Kitchen Hearth

Update: Kitchen Hearth is closed.

In a word: Like having your supper at home catered.

The specs: #0299
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; profiles at Dane County Buy Local and In Business Magazine; reviews: grilled chicken salad at Isthmus, Yelp; official web site.

JM ate a chicken shish kabob with rice, mac and cheese, and a cinnamon cream cheese roll.
Nichole ate the wild mushroom barley soup and a cinnamon morning roll.
We split a pickle.
The bill was $16, or $8/person, plus tip.
JM gave Kitchen Hearth a C+; Nichole gave Kitchen Hearth a B+ (see our grading rubric).

Latest Kitchen Hearth news and reviews

Based on what we've read, Kitchen Hearth is a force to be reckoned with in the Madison-area catering scene. They've been around a long time, and seem to serve many places around town including the Henry Vilas Zoo - if you've ever been to a catered do there, you've likely eaten something from Kitchen Hearth.

According to the staff, Kitchen Hearth fixes some of their food on site at their downtown location and some at an industrial kitchen on the south side. The retail storefront/deli on Main St. is a cozy place, carryout only, with shelves of preserves and mixes, and salad, dessert, beverage, hot entree, and bakery cases. The staff were friendly and helpful and things were labeled well.

Kitchen Hearth's daily soups and entrees are posted on their website, but we did pretty well by sheer chance. Nichole picked the wild mushroom barley soup and JM got a shish kabob and some mac and cheese. Of course, you go to a deli, you have to get a pickle; some of the morning bakery was 2-for-1 so naturally we took advantage of that, too, but not before a peek at the cakes and pies. Then we trundled all our goodies home.

Our dinner was ready to enjoy after plating and a quick spin in the micro. (Nichole was secretly thrilled her soup fit in her favorite bowl. How dorky is that.) The pickle was dispatched shortly after this photo was taken, and it was a typical deli pickle, crisp as you'd like it to be.

JM's kabob was just eh, he reported, but the rice had an unexpected warm and spicy kick to it. The rice may just have had more flavor than the kabob itself, in fact. The mac and cheese, while clearly made from scratch with care, was not that special either.

The wild mushroom barley soup, on the other hand, was really good. It included at least 3 kinds of mushrooms, plus carrots, celery and all the other accoutrements. The mushrooms had a nice rebound when bit into and the whole deal was quite satisfying. Nichole forgot to ask whether it was vegetarian, but if it was, that's just another feather in its cap.

Both our meals ended well with the homemade discount bakery. JM's cinnamon cream cheese roll was pretty good. Nichole's cinnamon morning roll was just loaded with cinnamon sugar on a twirl of tender, soft dough.

JM felt some chagrin at the price of his meal, and truthfully we may not have been able to do better - the other entrees (pot roast, haddock) were all in the $9 range, so a kabob at $6.75 plus a side at $5/pound was about the same deal.

Given KH's just-off-the-square location, it seems that condo dwellers with limited kitchen space could avail themselves of this kind of "home cooking," but if you cannot afford to live in those condos - there may be other places to get your take-out from.

Comments

[catlady]

I concur with Nichole on the soup; their soups are very good and at $2.60 I think it is a good deal for how much you get. Their cookies are fantastic! They also have a daily hot sandwich special that is great too!

[Rachel]

Kitchen Hearth is a staple for me. Lunch downtown is very reasonable - the soups at $2.60 and the assortment of HUGE pre-made salads under $6 are steals. I've never gotten anything from the "meal" counter as I have found the salads and soups much better deals. And the staff are the nicest bunch - I'm glad I work on that side of the capitol.