L'Etoile is a fine dining restaurant established in 1976 by Chef Odessa Piper. Our seasonal menus are inspired by the Midwest region and are rendered with a French influence.
Café Soleil is a welcoming, informal street-level space where our bakers and chefs produce our signature croissants, artisanal cold-rise bread, sweet and savory pastries, warming soups, hearty sandwiches, and fresh salads.
About Café Soleil
We're Going Green!
At Café Soleil and L'Etoile, we do everything we can to provide you with locally and sustainably raised products. (Look for our wagon at every Market!) We are very proud of the fact that all of our menu items are homemade with these Wisconsin ingredients. (How home-made? Just ask us about our flavor syrups, mayonnaise or our lunch meats!) Because we're committed to being responsible members of our community and our world, we are also going green! We're lessening our environmental impact and you can help!
Take a look at our latest "Green"-ery! We have changed all of our lightbulbs to fluorescents. These bulbs will last about 4 years and use 87% less energy!!
Compost that Coffee Cup! We've switched over all of our disposables to products that are made of either biodegradable/compostable materials, like corn, or 100% recycled content.
Recycle that Napkin! We encourage you to recycle everything dispisable that you get from our café, because it's all recyclable! (Except the silverware...)
Don't need a bag? Don't take one! Let a "red shirt" know if you don't need a bag, or plastic silverware, or a napkin, or just don't need one more thing to throw away.
Save that Saucer! Commercial dish machines use a lot of energy and a lot of water, so if we are giving you a dish that you don't need, just give it back!
Bring a cup ... and save! Bring your own mug and you'll get a discount on brewed coffee and earn a free coffee or espresso drink! Better yet, bring your Café Soleil mug!
And Why Do We Think This is Important...
It will take more than 500 years for an aluminum can to break down in a landfill!
The largest volume of trash in landfills is newspapers (14%). And Americans recycle about 27% of the newspapers produced. (So, please recycle those New York Times!)
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 styrofoam coffee cups every year. (Good thing Café Soleil has biodegradable cups that can be composted!)
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as incinerating it!
On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $70 to incinerate it.
Sources: www.uvm.edu/recycle
www.moab-solutions.org/recyclingfactoids.html
Café Soleil in the News
Our Currently Featured
Farmers
Local Artist on
Display
All of our menu items are made with locally-grown ingredients. Our Café features espresso and proprietary blends from Just Coffee Cooperative.
Café Soleil is open Monday through Saturday from 7:00 am to 2:30pm.
We work with organic and premium flours, allowing our dough to slow-rise for up to 40 hours to develop flavor and texture. Our handcrafted croissants were first baked for the farmers market by chef-founder Odessa Piper and have been a tradition on the Square since 1976.
We invite you to get to know L’Etoile by spending some time at Café Soleil.
Separate dining is available for groups up to 50 in our street level space, which houses Café Soleil.
Café Soleil In the News:
Isthmus Dining Guide 2008: "Cafe Soleil, the informal sandwich shop and coffee bar has locally sourced ingredients in nearly everything it sells...Cafe Soleil does pretty much everything right, and even when the ingredients aren't from Wisconsin, they're from sustainable sources. If you're craving good espresso drinks, superior soups, artful salads, or decadent baked goods, this is the place."
The Capital Times, October 6, 2007, Mary Bergin; "We were at the casual Cafe Soleil on the Square...even the cafe's mayo is homemade, most ingredients come from local farmers and 98 percent of its bakery products are organic. Composting and recycling are priorities; customers are rewarded for bringing their own coffee mug."
Wisconsin 's Sights Set on Earth-Friendly Tourism; Laura Bly discusses how earth-friendly Madison is and how that pathos is reaching the entire state in USA Today on September 14, 2007 . "[In Madison], one high-profile restaurant, Café Soleil, features fair-trade coffee served in compostable cups and a menu that relies almost exclusively on sustainably grown Wisconsin ingredients."
Top-notch bakery in casual setting at Café Soleil; Chris Martell 's review of Café Soleil in the Wisconsin State Journal on Sunday, January 28, 2007. "For those who haven't stopped in yet, it's a cheerful spot for a casual breakfast or lunch, and a chance to try superb bakery and some of the ingredients that also turn up on the much more expensive plates upstairs ... even a little cookie baked here can put you in the right frame of mind for the rest of an afternoon."
JM and Nichole visited Café Soleil and their reviews can
be seen on Dane
101 and on Eating
in Madison A to Z web pages,
"Our best downtown meal
since November's picks was, without question, Café Soleil in
the lower level of L'Etoile. The locally produced cheese add a great depth
to the menu. The Café serves up a great little breakfast or lunch
and takes thorough care with its choices. Nichole's been back since our December
visit for a half sandwich and coffee, a memorable lunch
on the Square for well under $10.
The Isthmus Dining Magazine 2006 ran an
article called Healthy Appetite, by Rosemary Zurlo-Cuva, where she
said that
"Café Soleil, the informal, street-level space below L'Etoile, is
probably better known for its flaky croissants, butter brioches, and good coffee.
But lunchtime devotees know that this is a fine place to get yummy, nutritious
homemade soups, salads and specialty sandwiches made from the best locally produced
organic ingredients."
Mary Bergin writes in the Capital Times on April 28, 2006 about Café Soleil's gougères and that these "savory puffs (are) a hit."
In the Isthmus on June 23, 2006, an article titled, Tom Laskin searches for gold between two slices of bread, concludes that Café Soleil's "Willow Creek Ham and Swiss ... does a lot with just a little ... "Oh," you say, "I could make that at home." Yeah, if you had high-quality cured meat, fresh bread, fresh homemade mayo and Swiss Cheese that's several times better than what the local supermarkets sell. But that's the catch isn't it? A great sandwich is all about the best ingredients being brought together with great care. It sounds like a simple undertaking. But after you have sampled a few exceptional sandwiches, you realize it is anything but."
Currently Featured at Café Soleil:
Artesian Farm Rainbow Trout
Black Earth Valley Sweet Onions
Bleu Mont Gouda
Capriole Cheese Fresh Chèvre
Ela Orchard Apples
Engel Brothers Organic Red Potatoes
Farmer Johns Provolone Cheese
Fountain Prairie Farm Grass-Fed Dry-Cured Scottish Highland Beef
Hook's Cheese Company Cheddar and Swiss
JenEhr Family Farm Free-Range Chicken
Lange Farm Organic Turkey
New Century Farm Organic Eggs
Willow Creek Farm Berkshire Pork & Ham
Café Soleil
Local Artist Display at Café Soleil
Phenomena by Pam Murtaugh
These photographs - pictures of things that just happen (unlit, uncropped, unstyled, unarranged, unplanned) - represent a way of seeing the world, as seen by someone who has lived it from many perspectives.
Pam Murtaugh, a management consultant to Fortune 100 companies, quoted in the Harvard business Review, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among others, lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She does photography as a way to escape and breathe - a sort of "Zen point and shoot." (All the work is from a Nikon N60 with a macro lens.)
Her first professional work in Madison, 25 years ago, included food styling for photography and teaching cooking classes at Orange Tree Imports and The Stock Pot. Then she completed her Master's in Family and Consumer Communications at the UW-Madison. For years her mother thought she was "famous" for appearing in Better Homes & Gardens in 1973 (as one of the yougest people they could find then who made bread from scratch). Others believe her claim to fame is her invention of Kudos granola snack for M&M/Mars. She will never be famous for the work she did for Carl Sontheimer, the founder of Cuisinart, although book and magazine credits (and good friends) exist because of it. She has him to thank for recognizing her as an inventor, and setting her on a new career path.
Her first food and invention experiences happened as a 20 year-old, while traveling with a group called Up with People (in the days when its mandate was to believe the world could change itself for the better if people believed more in each other, and themselves). It was her first brush with finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. This remains her focus and mandate in business, life, and photography.
To purchase Phenomena please call Pam Murtaugh directly at (608) 287-1122.