Casetta After Dark

On Saturday nights at Casetta Kitchen, employees Seanna Whalen and Nick Larke transform the bustling, subway-tiled lunchtime sandwich spot into Lady Bird, their recurring pop-up dinner. These ephemeral candlelit parties offer a five-course prix fixe menu for $50, a reasonably priced and interesting selection of wines, and one of the most exciting dining experiences in Madison.

The Lady Bird concept was born in Chicago, where Whalen and Larke were laid off from their restaurant jobs at the start of the pandemic. Looking for a sense of community in the isolation of lockdown, they hosted dinner parties in their apartment building’s backyard. After the city’s lockdown ended, they both worked to open Rose Mary restaurant in the West Loop, but still longed for the sense of connection that their backyard dinners provided.

In July 2021, they sat in the same backyard and wondered, in Whalen’s words, “Why are we working so hard for someone else when we used to do these dinners that brought us so much joy?” Like many in the restaurant industry during the pandemic, they were asking themselves what mattered most. Larke said he wanted time to be creative and Whalen realized she wanted “community.”