“The Bartolotta Restaurants is a nationally recognized restaurant and catering organization co-founded by the late restaurateur Joe Bartolotta and his brother, two-time James Beard Award-winning Chef Paul Bartolotta. Since the opening of its flagship restaurant, Ristorante Bartolotta dal 1993, The Bartolotta Restaurants has grown to become the premier culinary brand in the Greater Milwaukee region, offering first-class service and cuisine across a portfolio of 17 one-of-a-kind restaurants and catering facilities, including fine dining, upscale casual, upscale food hall, pizzeria, and quick-casual concepts. Additionally, its presence as a forward-thinking, respected, and community-minded company has produced a charitable arm, Care-a-lotta, which supports numerous nonprofit organizations throughout Milwaukee.”
“Joe and Paul Bartolotta grew up in a traditional Italian family in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Along with siblings, Maria and Felicia, they enjoyed large gatherings centered around the “Bartolotta Table” with good food and plenty of love. In March of 1993, Joe and Paul collaborated to realize their dream of creating signature restaurants together in Milwaukee by opening Ristorante Bartolotta in the Village of Wauwatosa. The restaurant elevated the dining scene in Milwaukee by offering authentic and traditional Italian dishes using the freshest ingredients available. Drawing upon Paul’s extensive culinary training in Italy as a basis for the menu, Ristorante Bartolotta dal 1993 became an immediate sensation in Milwaukee, garnering four stars and consistent recognition as the city’s best Italian restaurant.”
“Assuming the role as sole owner after Joe’s passing, Paul successfully navigated the company through the COVID pandemic and began to explore new opportunities to grow and make an impact on the Milwaukee community and beyond. The Commodore – A Bartolotta Restaurant, was conceived and developed within a historic waterfront property on Nagawicka Lake. Dedicated to the legacy of Lake Country, this new destination serves as a multi-purpose venue, with a fine dining restaurant, bars, and multiple spaces for large and small group events, coupled with the award-winning cuisine and first-class service guests have come to know and love from The Bartolotta Restaurants. At the same time, Paul played an integral role in the effort to bring the globally recognized Top Chef competition to Milwaukee. His efforts were successful, leading to the city being chosen as the location for the show’s 21st season, bringing worldwide attention to the restaurants and personalities that make Wisconsin a world-class dining destination.” Interesting enough and very appropriately a Milwaukee chef was the first runner-up for Top Chef Season 21!
Chef and Restaurateur Paul Bartolotta continues with us.
- Hi, I'm Carla Hall of ABC's The Chew. You're listening to The SoCal Restaurant Show on AM830KLAA. - Pretty who? - And welcome back. It is The SoCal Restaurant Show, and happily we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 AM until 12 noon, right here on AM830KLAA, the home of Angels Baseball 2024, and it can also catch us on the Angels Radio app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, and we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Primates. We are venturing back to Milwaukee, and we are speaking with chef and restaurateur, Par Bartolota, of the Bartolota restaurants. He only has 17 properties that are in the greater Milwaukee area, and just this last week opened his newest full service restaurant, which is a destination, and it is a pleasure to welcome Paul back. Paul, thanks for hanging in there. You kind of quickly went over the current season of Top Chef, which is season 21, which was based in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. And what is kind of funny is, is the runner-up is a local chef that you know. Tell us a little bit about Dan Jacobs, because that must have been pretty exciting. It certainly was, I remember I judged on the first, and I think the 10th or episode of this particular season. And also, you know, we knew nothing, of course. The integrity of Top Chef is what makes it continue to be, you know, it's 20 per season, 20 second season, I think it's gonna be in Toronto. Super exciting. And it is because of the integrity of the program. And also, you know, I'll block Stan Jacobs, a local chef owns a restaurant called Dan Dan and Esther Ev, here in town, super delightful guy. And again, you know, when you see a friend, and you're there judging your friend, you know, on one side, you don't want to judge too hard, because it's unfair to him, but conversely, you also want to be like, play a favorite. You want to stay like down the middle of the lane there with your judging, but it was a big surprise. He's a delightful guy, and we're so happy that he made it to the final episode, to the finale. You know, we, in Milwaukee, we're all there rooting for him, but obviously, Danny Garcia won the season, but super happy for Dan and great visibility, for his businesses and for City, and it couldn't happen when I served a guy. He deserved it, he earned it, and he told me actually that he had enrolled or, like, signed up to do it, like 10 or 12 times, and was never accepted to come. And, you know, it was just fortuitous that this was his season, so was great, and super nice guy, great chef, great guy. - And, you know, you'd mention that behind the scenes, you had more than a little something to do with getting Top Chef and the production team focused on coming to Milwaukee, but you also appeared in two episodes. You got to judge the first competition, correct? - I did, did you judge on the first episode and then later on, a break before they went to the finale table, and I actually invited them to dining, but we're starting to bark a little to one of my restaurants. I had judged on Top Chef the first time in '09, in Vegas, when I had my restaurant in Las Vegas, and I felt so bad, actually, having to kick somebody off that I invited the contestants to dining at my restaurant, I just felt guilty, I felt horrible, you know, 'cause they really put chef contestants, really throw themselves out there, and then very exposed and very real, and when somebody has sent away, it feels bad. So I invited them to my restaurant, I went in at the time, and they came, and they actually filmed that, and it ended up on the episode back in the day in 2009, and then I also judged in Singapore and Hawaii, and a couple of other times over the years. So when I moved back to Milwaukee full time, after my brother passed, I started, I joined the board at Visit and some other organizations, and I said, "How can I make a difference? "How do I showcase, you know, my city?" So I reached out through Amy Rosetti, who was a public assistant when, and then hosted a season when she was doing PR at the Metropolitan Falcon, so her team, you know, reconnected with all of our friends there, and together we worked on a plan to sort of bring them to Milwaukee and show them around, and initially there was this idea to do like a Midwestern, you know, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no." Milwaukee's out here, what's been a take, and they're like, "Paul," you know? And I'm like, "You know what it takes to put a show on?" I said, "Tell me what you need." And so I called the governor's office, and they were on board, and then tourism, and then visit, and MMAC, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and Wisconsin Economic Development, and the Cranberry Council, and the Wisconsin Delta, and everybody got together, a door county, everybody got together and said, "We want to showcase Milwaukee and Wisconsin," and they moved them out, and then it was really a collective group of people who brought it here, and it was just fantastic. They donned our goodness to who is the executive producer, the line producer, for all the episodes. She's, this woman is just a force of nature. She really is brilliant, and she made our city look so great, and I was, you know, for me, that was the key thing. It wasn't anything above and beyond the fact that we wanted to bring it to Milwaukee, bring it to Wisconsin, and showcase our city. - And obviously, Chef Paul, you succeeded handily, and again, for a show of the level of Bravo's Top Chef to be around for a 21st season, given logistics that are involved, the complexities of putting that show together. You know, that's a wow, and it's no surprise that when it comes to, you know, awards, they obviously get their fair share. Now, we don't want to run out of time. You have just opened in this last week, a project you've been working on for a couple of years that is called the Commodore. Tell us about the Commodore, but also, when I see you have Beef Wellington for two, Paul, you really get my attention. - Yes, so, so incredible location, about 25 minutes west of Milwaukee, in what is known as Lake Country in Wisconsin. There's this cluster of these really large, beautiful lakes, and we are located on Megawicka Lake, or Lake Megawicka, and they're all Indian names, and the building was founded in 1902 as half-lingers resorting in, and over the years it had 15 different people that have owned it. So, as part of the development, we were approached by some investors who bought the land, bought the building, and wanted us to manage it. And I said, "I'm focused on my own businesses." And they said, "Okay, then let's partner." And I couldn't be happy. Could be working with David Hiro and Jay Frankie. Jay designed the environment. I had seen one of these other projects. He is so gifted. And the entire genesis of it was to create almost like a home-like environment in this beautiful property located on the lake. It has an event space for 250 upstairs, or three smaller spaces, the North and South Heritage Ballroom, and the Baldwin Lounge named after Dave Baldwin. Then there are rooms throughout the restaurant, the Margot Room, or the Pepper Lounge, which are named after Margot's Pepper Tree, or people that owned it. There's a half-linger room, which is named after the original family that started it. And it's all connected to legacy and Lake Country. So when we started discussing what the food and how the food would marry and connect with this, we sort of went back and said, what are those classic items that are part of the American vocabulary, the sort of the romanticized nostalgia of American cuisine that has evolved over the years? So things like Crab Louie, or the original Tijuana Mexico comes to California, Caesar's Salad, done correctly, not the sort of diluted version that's everywhere, and the Crab Louie and the oyster's Rockefeller. So it's just the position between items that we're doing that are very modern and contemporary dishes, married with our re-interpretation of many of these really iconic classics, like a lobster new bird, or the prior owners that ran it as a restaurant for almost 40 years, the Weiskerber family, Jack Weiskerber, I made his beerschnitzel or I called it, my interpretation, paying homage to this iconic restaurant tour and gentlemen that owned the what was the seven seas that is now the Commodore Bartlewater restaurant on Megalooka Lake in Lake Country, Wisconsin. This was my way of showing respect for this iconic restaurant tour. I don't pretend to make my schnitzel exactly the way he would make his, but I wanted to show respect and bring something that people were familiar with in that location that is also part of my heritage as well because I have a German Austrian background as opposed to being a 100% Italian. And so we wanted to do many things that reflected all of those things, and that's what we did, and that's kind of how it evolved. - In terms of some of the contemporary items that are on the menu, just tell us about a couple of the seafood dishes that you didn't mention. - So again, so we have a beautiful halibut, we have some beautiful sea scallops, Georgia Bay sea scallops with a, like a champagne burp long with a demi salmon roe in it and beautiful mushrooms right now, where we've moved from Morell, now in this more Chantrells. So we have a beautiful roast halibut, we have a lightly steamed salmon, one of the lighter items for the menu. So it's a little bit of this, and then of course we have some dried beef, again, beautiful, we have some wagyu on our menu, so it's a pretty gropping, and then we've actually brought back the top of those menu terminology from once upon a time, top of those sort of a menu that offers the choice of the guests have a super salad, and then we're doing dailies on that as well. So we'll be doing a strogano for a prime rib or some item that we think, or like a veal marsala, and then on Friday, because there is the tradition of the Friday fish fry, we'll be bringing our mantucket fried fish basket back. So interesting foods that are very much connected with the history of dining in Lake Country in Wisconsin, but paying a nod to the past, this sort of romanticized nostalgia of certain dishes, juxtaposed with some more modern items that we're doing on the menu. We have my mother's crab and curried biscuits. On the menu, we have my mother-in-law, Luke from New York for New York style cheesecake, but we also have a British lemon pepassa in serving a beautiful martini glass as a dessert, you know, like a lemon custard. So beautiful dishes that are both traditional and modern on our menu, and we're having a lot of, I'm having a lot of fun doing the research and really learning more about it, and then sort of making it our own, but doing it justice and making it, you know, feel very relevant today, but certainly that connection to history like the building. - Paul, we definitely can hear the enthusiasm in your voice. Unfortunately, as we need to say goodbye, please give our listeners the website for the Bartilota restaurants, because anytime here in the Milwaukee area, you've got a lot of traces, and we want our listeners to be able to enjoy your hospitality. - Thank you so much. So it's www.bartilota.us with an S or Bartilota d-a-r-t-o-l-o-t-t-a-s.com, and if you're looking for the cometer, it will be a link to the cometer or Bartilota restaurant, but we have Harbor House, our milling and seafood, Lake Park Bistro, our French bistro, Richard de Bartilota, our traditional Italian tortilla, so we have a huge portfolio, we have a supper club, we have fake houses, we offer a lot of variety in the market, and we're very proud to be in Milwaukee. - Ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to Wisconsin and Milwaukee, it is Chef Paul Bartilota. It is the Bartilota restaurants. It is the SoCal restaurant show. When we return, yes, let's promise my colleague, you know him well, Chef Andrew Groold. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce, and West Coast Prime Meats. We'll be right back. (upbeat music) ♪ If you say high, you'll hide ♪ ♪ You are ♪
