Little Tibet
Momo from Little Tibet
Train talk: What’s going on with the new restaurant at the historic Milwaukee Road Depot, 640 W. Washington Ave.? Last September, chef Joe Papach and his wife, Madison native Shaina Robbins Papach, started planning in earnest for an eatery in the former baggage area. Nothing much has been happening at the site, but the couple is “still all-in,” says Robbins Papach. “It’s taking a little longer than we had anticipated,” she says; however, preliminary work is being completed at the site, and “we should be starting the build-out soon.”
No bone broth for you: Good Broth, the city’s first bone broth pop-up and the first pop-up of any kind in the lobby of Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, was a sipper’s sensation last winter. Fresco, the rooftop restaurant in the building, sold cups of the nutrient-rich broth from a simple booth. However, Caitlin Suemnicht, chief creative officer of Food Fight, says that “although we did decent business last year, we were unable to generate enough profit to make it worth everyone’s time and efforts.” Will Fresco be trying any other lobby pop-ups? Suemnicht isn’t ruling anything out, but she’s not particularly optimistic either. The bone broth needed “little labor or skill to serve,” she notes. “With other concepts, dealing with food waste and service probably wouldn’t be as easy.”
Wheels to brick-and-mortar: The food cart Little Tibet will be opening a restaurant at 827 East Johnson St. The Tibetan cart launched in 2016 and has been vending on Library Mall for the past two seasons with its momo (the Tibetan dumpling) and chicken curry proving quite popular. Co-owner Namgyal Ponsar says the menu will be slightly bigger than the cart’s, incorporating Nepalese, Tibetan and Bhutanese dishes — including the spicy hot national dish of Bhutan, ema datse. Ponsar hopes to be open by the beginning of March.
