Strolling the aisles of your local Goodwill, you might pause at a shelf piled with old porcelain plates decorated with flowers, vines, and bucolic scenery. These affordable dishes—known as transferware—were invented for the emerging middle class in 18th-century England. Inspired by hand-painted Chinese porcelain but stamped by machine, then exported by the shipload, English transferware became the go-to dish for early American households. 

Transferware’s earthenware base material (sometimes substituted for ironstone, porcelain, or bone china) kept the dishes highly affordable, but their printed-on monochrome designs—featuring castles, courting couples, and other intricate scenes—looked anything but. The technique lives on today, both in pricey, collectible Limoges porcelain from France, as well as in lower-grade plastic servingware that’s suddenly in vogue.

Across the United States, well-known chefs are now reviving transferware, swapping minimalist white dishes for Southern Willow Blue, English Chippendale, Historic American Brown, and other vintage designs. There’s a comfort to these old dishes, which conjure up meals in grandparents’ homes. These days, far from feeling formal or stuffy, the quaint motifs encourage a more relaxed dining experience. Here are the restaurants at the forefront of the transferware renaissance. What’s old is new again.

Gift Horse

272 Westminster St., Providence, RI

Before opening this groovy raw bar, chef-owner Benjamin Sukle (of Oberlin restaurant fame) dove into 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s dinnerware designs to match the new restaurant’s “timeless, brash style.” Rosebud Chintz from Spode was a winner, and eBay and Etsy got the job done. “Every time I have an empty plate in front of me, I can’t help but turn it over to see who made it, what collection it’s from, and how old it is,” says Sulke, a self-proclaimed “lifelong plate flipper.”

Get the look:
Royal Albert Rose Confetti 5-Piece Bone China Place Setting
Villeroy & Boch Audun Ferme Dinner Plate
Gracie China Rose Chintz Porcelain 8-Inch Dessert Plate

Hermosa

4356 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago, IL

Ethan Lim’s modern Cambodian restaurant (named after its neighborhood) pays homage to his late mother, Momma Lim, who ran a noodle stand in pre-war Battambang. With the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview, Lim “wanted to focus on creating a space where time stood still and the service style was reflective of being at home,” a philosophy that shines through in such touches as his partner’s grandmother’s English Chippendale plates—on which he serves Dungeness crab and caviar.

Get the look:
Royal Albert Old Country Roses 10.25-Inch Dinner Plate
Portmeirion Botanic Garden Dinner Plates
Loki Dessert Plates by Matthew Williamson

Mister Mao

4501 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans, LA

At her maximalist “tropical roadhouse,” chef-owner Sophina Uong swaps starched tablecloths and matching plates for a hodgepodge of colorful transferware. “I know it drives our cooks and servers crazy, because nothing matches and things are impossible to stack together neatly, but to me, that’s the beauty of recycling pieces of history,” she says. Menu standouts include avocado chaat and turmeric-potato pani puri.

Get the look:
Bitossi Vintage-Inspired Floral Dinnerware
Gien Les Depareillees Rebus Dinner Plate
Spode Woodland Turkey Dinnerware

Chubby Fish

252 Coming St., Charleston, SC

Housed in a defunct corner store, James London’s dock-to-table restaurant sprinkles in deep blue transferware to complement the casual, nautical feel. “We try not to take ourselves too seriously,” says London, referring to dishes featuring tuna belly toast and caviar sandwiches served on mismatched china. “Guests get excited when they see plates or glasses they grew up with, and often bring us boxes of plates from their garage that they think will work with our lineup,” he says.

Get the look:
Spode Blue Italian 16-Piece Set
222 Fifth Adelaide Woodland 16-Piece Dinnerware Set
Williams-Sonoma English Floral Dinnerware Collection

Troubadour Bread & Bistro

381 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg, CA

Boulangerie by day, bistro by night, Troubadour Bread & Bistro’s whimsical aesthetic shines through in the escargot and tartiflette served on gold-rimmed Limoges, a transferware subset popular in 19th-century France. “I love that each piece has a story, and that we get to give these plates a proper stage,” says co-owner Sean McGaughey.

Get the look:
Famille Rose Dinner Plates
RHODE Dinner Plate Sets
Noritake Hertford 12-Piece Set

Ma Der Lao Kitchen

1634 N. Blackwelder Ave., Suite 102, Oklahoma City, OK

The shatterproof melamine dishes at this brother-and-sister-owned Lao restaurant are a nod to the duo’s childhood. “I want patrons to feel like they’re at my mom’s house,” says co-owner Jeff Chanchaleune, who serves mugifuji pork katsu and nam khao on the same plastic, floral-rimmed plates he ate from growing up.

Get the look:
Siren Song Floral Print Melamine Plates
Tarhong Cottage Blue Floral Melamine Dinnerware
Sandia Melamine Dinnerware Set

Oma’s Hideaway

3131 SE Division St., Portland, OR

To create a restaurant that existed “outside the space-time continuum,” the co-owners of this Singapore and Malaysian hawker-inspired eatery leaned into bold, clashing patterns and ornate details such as lustrous fabrics, thrifted floral transferware, and a ’70s-esque iridescent snakeskin bar top.

Get the look:
Bitossi Bel Paese Fruit Accent Plate
Sur La Table Italian Blue Floral Salad Plate
Abi Dessert Plates

The post The Restaurant Design Trend We Can’t Get Enough Of appeared first on Saveur.

Don’t fear the dinner party! Hosting is so much more fun when guests are welcomed into the kitchen. This is Dinner at Kat’s—our series wherein SAVEUR’s editor-in-chief Kat Craddock invites buzzy chefs, cookbook authors, and wine and spirits pros into her home for a day of cooking and connection. There’s no mystery behind throwing a successful dinner party. Find the menus, recipes, drinks, shopping tips, and tricks to make it happen right here.

The Guests:

It’s no secret that I will travel for cheese. I’m an editor, art director, and stylist, and my first media job was with Culture, a magazine all about cheese and the people who make it. Since then, I’ve styled bite-sized skewers for a futuristic cheeseboard in Boston, served as a judge at a Cheesemonger Invitational in San Francisco, and trekked out to The State of Cheese to interview Wisconsin cheesemakers. And this season, it was cheese that brought me to New York, where I wheeled a suitcase full of platters and fondue forks through the East Village—to SAVEUR editor-in-chief Kat Craddock’s Alphabet City apartment.

This is also where Orphee Paillotin and Paula Heimerl—two young Wisconsin-based cheesemakers—come in. For one of the two co-founders of Alpinage Cheese, a career in dairy was a somewhat unexpected pivot. Paula comes from six generations of cheesemakers. Her parents were the original founders of Saxon Creamery in Malone, and she spent much of her childhood helping her family on the farm, at the creamery, and in the aging cave. But up until recently, Orphee, who was born and raised in France, had been working in Milwaukee as an IT manager for a manufacturer of off-road hydraulics motors. A chance dive bar meet-cute brought the two together, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Orphee’s homesick cravings inspired the couple to start their own cheese business in 2020, and these days, in their new Oak Creek facility, they together churn out 11-pound wheels of Mount Raclette, a nutty, Alpine-style raw milk cheese. “Now that we have our own company,” Paula says, “what makes me happiest is knowing I’m carrying on my family’s legacy and the tradition of Wisconsin cheesemaking.”

When enjoying their flagship cheese, the pair gravitates toward classic, European-inspired preparations like fondue and raclette (the latter of which is both the word for the cheese itself and for the dish—molten raclette cheese, “raked” over potatoes, onions, and cornichons). “Watching raclette melt is like a theater performance,” says Paula. “It’s just a beautiful way to gather around the dinner table and share the love of good food with your friends and family.” Coincidentally, Alpine dishes like these are inherently cozy (hello, après-ski) and they’re ideal for cold-weather entertaining. And because an abundance of cheese is as good a reason as any for a winter dinner party, Kat decided to throw one.

The Menu:

• Dirty Martinis with Copper Crow Whey Vodka & Blue Cheese-Stuffed Castelvetranos 
• Alpinage Raclette with Roasted Market Vegetables and Sausages
• Mixed Chicory Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette
• Alpine-Style Fondue
• Cave Aged Cheddar-Beer Fondue
• Chocolate-Mascarpone Fondue
• Creamy Espresso Martinis with Copper Crow Whey Vodka

The Big Night:

I wheeled my suitcase up to Kat’s place in the morning to start setting up for the party with chef and SAVEUR contributing editor Fatima Khawaja. Fatima threw on an apron and unloaded the bounty of local bread she’d picked up from a local bakery, while I started pulling plates, cheese boards, and linens from Kat’s collection. Meanwhile, Kat, Paula, and Orphee met up at the Union Square Greenmarket to run some last-minute errands. You can never have too many fondue dippers, so they grabbed assorted root vegetables, mushrooms, and brussels sprouts from Norwich Meadows Farm, Ramble Creek Farm, and Halal Pastures. A dairy-heavy meal is best balanced with a leafy green salad, so they also stopped by Campo Rosso Farm for a few winter chicories and edible flowers. 

On their way back to the apartment, Kat brought the cheesemakers into the Bedford Cheese Shop so that Orphee and Paula could spread the word about Mount Raclette. Bedfords’ mongers shared a few house favorites, and Kat grabbed some olives, pickles, and a wedge of Deer Creek Rattlesnake for pre-dinner snacking. 

By the time they arrived at Kat’s apartment, Fatima and I were in full-on party prep mode. Paula and Orphee got right to work in the kitchen, grating up a mix of their Mount Raclette and Roth’s Grand Cru Reserve for an Alpine-style fondue, while Kat melted down her own British-inspired version with zippy Carr Valley Cave Aged Cheddar, Worcestershire sauce, and a can of Sixpoint lager. 

While the rest of the gang put their finishing touches on dinner, I arranged a buffet station along Kat’s cookbook library using an assortment of new Boska and vintage Dansk fondue pots, teak and cabbageware platters, and my own vintage fondue fork collection. Orphee set up an impressive electric raclette iron on the breakfast bar, popped a quarter wheel of Mount Raclette under the melter, and portioned out bowls of boiled potatoes, gherkins, and pearl onions for serving. “You can’t go wrong with melted cheese!” Orphee laughed.

With the savory components well underway, it was time to focus on dessert: “I’m South Asian and I have a certification in Latin American food, so I wanted to spice up traditional chocolate fondue with a little bit of heat,” Fatima—who previously worked at Cosme as chef Daniella Soto-Innes’ sous chef—explained. She melted down a mix of milk and dark chocolate with velvety Crave Brothers mascarpone, ground chiles, and cinnamon while I piled the dessert station with toasted brioche, strawberries, cookies, dried fruit, and the creamiest, sweetest dates I’ve ever tasted from Rancho Meladuco.

At The Bar:

One of Kat’s friends had tipped her off about Copper Crow, a Bayfield, Wisconsin-based, Indigenous-owned distillery that’s making vodka and gin from whey, a byproduct of the cheesemaking process that’s extra-abundant in The State of Cheese. I’d heard of whey-based beverages before, but never whey-based distillates, so I was eager to learn more. Copper Crow co-owners Curt and Linda Basina couldn’t make it to our soirée because they were in peak production mode after a last-minute trip to Milwaukee where they’d won Business of the Year at the 2023 Indigenous Business Con (Copper Crow is the first Native American-owned distillery in the United States). So instead, I hopped on a call with Curt to get a few tips for mixing the bottles he’d kindly sent ahead for the party.

The Basinas started making vodka using whey from Burnett Dairy in Grantsburg, Wisconsin after a friend and local distiller encouraged Curt to pursue the old-school, environmentally friendly avenue. “Anytime that you can take what is essentially a waste product and turn it into something value-added, the whole sustainability aspect of it just falls right into place” says Curt. With a hint of lactic sweetness and a buttery mouthfeel, whey vodka makes an excellent base for all manner of food-friendly cocktails. Kat loves a dirty martini, so she mixed up a party-sized batch while I stuffed jumbo Castelvetrano olives with blue cheese for garnish.

As we put the finishing touches on dinner prep, we also iced down a case of natural wine from Kat’s favorite local shop, and some dry pet-nat cider from New York’s Breezy Hill Orchard. When it was time for dessert, we took Curt’s advice and shook up espresso martinis—the whey vodka made this already smooth cocktail even more luxurious.

Shopping All-Stars:

Alpinage Mount Raclette
Roth Cheese Grand Cru Reserve
Carr Valley Cave-Aged Cheddar
Crave Brothers Mascarpone
Hook’s Ewe Calf to be Kidding Blue Cheese
Castelvetrano Olives
Rancho Meladuco Medjool Dates
Bordallo Pinheiro Cabbage Oval Platter
Crow Canyon Home Catalina Small Rectangle Tray
Dusen Dusen Pattern Napkins

Pro Tips:

• Batching out cocktails in advance ensures that you’ll spend less time fiddling at the bar and more time mingling with guests. Ahead of happy hour, measure out family-sized martinis into large mason jars, adding all ingredients except for the ice and garnishes. Whenever someone is ready for a drink, simply pour a single serving into a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake or stir, and serve.
• Before you even think about hosting a fromage-filled party, make sure you have the right gear. Vintage fondue sets abound on eBay and Etsy, while Boska’s website is a one-stop shop for new fondue pots and raclette serving solutions. 
• Fondue pots and raclette irons bring with them an inherent risk of fire, which is increased whenever booze is added to the equation. Ahead of any party in which open flame is to be used, be sure to check the expiration date and location of your fire extinguishers.
• “You can’t have a great fondue without a top-notch baguette,” says Orphee. For added texture, he says to cut the baguette into bite-sized pieces, spread them onto a baking sheet, and pop them in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up right before you’re ready to serve. Crispy, bite-sized pieces of bread + melted cheese = fondue heaven.

The Fondue Fête Playlist

Get the Recipes

Alpine-Style Fondue

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Cheddar Beer Fondue

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Chocolate-Mascarpone Fondue

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The post Lessons From a Fondue Fête with Two Wisconsin Cheesemakers appeared first on Saveur.