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L'Etoile Restaurant in Madison
Family Inspiration
When Odessa Piper was a little kid, her thrifty mom taught her that the local fields were full of treasure: the crisp, fragrant pink, red and gold treasure of fresh apples. Whenever Odessa spied some of those jewels in an abandoned apple orchard, or one that had already been harvested, her mom would pull up the old family Rambler and lead the Piper children in a race to fill the car with found fortune. They then united to make pies, applesauce and cider.
No one noticed that little Odessa Piper also took another sort of treasure out of those woods. It was a love for the traditions of American farming that would one day make her an important chef of her generation.
"My parents are more interested in bragging about their daughter with all the big awards than they are in bragging about how their beautiful intuition gave me the experiences I've been drawing on ever since," Odessa says today.
The influence is obvious at L'Etoile, her restaurant located in a stately brick building overlooking the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Both the cuisine and the décor in the elegant dining room, marked by brick walls and dark wood accents, display Odessa's commitment to the efforts of local farmers. That big map of Wisconsin in the art nouveau colors actually diagrams the farms supplying her menu, with little labels and wires showing the origin of the pork, salad greens, cheeses and almost everything else that's served at L'Etoile.
Her passion and innovation are spreading Odessa's fame beyond Madison (look for her books coming soon), and she's won a number of cooking awards, including one of the major honors in a cook's profession: the James Beard Foundation recognition as the Best Chef in the Midwest for 2001.
Why so many awards? She's been at the forefront of American restaurant trends for the last three decades. For instance, Odessa supported organics (farming without petrochemicals) before the movement even had a name. She served heirloom foods when most people thought the word referred to furniture. (Heirloom produce, turkeys and others are based on food our grandparents ate.)
