Jentri Colello
Former Madison chef Justin Carlisle (right), returns for Chef Week to partner with Elizabeth and Tim Dahl of Nostrano (not shown) and Tory Miller of L'Etoile (left), on a collaborative menu.
Half the fun of Madison Area Chef Network Chef Week events is seeing the city’s well-known chefs working outside their regular restaurant habitat.
It was just plain cute to see Tory Miller’s smiling face as he joined Nostrano co-owners Elizabeth and Tim Dahl in their kitchen on Monday night, but the real guest of honor was Justin Carlisle, who headed up Madison mainstays like Harvest, Restaurant Muramoto and 43 North before moving to Milwaukee to open his own restaurant, Ardent, in 2013.
Jentri Colello
The menu for Monday night's MACN Chef Week event featured dishes from former Madison chef Justin Carlisle, L'Etoile chef Tory Miller and Nostrano co-owners Elizabeth and Tim Dahl.
The six-course dinner featured dishes from Ardent, L’Etoile and Nostrano, and each highlighted the restaurant’s unique approach to cooking and dining. The chefs crafted a menu that was cohesive, surprising, joyful and satisfying — and somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
The meal began with aperitivos submitted by each restaurant — a crisp sunchoke chip topped with lemon and trout roe, whipped lardo with anchovy and radish, and tiny little biscuits topped with jamon Iberico, pepper paste and honey. My friends and I split each dish surgically, almost reverently. If loving lardo is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Jentri Colello
Chef Tory Miller of L'Etoile created this dish -- fluke crudo with sockeye salmon, lemon puree, purple daikon, espelette togarashi and shiso -- for Monday night's MACN Chef Week event at Nostrano.
The most beautiful plate of the evening was a fluke crudo, compliments of L’Etoile — colorful rosettes of sockeye salmon arranged atop a lemon puree that tasted like a cross between a beurre blanc and a sorbet. Add peppery espelette togarashi, bright shiso leaves and almost inappropriately beautiful purple daikon, and it’s edible art, perfect with a tart, crisp Vermentino wine from Sardinia, Italy. (I splurged and added the wine pairing. Treat yo’self.)
Jentri Colello
Nostrano co-owner Tim Dahl checks in with waitstaff during Monday night's MACN Chef Week event.
Not as showy but tastier still was the chestnut pappardelle from Nostrano. With elegant ribbons of homemade pasta, savory duck ragu, charred chicories and toasted hazelnuts, it was a rustic, earthy delight topped with parmigiano-reggiano and the favorite dish of the evening. It was with a pang that my table remembered that Nostrano is for sale. Please don’t go!
Jentri Colello
Justin Carlisle slices a ribeye steak, which was sourced from his family's farm in Sparta, at the MACN Chef Week event Monday night at Nostrano.
Carlisle’s addition to the menu was a beautiful ribeye, sourced from his family’s farm in Sparta. Aged 55 days, the medium-rare beef was sliced thin and paired with roasted parsnip and caramelized radicchio. The parsnips came out cold, but the flavor, with hints of Earl Grey and maple, was outstanding. Next, from Nostrano, came a ramp-ashed caprino, a light Italian goat cheese served with golden beets, tart pickled apricot spread and candied cocoa nibs. It was devoured with tarragon crackers as my table discussed how to replicate the dish at home with grocery store ingredients.
Jentri Colello
Nostrano co-owner Elizabeth Dahl sends out a cheese board featuring ramp-ashed caprino with golden beets and a pickled apricot spread.
Thanks to the spectacular pastry chef prowess of Elizabeth Dahl, Nostrano has some of the best — and most inventive — desserts in the city. A chocolate cremeux, light and rich, paired with tart pear butter, caraway and buttermilk gelato was both elegant and weird — particularly when paired with black olive finanziera.
Milwaukee has embraced Ardent, but Carlisle says Madison is miles ahead when it comes to throwing organized events like Chef Week.
“There was nothing like this when I was here,” he says. “It’s exciting to see.”
