A Wisconsin supper club is not a restaurant. It is a standing agreement between a family, a bar, and a freezer full of prime rib. Learn the rhythm and you will be welcome. Ignore it and you will be seated near the kitchen door.
Start at the bar, not the table
You will be told the wait is forty minutes. It is not forty minutes. It is the length of one brandy old fashioned, then a second one you did not plan on, and a conversation with a stranger about his boat motor.
The bar wait is part of the meal. Nobody is stalling. The table will be ready the moment you stop noticing the time, which is by design.
Order the old fashioned the way the bartender asks: sweet, sour, or press. Sweet is the default and the safe answer. Sour is a personality. Press means the bartender tops it with soda, and you will feel like a local for the rest of the night.
The relish tray arrives on its own
Before you order anything, a relish tray lands on the table. Carrots, celery, radishes, pickled something, and a cheese spread with crackers. You did not ask for it. You cannot refuse it. It is the opening statement.
The rules are simple:
- Take a cracker, take the cheese spread, and act like this is normal.
- Do not ask what the pickled thing is. It is pickled.
- Leave one radish. Nobody knows why, but everybody does it.
Know your night
The menu is a calendar. Friday is fish fry, with rye bread, coleslaw, and a potato of your choice. Saturday is prime rib, and it sells out before the sun does. Sunday is chicken, and the parking lot fills with church clothes.
Ordering prime rib on a Friday is legal but visible. Ordering fish on a Saturday is a cry for help. Read the chalkboard and follow it.
Dessert is a drink
After dinner, the waitress will ask whether you want dessert. What she means is an ice cream drink. A grasshopper is mint and chocolate. A pink squirrel is almond and cream and very pink. Both arrive in a glass that has seen decades of use.
Order one for the table and pretend you are sharing. Nobody shares. That is the whole joke.
Supper clubs up north, on the lake
The best supper clubs sit on a lake, with a dock out front and a sunset the owner did not have to buy. Boats tie up. People arrive in flip-flops and leave in a mood.
The Poontoon has tried to dock at several. The answer was always a polite nod and a request that Gary please not park it near the neon sign. We took this as a yes.