creative and Whalen realized she wanted “community.”
Casetta owner Tommy Gering and his wife, Laura Romanski, encouraged Whalen and Larke to come to Madison with the promise of day jobs at Casetta and the use of the space for their dinners.
For Whalen, a veteran of both local sushi restaurant RED and Graze, it was a homecoming. For both Larke and Whalen, it was a chance to recapture a sense of community.
Larke says he felt connected to Madison almost immediately: “Madison as a whole is very welcoming. In Chicago...the circles are very closed off.”
The first Lady Bird dinner took place in September, and they have been an almost weekly fixture since. Larke focuses on menu development and execution; Whalen on service. The menus are not fussy and are remarkably cohesive, which comes from a strong emphasis on seasonal vegetables and complementary flavors woven among courses. Most dishes are served family-style, and standouts from recent dinners included tortellini in an astonishingly complex mushroom broth, a cod Wellington that was both richly satisfying and delicate, and cheesecake with tart cherries and a black sesame crust that perfectly balanced salty and sweet.
Whalen excels at orchestrating warm and authentic service that is enthusiastic and attentive without being self-conscious.
And the name? “Ladybird” is Whalen’s longtime affectionate name for the women in her life, and is also a little wordplay on Larke’s last name. Whalen says that when they started brainstorming “we came up with it together and it all clicked.”
Interested diners can make reservations by sending a message to Lady Bird’s Instagram, @ladybirdmadison, where Whalen and Larke post menus. They demur when asked about whether a more traditional bricks-and-mortar restaurant is in their future. For now, they plan on hosting dinners weekly, and Whalen says they have a simple focus: “How do we make next week just as great, if not better, than last week?”
[Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Whalen was previously employed at the restaurant Graze.]
