Wisconsin Supper Clubs
Childhood memories may be haunted but the relish tray abides
Pickled mushrooms and asparagus don’t mix well with alcohol; neither does ice cream
The first rule of Supper Club is that they don’t take reservations; the last rule is that no one eats alone
It’s been said that Wisconsin has more ghosts per square mile than any state in America, a claim I can’t substantiate but buy nevertheless. It seems like every town has its own ghost story: haunted hotels, haunted theaters, haunted steakhouses and saloons. Some have seen the apparition of a Christmas-tree delivery ship that sank into Lake Michigan off the shore near Manitowoc in November of 1912, or heard the disembodied sounds of the Kickapoo Polka Band, whose eerie music floats through the Vernon County woods. Others have seen the ghosts of gangsters who laid low in the Northwoods at spots like Manitowish Waters’ Little Bohemia Lodge, where to this day you can enjoy fried lake perch, potatoes, coleslaw, and rye bread in a place whose windows still have bullet holes from the FBI’s botched 1934 raid on the Dillinger Gang. This was more or less what brought me heading north on Highway 51 towards the vast woods and glacial lakes of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest — not gangster …