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STORY BY PATRICK YOST

The inside of The Dining Room glows. There are 46 light fixtures that hover, almost as if in mid air, over white linen tables with silverware meticulously placed, surrounded by multiple wine glasses for, of course, multiple wines.

Chef Ryan Caldwell, a 36-year-old man who has earned his place as executive chef, takes a sip of mineral water and reflects. It has taken him one and half years to get to this place with MAD

Hospitality and their stable of Madison-based restaurants. His time was spent creating The Sinclair, a hip breakfast, small plate, wine and drinks restaurant housed in an old car dealer building; Mad Taco, an authentic Mexican restaurant located across the square from the Sinclair; and Hart and Crown, a British Pub that, since its opening, stays both comforting and full.

Caldwell’s last chef stint was as executive chef at the Malibu Beach where he defined the west coast cuisine for four years.

But now there is The Dining Room.

The high-end eatery is the brainchild of MAD Hospitality owner and real estate developer, Preston Snyder, who spent years working as a server during the Chef Gunter Seeger transformation of The Ritz-Carlton, Atlanta while attending college and starting his real estate career.

The Dining Room, on Hancock Street, is the fourth restaurant Caldwell and Snyder have opened in downtown Madison in the last year and a half and brings a lineage, immediate heritage and gravitas found no where else. A bakery and breakfast restaurant are also in the works.

For a chef, Caldwell says, The Dining Room offers a chance to shine. Open Thursday through Saturday and

Executive Chef Ryan Caldwell, right, creates each course at The Dining Room from locally sourced ingredients and tailors his menu based on what’s available, what’s fresh, and what’s going to give patrons an unforgettable dining experience.

Photography by Josiah Connelly accepting 36 reservations per night, The Dining Room offers a sophisticated menu, typically four courses, of locally sourced ingredients with thoughtful wine pairings. In the year and a half Caldwell has spent in Madison, he used that time to establish a network of providers for freshness.

“It’s a painstaking process,” he says. “It’s trial and error. You give everybody a shot but it doesn’t always work.”

Recently The Dining Room featured a suckling pig sourced from Milledgeville’s Comfort Farms. Comfort Farms, according to its website, is a “sustainable small farm that help veterans transition from their time at war.”

At Comfort Farms, Caldwell found a Mulefoot pig. The well-marbled pig was butchered at the expansive kitchen that services The Dining Room, Hart and Crown and Mad Taco and was covered in aromatics, slow roasted and then wrapped in cabbage from Bread and Butter Farms in Sparta. Mona Lisa smiled. That’s the idea, Caldwell says. “This is a great product. The guy that raises them treats them with respect.”

The menu at The Dining Room changes, sometimes daily, to accommodate what was procured. Caldwell takes the best ingredients he can find and then creates. “It elevates everything,” he says.

“I order what they have and then I have to create. That’s the challenge and that’s the pay-off.”

The intimate space is adorned with original art. The four-top bar sits before a gleaming array of whiskeys. The service matches the linen table top. No detail is left to chance.

A recent offering was a first course of roasted beet root salad, house made ricotta, Rolling Branch Farms Satsuma orange with fresh fines herbs served with a 2010 Petites Sardines, Muscadet, France wine. Second course; Sunchoke veloute, Salmon roe, Saffron oil served with the “Pale Rose,” Provence, France. Third course; North Carolina Speckled Trout, Pine Nut and Curly Kale gremolata, and Crystal organics baby winter carrots, served with Hugel Reisling Classic, 2020, Alsace, France and a final course of vanilla panna cotta, kumquat compote,