Casetta Kitchen and Counter — Restaurant in Madison

Private Event Review: Casetta was the venue for my wedding reception for which I was the groom. I received compliments from my guests telling me this was the best wedding they've ever been to.

The front of the house: The staff is outstanding. They were courteous, accommodating and professional. When I didn't have an appetite because of the residual nerves and didn't touch my dinner, someone had the empathy to box up my food for me so I could at least experience it later. I was so appreciative of this and other moments of that night. James went out of his way many times to ensure our event was perfect, and it was.

Sizing: We were able to reconfigure tables as needed to seat people. We had 60 actual seats available inside and out, so that was our wedding size, but there ended up being much more room than we had imagined because of so many people standing and socializing. I think we could have gotten away with 80 or more. All of the seating outside was available to us. There is a shelter above those tables so if it rained it still would have worked for outdoors.

The back of the house: For anyone that is familiar with the food from Casetta, it should be no surprise that it was an outstanding, show-stopping experience. I got compliments all night long on the food saying it was the best so-and-so dish they've ever had, or it was the best food experience they've had at a wedding. Tommy went over the top for us. We started with the base catering menu but also went into some of our favorite dishes from some of the Friday Night Dinner series that we loved, and even into some stuff that Tommy used to do in NYC. I can't speak to how the back of the house felt about this, but we had five appetizers that we served followed by seven entrees for dinner. Since table service wouldn't have made sense, we did banquet style, and that ended up being an amazing way to do it because everyone got to try everything they wanted. Our guests lined up and filled their plates with "Friday Night Dinner" level quality food, walking away with plates full that looked like they were just about to dig into a Thanksgiving meal. It was awesome.

Pricing: Extremely competitive. It should have been far more for the value we got. They were very upfront about cost per item and there were no surprises. We chose open bar and again, that was...

Waited months to try this chicken caeser sandwich after hearing someone rave about it, and it was terrible. quite literally the worst sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. previously, I’ve tried the paradigm and the manzo, and thought both were good— I really enjoyed the flavors and quality of the ingredients. So to try the chicken caeser today and it be so bad made this extra disappointing. Dry chicken, dry bread, and the lettuce, though green and not too soggy, genuinely tasted unwashed or poorly washed. the sandwiches had no sauce, which basically just made it chicken cutlet (though a generous serving of chicken) and lettuce, did not give off a caeser vibe at all (though there may have been mistakes made with our sandwiches!). I got mine on dutch crunch and my partner’s on focaccia. he thought it was more palatable on the focaccia but ended up needing to add kewpie mayo to be able to finish it. The dutch crunch bread for my sandwich was burnt and not in a deep golden brown kind of way. I try to never waste food but I could not swallow this sandwich. I never write reviews because I think most people’s tastes are subjective, but this was an objectively poor quality sandwich, especially for the price and from this store which seems like it holds itself to a high standard, and is quite literally the worst thing I’ve eaten in Madison in the year I’ve lived here (and I’ve eaten at many questionable places surrounding state st. and the capitol). excellent staff regardless of the bad sandwiches today. and i apologize for the dramatic review, but it cannot be stated enough how much i DO NOT RECOMMEND the chicken caeser sandwich if you actually like chicken caeser salads and beautiful italian...

Checked this place out because of the hype… but left somewhat disappointed.

The restaurant itself is beautiful and smells of fresh bread. There was a long line out the door so I had high hopes. I ordered the daily special… “The Mac”: a chicken cutlet sandwich on lettuce, onion, and provolone with special sauce. Sounds delicious.

They made my sandwich quick and I was out the door. 6 minutes later, back home and time to eat. But to my surprise, the ciabatta buns were already soggy and the chicken cutlets were hard crisps. Not sure if it’s because I went about an hour and a half before close, but seemed like the cutlets were fried in the morning and reused.

The overall flavor was pretty good, and hey for $12 you can’t really expect anything anymore these days… but I guess I don’t understand the hype of this place.

Perhaps I went on the wrong day, wrong time, or got the wrong sandwich, as there wouldn’t be a line out the door if this place truly was just average. Perhaps I’ll give it another shot another day because I certainly do want to like this place.

But for now… Casetta is nothing more than an aesthetic sandwich shop for people that think they’re too hipster for...