The supper clubs I have been to almost exclusively serve supper only (dining begins at 5/5:30pm). If you want lunch, you get it in the bar, not the dining room. The one that I found disconcerting (no longer operating) was a place called the Tundra House in Baileys Harbor. We stopped in without having the name set off alarm bells. On a shelf behind the bar, they had a box of official frozen tundra from Lambeau, but you barely noticed it with all the other Packers memorabilia and pictures on the walls, the ceiling the restroom, every-fucking-where. Food was ok, though.
Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club
As another “kid dragged to two-hour-long dinners at random supper clubs”, I’ve got to watch that documentary.
Partly because my parents never did answer my question about the “club” designation. My theory was it had some connection to Prohibition, and how maybe you could get booze under the table at a “supper club”…
By the way, back living in Wisconsin now, you can find that atmosphere when you least expect it. My brother-in-law came from the west coast, he’d Yelp’ed a steak place he wanted to try, and we walked into Smoky’s (in Madison)…
…I felt like I’d tripped into a time machine. The almost-complete darkness broken up by those little red candles with fishnet stockings on the outside on each table, the stuffed swordfish on the wall, the signed headshots (not of movie stars, but of Packers from the 50s)…
And, as the menu says, all entrees came with the big bread basket: soft, fresh white bread rolls and a pound of butter; a “wedge salad”; and if you’ve never been served a complimentary iced “signature relish cup”… you’ve never really experienced What Used To Pass For Fine Dining.
By the way, Brother-in-law asked “Did we just walk into 1959?”, but he loved it, and proclaimed that his King Cut Prime Rib was the best he’d ever had…
… as was his Brandy Old Fashioned (with lots of fussy “muddling” involved).
Born and raised cheese head here. I worked in a supper club in High School. It’s still there, out in the woods.
I think, for my neighborhood (by national standards, we were all poor, but not dirt poor. we got by), is that Supper Clubs had a more fancy air. A restaurant, especially a “family” restaurant, was just a place to eat. Be it the “[insert name here] Family Restaurant”, or Marc’s Big Boy, they were just eating out.
But a supper club - you put your better clothes on and were on your best behavior. And you got breadsticks or rolls on the table and parsley with your steak. And you could drink.
And yes, they were all dark wood and deer heads. And the bar always has some good signs, like the flowing water Hamms sign, or a rotating Schlitz globe,
We used to live in Shorewood Hills within walking distance of a Smokey’s. One year Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hiroshima was there with his wife. He was plastered. Took a liking to my husband… Put his arm around him. This was long before selfies.His wife was a Saint. The decor is different. The Hash browns are buttery deliciousness.
I’m going to guess that was an auto-correct error. 
For our non-cheesheads: Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch was a local celebrity in Madison: he had been a star football player for the University of Wisconsin, and then for the Los Angeles Rams; later, he was the athletic director at UW-Madison for decades.
That’s funny I didn’t even notice that!
And he was the basis for Kareem playing Roger Murdoch in Airplane! (As he was in Zero Hour!)
I was going to add - now that i’ve moved out of Wisconsin, and seen the world, I’m still a fan of the Supper Club. I ate at Ruth’s Christ, and all I can say is it’s a ton of money for no real increase in quality. Send me back to the Timbers, or Silver Crest. I don’t need to impress people with my $70 steak and $20 side of brocolli (without hollandiase!)
eenerms, where in Door County did you eat?
As a Wisconsin kid at a supper club, if your parents refused to buy you a beer with your food (mine didn’t buy alcoholic drinks for me until I was 14!), you could at least order a ‘kiddie cocktail’ or Shirley Temple. Usually a 7-up with some maraschino cherries on a spear, and some of the cherry syrup in the drink.
Oh, yeah, as a kid I’d much rather have a well-made Shirley Temple (or a Roy Rogers if the bartender didn’t think your budding masculinity could handle it).
The really good places* would fuss over it and basically make you an Old Fashioned without the brandy. Compared to that, the “little bit of grenadine in a 7-up” just made you feel like kids were second-class citizens.
*like Kegel’s on National Ave. in West Allis… though that was more an Olde German Jointe… my mom took us there last winter, and not a thing had changed!
Once Covid isolation is over and dining out is safe again, we’ve GOT to set up a WI Doper dinner at a supper club.
I’m in! I’ll start shopping for a Packers Sweater Vest…
(Actually, we basically refused to take my 90+ yr old invalid mom to a grandkid’s SuperSpreader Wedding, and as a consolation prize, I promised to buy her The Perfect Old-Fashioned at her favorite supper club when this is all over.)
(She’d love to have you guys join us!)
At Fish fry at Peninsula Pub in Baileys Harbor, Sisters Bowl supper club Sisters Bay and White Gull in Fish Creek for Door County Fish Boil( homemade cherry pie included). Butter butter butter!
Not grenadine?
Abso-friggin’-lutely! I’ll make the trek north!
Damfino, I was a kid. I thought it was cherry juice from the maraschino cherries, I would never have heard of grenadine syrup at age 6. Not until I was in HS.
I grew up in Shorewood! Believe it or not, I never made it to Smokey’s. But I did eat at the Cuba Club a couple of times.
You’re old…
My parents love to tell how when they started going to Madison for UW football games*, the Cuba Club was on the western edge of town, with a lot of farmland beyond that… (naturally, it’d be considered ‘in the city’ these days, maybe ‘near west side’).
*(“Back in the leather helmet days, Dad?”)
That’s what I thought as a kid and I’d been no where near Wisconson.
I resent that! It only got torn down in about 1990.
One of my uncles spent a year at UW-Madison in about 1935. He remembered taking a train out to Middleton.