While she grew up cooking in her family’s Italian restaurant, Nadia Santaniello Bucholtz left the family business to pursue a different path. Then her son lost his job. Brainstorming ideas and options, she moved her life and family from Michigan to Milwaukee and opened a food truck with her children.
Nadi Plates served its first customers in 2022, with a custom food truck and wedding catering.
Every recipe Bucholtz makes is rooted in the techniques, tastes and traditions her parents taught her. Building upon those roots, she’s creating the family business she wanted with her fiance, David Brown, and her children, general manager Zachary Bucholtz, Bianca Bucholtz and Austin Santaniello.
You’ll always find at least one of the family members in the trailer. They all pitch in for catering and weddings. Nadia’s sister even comes from Michigan to help most weekends.
They coined their style in one phrase, “Twisted Italian.” While the roots of the family’s cooking are firmly Italian, that’s just the base Nadia uses to put her own unique spin on dishes. Consider the vegan calzones or the arancini with an Indian curry sauce, one of their most popular items offered at a recent festival.
The cooking here doesn't rely on shortcuts. Sauces are all made from scratch, as are the doughs. The Italian beef is gluten-free, as their gravy doesn’t get a quick hit of flour or thickener. Their version thickens with vegetables cooked down slowly.
As they work through wedding season, the family is currently seeking its own brick-and-mortar space with plans to open within the year. Nadia spoke with us recently, joined by her son Zach and daughter, Bianca, at their east side home.
Why she left one family business only to start another
Nadia: My parents were born in Italy. When they came here, they bought something like a resort. I worked from the time I was like 10. They changed the resort to a restaurant, then a banquet hall. I spent at least a good 25 years working for them. I did everything from waiting on tables to cooking all the food. I ran the banquet facility. I was pregnant with Zachary when we opened it. It became hard to work with family. That’s why I left. Then I went to work for corporate, as food and beverage director for a hospital. That taught me the business side of things. My family was very lazy daisy and didn't take inventory or those things. The food and customer service was great, but I don't think they ever had any idea of their food costs.
Over the years I went for my master's degree for social work. Sadly, my husband, their dad, passed away. I was working for a couple years as director of advancement for a school. ... During COVID, my son Austin lost his job. We thought about a business we could do together. The food truck grew out of that. Then he of course got a great job working for Governor Evers. When Zachary said, “I will do it with you”, I never thought in a million years that would happen. He’s got this fancy degree from University of Michigan, he'd never want to come work with his mom! But he moved, and with my fiance, Dave, we said, we're going to open this food trailer. We moved from Michigan in 2021.
How she made her vision a reality
Nadia: My mom and dad had this basketball court that was cement. I took chalk and asked Dave to draw me the dimensions of a food trailer. Then I went in and drew what it should look like inside. ... We played with it. Then we looked up equipment and dimensions, ovens, and we designed it. We make everything from scratch, so it was a process. Where do you grab the dough? Is this where the refrigerator should be? It was quite a back-and-forth with all of us.
Austin, Zachary and Bianca designed and named the truck. I was being an old lady, and "oof, we can't call it Nadi Plates! What if we offend people?" I’ve never had anybody say anything.
This recipe was a family secret for decades, but not any longer
Nadia: My mom and dad, they taught me to cook. My dad, he had this secret little dough room. Nobody could know the recipe for the pizza dough! We still have that mixer. I bought it from the restaurant when it shut down. We call it Pasquale, his name. My dad would make the pizza dough and he would put sugar in it, but then put the cup in the salt in case somebody saw. He had to really trick people. My employees make my pizza dough all the time.
The recipes I learned were my mom's ... but my dad is the one who taught me them. He taught me how to make huge, gigantic pieces of roast beef, and how to make that crusty top and slice it really super thin. Italian beef is one of the things we have on the menu.
How they describe their approach to food
Nadia: We like to call it “Twisted Italian.”
Zach: It sounded good. Part of the original idea behind Nadi Plates is she's always had this uncanny ability to make a great meal out of any ingredient. Yet it has always been a little bit different. Our meatballs are a great example. We make meatballs with turkey, and we love them. Nothing is super traditional. I think that's where the twisted comes from. It is very uniquely her in a sense that we don't think you're going to get the same style anywhere else.
Nadia: I took what my parents taught me to cook, I took their base on everything. I wouldn’t be here without them, and a lot of people, and my kids helping me. This is definitely a "we" business, this is not "I." They come up with the fun ideas. We collaborate.
What is different in the way I cook is a little bit lighter than what my parents had. They had a really heavy hand in butter and salt. Mine does contain butter, but it is maybe a bit lighter. We also make vegan, gluten-free food, dairy-free food, which would never happen in my parents' Italian restaurant. My son Austin is vegan.
What you should know about their business
Nadia: There are two distinct sides to our business. One is the Italian street food at a festival or brewery. Then there is our wedding food, which is filet mignon, those fancy things. There are two different styles we serve. We do passed hors d'oeuvres, servers and plated meals, and then Italian street food with the truck.
The one pasta she always makes from scratch
Nadia: We only make pasta from scratch for the lasagna. We buy imported pasta, and everything we buy is mostly imported from Italy.
Zach: We make all the sauces from scratch, the Alfredo, meat sauce, peas and pancetta, marinara. We make buckets and buckets of sauce for weddings.
Nadia: Each piece of chicken is grilled fresh. It is definitely more labor intensive, but I think that’s what sets us apart.
How she embraces challenges
Nadia: I always say something goes wrong at every event, every day. My favorite word is pivot. Let’s pivot, without the guest seeing it. ...
All these people kept clamoring to have my parents’ food when they shut down the restaurant. We decided to have frozen food and ship it. We failed miserably at that. ... We needed to focus on what we were really doing well. So that was my big lesson. Step back a second.
These are the dishes they’ll have on the menu no matter what
Nadia: We’re working on our own space. I want to make it mine. I’d probably have just a bunch of staples and specials, but we have to serve the pizza and calzones, our most popular.
Zach: The most popular thing on the food trailer is our calzones. We had a deal with Oso (Ighodaro) from Marquette basketball. ... The deal is pepperoni calzones for life for a picture.
Nadia: Our pizza dough is really soft. We hand fill and crimp them, slather them. When you cut them open, people go crazy.
Zach: This year we added the option to make their own calzones.
Nadia: We also do one called the Tree Hugger, which is vegan. That dough is what we make our focaccia with. People love it.
If they could only eat one dish every day?
Nadia: Pasta in Italy.
Zach: All of my mom’s soups. I love soup, and she makes the best soups. One of the first times in my life I won a debate with my mother, I got her to put the tomato soup on the menu.
Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email clewis@journalsentinel.com.
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