Inspired by Truffles

The name Adam Siegel may sound familiar to many diners in the Milwaukee area. In this town he’s well known as the Managing Partner and Executive Chef of The Bartolotta Restaurant Group.  He is also a well-deserving recipient of the prestigious national James Beard Award. For those unfamiliar, the James Beard Award is considered to be the ‘Oscars’ of the culinary world. However, what most do not know is that Chef Siegel’s first love was not food, it was in fact, art.

While in high school, Siegel fell in love with his artistic side, “That is what I thought I wanted to do,” he said. While he enjoyed working at his family’s Chicago restaurant, he truly thought art would be his future. Then, in college, he started working full time in the restaurant industry and found that food was his passion. Both are forms of artistic expression, just with different mediums. According to Siegel, “Food is art, the way you can mix flavors and ingredients to create a dish.”

In 2013, while preparing for the infamous Bartolotta Black Truffle Dinner, Siegel decided he wanted to celebrate the 10th anniversary dinner by doing something special and personal. At home with his children watching, he painted his first Truffle Dinner menu. It was the first time in 20 years that he resurrected his “first love”.  What resulted was a colorful, purposeful… pig. As any gourmand knows, pigs are used to hunt the precious and sought after truffle. It seemed like a natural choice to represent the theme of the already artfully crafted dinner, all while providing a special touch of Siegel’s past to the event menu. When asked to pick a favorite of all the menus he’s created since, Siegel said, “I really don’t have a favorite. But I guess if I had to pick one, it would have to be that first one,” and then added, “my wife kept that one!”

Since that inaugural art-forward Black Truffle Dinner menu, Chef Siegel has created six menus for the Bartolotta Black Truffle Dinners. He’s also rediscovered his love of painting and creates other works for charity events, as well as curated a similar painted menu for the Bartolotta’s Mouton Rothschild Wine Dinner, which was held at Lake Park Bistro in 2014.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of partaking in any of Chef Siegel’s masterful cooking creations knows that that his culinary talents have a Rembrandt-like quality, proving that he is a mastermind in more than one artistic landscape, which we are extremely fortunate to have in Milwaukee.