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Paisan’s operated at 131 W. Wilson St. for 16 years. Hotel Chair
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Paisan’s Italian restaurant plans to reopen in the basement wine cellar of its sister restaurant, Porta Bella, but restaurant co-owner Wally Borowski said it’s hard to say when.
The popular restaurant had to leave the building it anchored at 131 W. Wilson St. after a long saga that started in September 2021 with reports of the 12-story structure’s deteriorating condition.
The building’s owners repeatedly ignored warnings that the building was in need of repair, forcing the restaurant to close three times. It reopened twice.
Paisan’s owners sued their landlord, who disputed the allegations, according to the restaurant’s website. Borowski said he isn’t supposed to talk about the terms of the settlement.
“We’re still in this treading-water state of what we’re going to do,” Borowski said, adding that there’s work he and his business partner, Ed Shinnick, want to do at Porta Bella to improve the kitchen and basement.
The Porta Bella building at 425 N. Frances St. dates to about 1920 and was expanded in the mid-1970s, Borowski said. He said they added a banquet room about 12 years ago that’s as big as the ornate Porta Bella dining room and can seat about 180.
Borowski said they need to update the kitchen to better handle the banquet room before taking on the Paisan’s project. They intend to bring over some of the Paisan’s booths that have been stripped and refinished.
From 1969 to 1975, Paisan’s was in the basement below Porta Bella before moving to the former University Square shopping area near the UW-Madison campus, where it stayed until 2006. It then moved from University Square to Wilson Street.
“So, we’re going to put Paisan’s back, but before we do that, we’re going to try to polish up the gears,” Borowski said.
Paisan’s was established in 1950. Borowski, Shinnick and Jerry Meier bought the business from Roy McCormick in 1985. Meier retired 10 years ago.
Borowski said Paisan’s won’t go into Porta Bella’s banquet room because the banquet room does a decent amount of business. He said it has handled about 100 weddings since it was established, and he’d like to do more of them. Instead, get-togethers for 30 to 40 people tend to get booked there, including meals for sports teams, he said.
Putting Paisan’s downstairs would give him and Shinnick the best investment return, he said. There are plenty of restaurant spaces they could rent, but it wouldn’t be worth investing the time and money it would take to give a leased space the Paisan’s feel.
The advantage of using the basement for Porta Bella is that Borowski and Shinnick own the building. “So, any sort of investment we put into this building is something that we’re investing in ourselves, as opposed to if it’s somebody else’s property.”
He said the basement is about 4,000 square feet. It can seat about 125 and hasn’t been used for about a year. It was last used for private parties, he said.
Borowski said it’s hard for him to estimate when Paisan’s will reopen in the basement. “It’s a big ‘I don’t know.’”
He said it’s a slow, methodical process, mostly done by his own staff instead of high-cost professionals.
Much of Paisan’s furniture has been stored in the Porta Bella basement for the past year, which makes it tough to get around in, Borowski said. A bunch of equipment and architectural pieces are being stored in a production facility in Cottage Grove.
Borowski said he and his wife don’t eat out much, but when they do, he doesn’t see many restaurants investing in ambiance. “I mean, people create nice ambiance, nice lighting, but it’s kind of minimalist. And I think that’s maybe a function of what it costs to put it all together.”
He said he and his partners have always worked hard to create an inviting setting and that workmanship is expensive. “Maybe we don’t really need all of that stuff, but that’s kind of the thing that we’ve always done for the restaurants. The last Paisan’s was, I thought, a good example of that. There’s a big investment in creating the stage that we wanted to have.”
Borowski, 69, said he and Shinnick, 73, don’t need the stress created by hurrying. He said they’ll reopen as soon as they can, “but I’m not going to rush into something.”
He said he realizes he faces a deadline of sorts in order to keep his brand alive. “As time goes on, your name fades into history, and that’s a tough thing to kind of get past.”
Read more restaurant news at: go.madison.com/restaurants
"We're still in this treading-water state of what we're going to do."
Wally Borowski, co-owner of Paisan's
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Paisan’s operated at 131 W. Wilson St. for 16 years.
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