Vin Santo: A Little Place with Big Food

I find myself venturing into Middleton more and more lately. Middleton is picturesque, for sure, but until recently, a visit there took the young me into the future too fast: 2.3 kids, a hefty mortgage, a sensible black Volvo and wistful thoughts of a time when Tuesday meant Pabst and bacon at Wando's, not soccer, ballet and Boston Market for dinner. It's a very settled and comfortable town, Middleton is.

The wild, childless, unmarried me made a promise to myself to try a new venues, to keep it fresh because if you have to start settling down in life, you might as well keep things fresh in food. And that meant taking a few chances, even going so far as to venture into the center of Yuppie-dom: Hubbard Avenue.

Vin Santo is a tiny little place, tucked into an older, non-descript building that, if you let the glare of Greenway Station blind you, you would never notice. I first heard of Vin Santo while dining at Tutto Pasta. The table next to ours had reached the point of drunkenness where they no longer cared what the waiter would think and if he would hock a good one into their food, and so they loudly proclaimed praise for this other, superior Italian restaurant in Middleton. While drunk people aren't necessarily good food critics, they are unnecessarily honest. I booked a table for my birthday at Vin Santo.

Now that I look back, it was awful of me to put such expectations on this poor place: a birthday dinner, with 12 people, on a Saturday night. But the lovely co-owner with the soft, proper accent, Clarissa, never flinched when I made my reservation, and was incredibly gracious when all 12 of us piled into the little restaurant.

We sat down to baskets of warm, chewy bread, served with a bright and smooth seasoned olive oil. I can get quite irate about the bread basket. If it's a good restaurant, a good, crusty bread is a sure thing, but the cruelty of the bread basket at even the best restaurants is that everyone gets one piece, and the basket is never refilled. Everyone at the table rations their single piece, and gives each other the stink eye over that last piece of bread. Vin Santo, however, obviously a humane and caring place - by the time our appetizer arrived, we were still working on the second or third refills of our bread basket, and no one had been stabbed in the hand with a butter knife.

For an entree, I ordered a fresh pasta that came in an enormous, shallow pasta bowl, the kind that makes it easy to scoop up many noodles at a time, and eat more than you intended to eat. Studded with sharp capers and salty Kalamatas in a hearty, spicy tomato sauce, it was the kind of dish that sticks to your ribs and in your memory.

For a tiny restaurant, Vin Santo is big on big. After we had waded through our generous entrees, we ordered tiramisu. With our bellies full of carbs and wine, we were expecting to nibble on the usual little slices of tiramisu that finish off an Italian meal. Our stomachs cramped and our eyes lit up when the waitress brought out concrete block-sized behemoths of ladyfingers and marscapone. From what I remember, it was some of the best tiramisu I ever had. I believe I passed out that night not from drink, but rather into a food coma, from which I awoke stupified and still full. Now that is the mark of a truly satisfying meal.

I still have a Pavlovian response to Middleton, but instead of sudden commitment-phobia, I now salivate like a dog reacting to a bell. Vin Santo was a solid introduction to the Middleton culinary scene, and as I delve deeper, you might not want to mention the town to me. It won't be a pretty sight.

If you want to go:

Vin Santo
7462 Hubbard Ave.
Middleton
608-836-1880

Chicken says: "Please don't abuse me."

Food is much more than just calories and nutrients and chemicals. Food is more often an experience, and certain foods are connected to certain emotions. The first thing I want after a bad day is a big, hot platter of my mom's Provolone Chicken and Brown Rice, or my tiny Ukranian grandma's pyrohy (giant dumplings filled with onions and mashed potato, fried in a pan with butter and served with sour cream - the closest thing to both heaven and a heart attack).

This weekend I attended a funeral. Funerals are always sad, no matter your proximity to the person who is being honored. In our Catholic, Chicago-based family, it's tradition to gather in a basement banquet room of The Rose Garden restaurant in Elk Grove Village, following the long days of mourning, a wake and an intense church service.

Now would be the time for food that fills your soul, that reminds you of one of the things the dead will miss about life, and (if you believe in it) is a never-ending part of the wonderful afterlife. I left The Rose Garden feeling empty and having little faith in life on Earth and beyond.

Sorry, that's a little dramatic, but you have to remember I just came from a Catholic funeral, which can make everything seem a little more somber and sinful. The fact of the matter was the food sucked. The waiters half-heartedly plopped down plates filled with rubbery, pale chicken, sprinkled with a mysterious red spice that added no flavor but another reason to pass on the poultry. Thin strips of bland beef, mashed potatoes that sat in my stomach like cement. Gravy that (I swear) glowed orange. And tasted suspiciously like the sweet potatoes you find in eeny-weeny jars of baby food.

It always makes me sad when good food is used badly. But what brings me down a lot more is that the people around me, the friends and family who had just lost someone they love and will miss deeply, found no extra comfort in the food. It's a comfort they might not even realize they are missing, but if they had found it, they would have felt it.

I don't think a lot of people think about the meal that people will share at their funeral. In the back of my head, I'm slowly keeping a list of the dishes that I want people to enjoy as they celebrate my life and think about me. I want them to find comfort in the meal, but also I know they will associate me, my life and my death with this meal, and I (selfishly) want the association to be good.

Morbid? Definitely. Necessary? I think so.

Chapter One. I like to eat.

I like to eat. I like to write. Sometimes I can be clever too.

Food writing seemed to be my calling.

Back in my campus days, I had heady dreams of sitting outside European cafes, composing poetic works relaying my luxurious, exciting (and really f-ing easy) life as a food writer. I would eat insects in Cairo and poisonous fish in Tokyo, risking my tastebuds and my life for the sake of my readers, who would live ever-so-vicariously through me.

As I write this in my (suburban) Madison apartment, with a re-run of "Everybody Loves Raymond" playing in the background, it's clear I haven't quite made it there yet. But hope lives on, thanks to various Madison gigs, most recently as a food writer for the dearly departed Core Weekly (miss you much, little paper), under the seriously terrific editorship of Evan Rytlewski.

As much as I missed food writing after the proverbial (and literal) doors of Core shut for good, I resisted the blog thing for a long time. I'm not sure why...when it comes to food, I'll try anything. New technology can cause the type of frustration and fear many reserve for zombie invasions. My wonderful boyfriend, Mike Jones, encouraged me to set one up, to work my artistic juices (what a yucky euphemism), and with his support...well, here we go.

So without a plan, a map or a sidekick, I'm heading into the wilds of blogging, to randomly write about all things food. Sometimes I'll post recipes that I've tried, sometimes I'll talk about the best or worst meal I've had in recent days, sometimes I'll just bitch about the price of pine nuts (for those who actually read this, feel free to skip those posts - I just need to get it out of my system).