'Anyone can make delicious food,' but Patrick O'Halloran wants to make it 'deliciouser'

Patrick O’Halloran’s approach to cooking can be summed up in one phrase he’s used consistently in the kitchen: “Anyone can make delicious food — we need to make it deliciouser.”

It’s a mantra he used with his staff over the past two decades at Lombardino’s in Madison. Now it’s also the name of his spice business, The Deliciouser.

You can debate whether it's really a word, but it won’t change his cooking evangelism. For O’Halloran, "deliciouser" means the little things make all the difference.

O’Halloran grew up on Milwaukee’s south side and attended Greenfield High School. He found a mentor in Scott Shully and spent nearly a decade working with Shully’s Cuisine & Events before finding his way to Madison. There he spent 22 years running Lombardino’s, plus had roles with The Old Fashioned and Tipsy Cow. Last year, he stepped back and sold his restaurant shares.

Prior to the pandemic, O’Halloran been thinking about his next chapter. Inspired by flavors from his travels, he began creating small batch spice blends. Working with his wife, ex-wife and daughter-in-law, O’Halloran launched The Deliciouser in 2020.

Today the company offers a line of more than 30 products, plus private events and popular classes that have become increasingly popular, particularly the Wisconsin Supper Club dinners. The line of spice products covers a range of flavors, with favorites like Deer Camp Seasoned Salt, Oaxaca Spice Blend, Zocalo Spice Blend, Bomba, a ghost pepper sea salt named Sparkler, and a collection of chili flakes and curry spice blends that include Vadouvan, Ras El Hanout and Berbere. Products are available at the retail store in Madison, online, and at Metcalfe’s Market in Wauwatosa.

The lifelong Packers fan’s newest spice blend is Tastes Like Victory, a green and gold blend highlighting flavors of New Mexico with green chiles and sweet onions. Ten percent of the sales of Tastes Like Victory throughout the remainder of the Green Bay Packers season will go to the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation.

O’Halloran will be the chef for this year’s Lombardi Dinner, teaming up with emcee Luke Zahm who worked with him at Lombardino’s, to create the menu. The 20th annual Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation Food & Wine Experience Nov. 3 and 4 at The Pfister Hotel and Wisconsin Club includes the Celebrity Chef and Wine Dinner, which this year features Zahm (co-owner of The Driftless Cafe in Viroqua, host of Wisconsin Foodie), vintner Cynthia Lohr of J. Lohr, and cheesemaker Pam Hodgson of Plymouth's Sartori Cheese.

Additionally, this year Cousins Subs teamed with the Lombardi Cancer Foundation to create a cookbook highlighting 20 recipes from over the years. O’Halloran’s recipe is for a ragu. Friday tasting experience attendees will receive a digital edition of the cookbook, while wine dinner attendees will receive a printed copy.

The Food and Wine Tasting Experience will be from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Pfister Hotel, 424 E. Wisconsin Ave. Tasting tickets are $125 each. The Celebrity Chef and Wine Dinner is from 6 to 10 p.m. Nov. 4 at the Wisconsin Club, 900 W. Wisconsin Ave. Dinner tickets are $300 each. Attendees must be 21 or older.

O’Halloran recently talked by phone, telling us his inspiration for all things delicious.

How a Milwaukee mentor and MATC pushed him in the right direction

Scott (Shully) is my mentor. I started out as a student at UWM, then at MIAD studying art briefly, bouncing around in my early 20s. I was working at restaurants. Through friends I was told about Shully’s. Cooking had always been a passion of mine, but I’d never pursued it professionally. I was into history and art and PBS shows. That’s how my brain works. I went to MATC in Milwaukee and did my 6,000 hours on the job at Shully’s. I did three years as an apprentice. Scott took me to Switzerland and I worked at two hotels and a restaurant he’d worked at there. He was cool enough to bring me along. From Switzerland, I traveled on my own through Italy and ended up marrying the next chef’s apprentice who came through, Marcia Castro, who is also my co-owner at The Deliciouser.

Making his move to Madison

We fell in love with the (Dane County) farmers market and the local food movement. We had a deal to buy a restaurant with partners, and it fell through. Friends told us about this old Italian spaghetti place that put a sign in the window. We drove over, saw Lombardino’s. It had been an institution since 1952. We went in the parking lot and Marcia said, “I want it!” We plunged in, having never been a chef in a restaurant. ...

We (later) opened The Old Fashioned. When Marcia and I divorced, I continued Lombardino’s, Marcia continued The Old Fashioned. We opened the Tipsy Cow. ... I sold my interest in all the restaurants about a year ago. Pre-pandemic, 2019 was our best year we’d had. I’m a working chef, I’m in the kitchen. The pandemic started the idea of what’s next. During that time we had more downtime than in our entire career. My wife and I, we were in a bubble with my ex-wife, the kids. ... We started cooking from all the places we wanted to go or had been. We came up with this idea of creating spice blends, putting things in a jar that would make your life as a home cook easier and take you on a journey.

What’s behind the name The Deliciouser

We call it The Deliciouser, because at the restaurant I’d say, “Anyone can make delicious food. If we want someone to get off their couch and drive here and pay good money, we have to make it deliciouser.”

We started doing markets and our online store. ... People were liking our product, but they don’t know what to do with it. Now we have a kitchen studio in downtown Madison. I cook and we can seat about 40. ... The goal as we grow the business is to start online classes so we can go nationwide. We’re in the Main Street Industries building. It is a non-profit business incubator, (also home to) a women-owned brewery, Giant Jones, Quince and Apple, Old Sugar Distillery. It is a cool mix of people, some industrial spaces and artists, and Common Wealth owns another two buildings, one where there’s an urban mushroom farmer we just did a dinner with. We’re in a former Greyhound bus terminal.

What sets his spices apart

We’re selecting, toasting, bottling. Labels come from Aljan in Oak Creek. Everything is done in five gallon batches. This is chef curated, small batch, hand toasting, a lot of texture. Our Vadouvan is our number one selling, a curry from southern India. This month we’re releasing a salt-free version of several signature flavors. We’ve also been in trials with Landmark Creamery to do a cultured butter with those.

Why the Lombardi dinner is personal

Luke (Zahm) reached out to me. We went to visit his owl farm project in Viroqua, with my wife and his wife, Ruthie. He has his own restaurant, and I had mine. We were talking about what opportunities lie ahead. I couldn’t be more proud of where Luke has taken things; he’s an evangelist for what we do in Wisconsin.

Luke said they wanted him to emcee the Lombardi dinner. My wife Michelle has bladder and skin cancer. She is also living with chronic leukemia and she is on chemotherapy for life. Cancer has touched our family. She lost her former husband to cancer, and her mother. It is something we have lived with. Plus it is the Vince Lombardi Foundation. I’ve been on the (season ticket) list since 1986. ... I’m now 389 people away. I remember being there and seeing the first Lambeau Leap.

How he approached the menu for the dinner

We wanted to feature the spice blends and Vince Lombardi, an Italian immigrant who grew up in New York. I wanted to do a tribute to part of the story you don’t hear about as often. This will be structured as an Italian meal and an homage to the Lombardi family.

What every chef needs

You have to get experiences. Everyone is a different kind of learner. You have to know how you experience the world and learn. ...

I also spent a little time with Odessa Piper at L’Etoile (in Madison). She taught me every chef has to have one good dessert in their back pocket. For me, it is probably budino. I took a trip to Nancy Silverton’s restaurant for her budino.

His Milwaukee eats

Maria’s Pizza, 5025 W. Forest Home Ave., that was always on my tour. Leon’s for custard, Kopp’s for the burger, and Solly’s dripping-with-butter burger as well. You can’t beat the butter.

What he’s excited about moving forward

We just hired another chef, Ben Hunter, previously with Underground Food Collective in Madison. We have another chef moving into event planning, Mark Wroczynski, also a Greenfield High Alum, 11 years younger than me. He had an underground dining club called Vignette.

The retail space is at 931 E. Main St., Suite 7 (in Madison), noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. People can go to the website (thedeliciouser.com/upcoming-events) for ticketed events.

Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email clewis@journalsentinel.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Patrick O'Halloran turns his attention to spices at The Deliciouser