As I walked into Porta Bella on the restaurant’s last day of service, a woman rushed in to get her pickup order. “I’m illegally parked!” she said as the host shuffled to get her food.
Friendly but frantic, the woman said she had to get one last Porta salad, one of the restaurant’s signature dishes — iceberg lettuce topped with chickpeas, ham, salami, mozzarella and cheddar cheese.
Porta Bella has been serving Italian American classics since 1968. Its menu has changed very little during that time, carrying over many recipes from the original owners, Roy and Rose McCormick (specifically Rose, who was a member of the Troia family, an Italian family that resided in the Greenbush neighborhood).
The couple also opened Paisan’s, a popular spot for University of Wisconsin-Madison students — and one former Cap Times reporter’s introduction to pizza — with Rose’s brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Bette Troia, in 1949…