Osteria Papavero Is A Local, Delightful Taste Of Italy
Posted: 4:01 pm CDT May 30, 2009
By Nancy Christy and Neil Heinen
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000Osteria Papavero is our neighborhood restaurant. One small problem--if you can call it that--is it's not in our neighborhood. No matter. It feels like our neighborhood restaurant, and that's just how we use it. Chef and owner Francesco Mangana has created an environment that evokes his home in northern Italy--comfortable, unpretentious and serving lovely food. The restaurant seems to know who it is, deliberate and not phony. The servers are well informed and helpful without calling attention to themselves. In addition, everything seems the right size: portions, the menu and the prices. Mangana understands scale and restraint.We've had wonderful dinners with friends and great business lunches. The Bologna-born Mangana both studied and trained professionally in that city. His deft hand and broad range of skills at Osteria Papavero are the result of his education in everything from cutting and curing meats to brewing beer. He also studied food and wine tourism at the University of Bologna, including the promotion of regional products. You can see the influences in his menu, with recipes reminiscent of his grandmother and locally sourced ingredients from Cates Family Farm in Spring Green, Crawford Farms and the Dane County Farmers' Market.Vegetables have their rightful place on the menu--not as an afterthought like at so many restaurants. Pastas are expertly prepared, never heavy-handed. Francesco does much of the salt curing of many of his meats himself, but when he found a lamb prosciutto he especially liked he bought it. It was outstanding. One of us considers herself a dessert snob, so it's high praise to say we've had desserts we really liked including Susan Cesnik's almond cake and a wonderful panna cotta an Italian friend proclaimed as good as her mom's.In addition, we've celebrated special occasions there and had the pleasure of attending the tuna "competition" Mangana offered with Shinji Muramoto that had the two chefs cooking side by side in each other's restaurant over two nights with both using the same high-grade tuna as their menu motivation. Their collaboration was an additional pleasure. We've been told there's another one in the planning stages, this one featuring pork. Keep an eye out for it. We would have missed the tuna had we not been dining there one night and were told about it.But back to the neighborhood restaurant. The last four dinners we enjoyed at Osteria Papavera, Natasha Nicholson and Tom Garver were in their usual spots having dinner at the bar. The sight of these two icons of the Madison art scene--Natasha artfully dressed with her adorable red shoes--in that environment was an artistic tableau in itself. And every time we all acknowledged what a gem the Osteria is. From the simplest to the fanciest dishes we've tasted on the menu, all have been well executed and demonstrated respect for the ingredients.To continue reading, visit MadisonMagazine.com.
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000Osteria Papavero is our neighborhood restaurant. One small problem--if you can call it that--is it's not in our neighborhood. No matter. It feels like our neighborhood restaurant, and that's just how we use it. Chef and owner Francesco Mangana has created an environment that evokes his home in northern Italy--comfortable, unpretentious and serving lovely food. The restaurant seems to know who it is, deliberate and not phony. The servers are well informed and helpful without calling attention to themselves. In addition, everything seems the right size: portions, the menu and the prices. Mangana understands scale and restraint.We've had wonderful dinners with friends and great business lunches. The Bologna-born Mangana both studied and trained professionally in that city. His deft hand and broad range of skills at Osteria Papavero are the result of his education in everything from cutting and curing meats to brewing beer. He also studied food and wine tourism at the University of Bologna, including the promotion of regional products. You can see the influences in his menu, with recipes reminiscent of his grandmother and locally sourced ingredients from Cates Family Farm in Spring Green, Crawford Farms and the Dane County Farmers' Market.Vegetables have their rightful place on the menu--not as an afterthought like at so many restaurants. Pastas are expertly prepared, never heavy-handed. Francesco does much of the salt curing of many of his meats himself, but when he found a lamb prosciutto he especially liked he bought it. It was outstanding. One of us considers herself a dessert snob, so it's high praise to say we've had desserts we really liked including Susan Cesnik's almond cake and a wonderful panna cotta an Italian friend proclaimed as good as her mom's.In addition, we've celebrated special occasions there and had the pleasure of attending the tuna "competition" Mangana offered with Shinji Muramoto that had the two chefs cooking side by side in each other's restaurant over two nights with both using the same high-grade tuna as their menu motivation. Their collaboration was an additional pleasure. We've been told there's another one in the planning stages, this one featuring pork. Keep an eye out for it. We would have missed the tuna had we not been dining there one night and were told about it.But back to the neighborhood restaurant. The last four dinners we enjoyed at Osteria Papavera, Natasha Nicholson and Tom Garver were in their usual spots having dinner at the bar. The sight of these two icons of the Madison art scene--Natasha artfully dressed with her adorable red shoes--in that environment was an artistic tableau in itself. And every time we all acknowledged what a gem the Osteria is. From the simplest to the fanciest dishes we've tasted on the menu, all have been well executed and demonstrated respect for the ingredients.To continue reading, visit MadisonMagazine.com.
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