Sage Harvest’s Michael Solovey Partners with Appetito for New Classes, Events

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Glorioso’s Appetito (1020 E. Brady St.), a culinary center formed in 2019 by Glorioso’s Italian Market, welcomes the addition of chef Michael Solovey’s Sage Harvest interactive online culinary school. This new combined culinary experience offers a full lineup of in-person and online cooking classes, food coaching, in-home private dinners and catering.

Appetito offers hands-on Italian cooking classes and demonstrations in the space where brothers Joe, Eddie and Teddy Glorioso founded Glorioso’s Italian Market in 1946. In 2010, Glorioso’s Italian Market moved across the street to a spacious 10,000 square foot location at 1011 E. Brady St.

Sage Harvest opened in 2020 with a science-focused approach toward cooking, baking and nutrition classes. Solovey graduated Magna Cum Laude from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s skilled in food stylization, culinary science, restaurant and menu consulting and food medicine. He assisted in opening 24 restaurants as a consultant and restauranteur.

Solovey is happy to be back in a brick-and-mortar setting and looks forward to teaching in-person classes. “It involves all the senses. We’re creating an art form that, when consumed, it literally become part of us. To further expound upon everyone’s knowledge of how food affects our health goes beyond any business aspiration for me,” he says. “I think it’s my purpose, and it’s very fulfilling to have a new venue to exercise this obsession.”

Interactive and Online

Solovey will still offer his popular interactive online cooking classes. “There’s still a calling for that (online classes), especially during colder months here in Wisconsin.”

In 2019, when Appetito was still in the planning stages, Solovey was hired by Glorioso’s/Appetito manager Michael Glorioso for some light consulting. At the time, Solovey was managing the cooking school at Sur La Table’s former Bayshore Town Center location. He also taught some classes at Appetito and fell in love with the space.

As pandemic restrictions eased and Appetito resumed in-person cooking classes, Solovey started teaching more classes for them. “I started falling more in love with the space, and with the Glorioso’s family and all that they stand for.”

Glorioso and Solovey looked at the core concepts of Appetito and Sage Harvest to examine any overlap or redundancies, and they didn’t find many. Solovey had interactive online classes, and classes and dinners in people’s homes. Appetito was concentrating in filing their space with cooking classes or events. “So we figured we’d join forces and offer all of these things under the same roof. We want to offer something really different from other cooking schools and cooking experiences in town,” Solovey says.

More Global Cuisines Shine in Classes, Events

The new partnership still offers Appetito’s hands-on Italian cooking classes and demonstrations while adding cuisines influenced by Solovey’s global travels. Recent offerings include a Thai-themed class in which participants made basil lime sorbet and spring rolls. Solovey has also done in-home dinners and catering events, including one on a pontoon boat that cruised the Milwaukee River.

“I’m always thinking outside the box to come up with interesting ways to bring people together over food,” he says. “Having taught thousands of cooking classes, and being involved with restaurants of varying concepts, I cook anything and everything—there’s nothing that I shy away from.”

Classes scheduled for September include Making Ravioli Two Ways and Wine Sampling, on Sept. 18, which will teach scratch-made pasta techniques. A meat and a vegetarian option will be available. The October! Pork Schnitzel and Herbed Spaetzle from Scratch class, led by Solovey, takes place Sept. 23. Making Empanadas, on September 29, will teach students to make the popular Latin American street food.

To see all upcoming classes and events, visit shop.gloriosos.com/collections/events.