Jeff Cui was cooking food from his native Singapore for friends of both Asian and American descent at a Chinese New Year celebration when they convinced him to share those dishes with the public. 

Cui and his wife, Jessica, own Red Lion Singapore Grill & Japanese Cuisine on Cottage Grove Road, which opened about two months ago. They plan to draw customers in with foods they know while slowly introducing the dishes of Singapore as the restaurant gains a customer base.

Finca Coffee’s building in the new developments of the Novation Campus on Rimrock Road is modern and shiny. It’s sleek, with walls of windows and clean lines, a stark contrast to the warm and welcoming interior of this brand new Salvadoran restaurant and coffee shop. 

Finca means “farm” in Spanish and this new addition to the South Madison neighborhood is part coffee connoisseur paradise, part cafe. The decor is meant to evoke the feeling general manager Todd Allbaugh felt the first time he visited the coffee farm Santa Leticia in El Salvador. It isn’t actually all that far from the feeling of a Northwoods cabin, he said. 

Tapping into the nostalgia of camping with family and a childhood spent outdoors, Jamie Scholl thought the pudgey pie (sometimes spelled pudgy or pudgie), a campfire meal staple, might just be the perfect food truck food for Madison.

Based on how quickly his event schedule has filled up, Madisonians agree. Despite being new to the mobile food cart circuit, Pudgey’s has already found success drawing on those flavor memories by providing savory and sweet goodies in a quick and easy fashion.