Local butter and cheese stand out on the menu at a Wisconsin restaurant housed in a former cheese factory.
Twenty minutes outside of Madison, Wisconsin, lies Paoli: A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town rooted in the state’s long-standing dairy tradition. From 1888 to 1980, Paoli served as a hub for butter and Swiss cheese production, thanks to a factory perched on the banks of the Sugar River. In 2022, butter production returned. The year prior, a local group of families revitalized and reopened the building, naming it The Seven Acre Dairy Company. Landmark Creamery moved in the following year, breathing new life into the space with its award-winning butter. There’s also a boutique hotel and several eateries on-site, including Little Cloud Restaurant.
Little Cloud’s moniker didn’t fall from the sky. Its namesake, “petit nuage” in French, happens to be the name of one of Landmark’s fresh sheep’s milk cheeses—and Petit Nuage was the creamery’s first to earn accolades at the American Cheese Society Judging & Competition. “Petit Nuage is labor-intensive because of the flipping,” says founder Anna Landmark. “In order to get the shape we want, we have to flip all of these little individual baskets.” The finished product is a round 1-ounce cheese that’s light as air and gone in two delicate bites. It stars on Little Cloud’s menu, served with wildflower honey and Potter’s Crackers, another Wisconsin specialty.
While the menu is always changing, Petit Nuage is far from the only dairy offering on Little Cloud’s menu. There’s a cheese board with Landmark’s favorites, and a tiered tray full of rotating dairy spotlights. The Butter Lover plate stands out—two of Landmark’s pillowy-rich butters dusted with sea salt and honey and paired with bread.
The menu also features an in-season broccolini and steak entree, with the artfully charred greens encircling the locally sourced filet, topped with a pat of Café de Paris compound butter—laden with anchovies, herbs, and garlic—modeled after the Geneva restaurant’s iconic recipe. “Having the perfect steak on the menu was important,” Landmark says. “What we’re going for … is a unique flavor profile that stands out and highlights the butter.”
Butter is a common thread throughout the menu, and Landmark aims to showcase dairy in all its forms. “Most of the dishes have cheese or some other by-product, like whey-braised potatoes,” she says. “Wisconsin is such a dairy state, but you don’t see a lot of restaurants that feature all different aspects of dairy—the different by-products and different treatments.” This thoughtful curation honors the historic factory building and Landmark’s Swiss roots.
“I grew up eating Swiss cheese on my grandfather’s farm,” says Landmark. “We’d go inside [after chores] and there was always a block of Swiss cheese on the table. We ate it with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Her grandfather, Delmar Zentner, was an early tester of her cheeses. Today, she honors him with Zentner’s Alpine, a pasteurized Brown Swiss cow’s milk cheese. This recent addition to her creamery’s lineup also appears in Little Cloud’s fondues and other melty menu fare.
Landmark’s future didn’t always hold dairy farms and restaurants. Her grandfather, who was a dairy farmer, had retired during the US farm crisis in the 1980s, and she was discouraged from following in his footsteps. Instead, she worked in nonprofits and made cheese at home. Her grandfather was supportive of the latter but remained skeptical of its long-term career viability. Even Landmark had her doubts as to whether she could make a living off cheese.
Today, she’s doing exactly that. And Landmark thinks her grandfather would be proud that she found her way back to the family biz. “He always had such a close connection to the farm and his cows,” she says. “He would find [Little Cloud] amazing. He would understand the history of it all. He lived close to here. I don’t think he ever sold milk to this particular factory, but he certainly knew people who did—we’ve got cousins just down the road whose milk would’ve come here. I think he would’ve really enjoyed that aspect.”
Get the recipe for Little Cloud’s Café de Paris Compound Butter here.
Alana Pedalino
Alana Pedalino serves as Managing Editor of culture. Her work has been featured in Bon Appétit, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and more. She loves to write, cook, and kayak. Find her bylines at alanapedalino.com.
