The Madison Bistro

The Madison Bistro is located primarily in Sara’s kitchen in Madison, Wisconsin (US). This site was created to share her love of good food, cooking, baking, culinary successes, culinary disasters (though she’s hoping those will be few and far between), and to prevent her from ordering takeout because she doesn’t want to wash dishes that night.

She got her start in baking about twenty-five years ago by helping her mom make cookies (and sampling the dough for a pre-bake quality inspection), and later by jazzing up cake mixes, determined to improve Betty Crocker’s recipe. She later graduated to her own baking using her Easy-Bake Oven. 

Her cooking career began by adding vegetables to a frozen cheese pizza, and later by shaping pre-made biscuit dough into pizza crusts with her younger brother, and topping those crusts with sauce and cheese. When Sara and her brother got really creative, they grilled their pizzas on a charcoal grill.

These days, most of Sara’s food is cooked from scratch in her kitchen (except for the occasional takeout habit). Some of the recipes come from cookbooks, some come from websites (including other food blogs), and some of the dishes she creates simply by looking at the contents of her fridge and pantry.

Though making desserts is her first love, she loves to make home-cooked meals that friends and family can enjoy.