Wisconsin Supper Clubs Archives : TRAVEL/FOOD

Classic Del-Bar Supper Club Celebrates 80 Years with Special Recipes

Historic foodways, Historic Restaurants, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Supper Clubs

For those who love supper clubs, then check out The Del-Bar, a supper club in the Wisconsin Dells celebrated their 80^th anniversary on June 1^st with the release of one of their most popular dishes, Shrimp de Jonghe. A Chicago classic created by the de Jonghe brothers in the late 1800s, Shrimp de Jonghe is one of the most classic of classic supper club dishes and interestingly, for as delicious as it is, is typically served only in the Chicagoland area.

Wisconsin is the epicenter of supper clubs, probably boasting the most in the nation.

Mary Bergin, author of Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook – Iconic Fare and Nostalgia From Landmark Eateries explains what differentiates a supper club from a restaurant.

It’s not just food and drink, she says. Supper clubs tend to be less about family than couples, lighting can be neon on the outside and dimly lit—or should we say atmospheric inside.

As far as I know there are no chain supper clubs, instead, according to Bergin who is a travel writer and author, they’re locally owned and often have been in the same family for generations. Sure, there are some in big cities, but often they’re in rural, even out-of-the-way places. And they don’t skimp on the food.

Of course, what makes a supper club in Wisconsin might differ in other states, but in the Midwest, it’s more the rule that they offer a friendly atmosphere, making you feel like you belong to—yes, you guessed it—the club.

“I think at a supper club, you immediately feel like you belong,” says Bergin, who is also authored xxx

Del-Bar checks many of the boxes. It was founded Jim and Alice Wimmer, the grandparents of third-generation owners– Amy Wimmer and Anne Stoken. In 1943 the Wimmers bought a roadside diner situated between Baraboo and the Wisconsin Dells (hence the name) that was in actuality a cabin with room enough for six tables.

Jim, a former quarterback for the University of Wisconsin who grew up in rural Wisconsin Dells, was all gung-ho about the buying the place. Alice less so. But he pointed out she had a degree in Domestic Science from the University of Wisconsin and also was a pretty good cook.

And so they took the plunge. Obviously the current restaurant is more than a converted cabin. Designed by James Dresser, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, he designed homes throughout the country but many can be found in Wisconsin including not only Del-Bar but also Fields at the Wilderness, also in the Wisconsin Dells.

Taliesin Preservation describes Dresser’s design of the Del-Bar as featuring {strong geometry in its design, with the triangle as a repeated element, including on the sign out front, which literally points diners into the restaurant. The building’s construction materials also reinforce its connection to nature and the prairie. Exterior stone walls continue inside, giving way to large expanses of glass. The warmth of another natural material, wood, harmonizes with the earth tones of the restaurant’s color palette, which can be found both inside and out. Another design principle James absorbed from Wright, the use of compression and release, is easy to see and feel at the Del-Bar: Intimate, low-ceilinged spaces open to larger, soaring expanses.”

To celebrate 80 years in business, Del-Bar is releasing two recipes including their hot bacon dressing that they serve with their spinach salad and has been on the menu since almost day one.

The Del-Bar’s Hot Bacon Dressing

Serves approximately 20

1 pound bacon – cut up and browned(grease drained off)
1/2 cup 0nion – chopped and sauteed
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Dijon mustart

Combine first three ingredients and bring to a boil.

Lower heat to low and add sugar and simmer for a few more minutes.

Turn the heat off and add mayonnaise and mustard.

Stir until dissolved.

The Original Shrimp de Jonghe Recipe:

According to The Del-Bar’s website “As we continue our 80th year celebration, we are excited to reveal the history and recipe for The Del-Bar’s Shrimp de Jonghe recipe. Shrimp de Jonghe has been a staple among Chicago cuisine dating back to the late 1800’s and legend has it that this recipe was acquired at Binyon’s, a famous Chicago restaurant, which held the Original Henri De Jonghe recipe. Second generation Del-Bar owner Jeff Wimmer seized an opportunity to bring a Chicago specialty to the Dells area in the early 70’s and it has been a staple on our menu since then! Enjoy! Or continue to let us do the cooking!

This recipe yields one loaf of de Jonghe Bread which is plenty to cover up to two 9×13 casserole dishes or if you are doing individual ramekins as we do, you will have plenty to freeze and it will keep for a month.

Ingredients:

1 load bread- remove crusts, use dough hook in standing mixer to make into crumbs
2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
2 teaspoon dry chives,
1 teaspoon dry tarragon
2 teaspoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon black pepper,
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
1/3 cup garlic
1/3 cup shallots
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined

Cream butter with the Worcestershire sauce, chives, parsley, black pepper, salt, and Tabasco.

Mince the garlic and shallots with a food processor or by hand.

Then sauté on low heat for five minutes with 1/2 cup butter.

Combine all ingredients into mixer with dough hook.

Form into loaf and refrigerate 24 hours. When ready to assemble, season shrimp with salt and pepper.

Slice de Jonghe bread thin, top shrimp (5 for ramekin size) or fill a casserole dish with shrimp and cover with thin slices of bread.

Brush bread with butter and bake at 450°F for 10 minutes and then broil until bread is browned.

Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience

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When I was young, my parents liked to dine at supper clubs. To me, they were swank places of dark wood, bold colored banquettes, and oversized menus where your dad would order a martini and your mom a Manhattan while you, because you were only seven or so, had to do with a Shirley Temple. But at least it came with a pretty paper umbrella and a maraschino cherry

These were the supper clubs of yore. Often tucked away on back roads that seemed to take hours—no make that days—to reach when you were riding in the back of that big boat-like Buick your parents owned and no iPad or cell phone existed yet to keep you entertained. Just a coloring book and a box of Crayolas your mother handed you as you climbed into the car. If your brother came along you could kill time by arguing over whether the Cubs or Sox were better—a fight that endures to this day. If not, you colored and asked every three minutes (I know because my dad timed it once) “are we there yet?”

In Michigan there are few supper clubs that I know of. Maybe D’Agostino’s Navajo Bar & Grille in Bridgeman, family owned for almost 70 years would qualify. It has that feel. There’s Talon’s Supper Club in Norway way up in the U.P. where old fashioned ice cream drinks (typically one of the deciding factors in determining if a place is a supper club) like Grasshoppers and Brandy Alexanders are on the menu. But let’s face it, is anyone going to drive 400 miles one way to go to a supper club? In Norway Michigan—population 2,845? No, I didn’t think so.

Much more local, there’s the Heston Supper Club, in Heston, Indiana just north of LaPorte on the Michigan-Indiana border. And yes, it is in the middle of nowhere. In Syracuse, Indiana less than 90 minutes, The Sleepy Owl has been around for more than a half century. I haven’t been there yet, but definitely will when we can finally leave the house.

Geraldine’s Supper Club in Indy is a hat tip to the classic places of the 1930s and 1940s. There are a few more in Illinois, like the 60-year plus old Timmerman’s Supper Club on the Mississippi River in East Dubuque as well as several in towns I’ve never heard of like Scapecchi’s Supper Club in Farmington.

Because they’re becoming big again, Millie’s Supper Club in Chicago has the look—polished wood, red leather, low lighting—which is cool unless you want old.

But for the largest selection of real back-in-the-day supper clubs, the place to go is Wisconsin and Ron Faiola has got them covered in his two large, heavy-on-photos books, Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience and the follow-up Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round both published by Agate, a Chicago publishing company. The books came about after Faiola’s film (its name is the same as the first book) was shown nationwide on PBS nine years ago. He also has a website, wisconsinsupperclubs.net, with lists of supper clubs organized by region including many not mentioned in his books. And amazingly, there are lots of them.

So what exactly is a supper club? You’d know if you walked into one of them but Faiola describes them as usually only open for dinner and family owned with great service and food as well as a club-like atmosphere. The reason for all that, he says, is because there’s usually at least one family member on the premises to ensure quality is maintained and guests are happy.

Courtesy of CHUCKMAN’S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA

Courtesy of The English Inn Supper Club with locations in Fish Creek and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

“When you come back to a place a few times, you get to be family too,” he says.

Expect steaks and classic dishes like shrimp deJonghe. The latter is totally Chicago-centric, dating back to Chicago and the three deJonghe brothers who immigrated from Belgium in 1891. Two years later they opened a restaurant at the 1893 World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, a global celebration of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. The brothers went on to operate several restaurants including, from 1899 to 1923, DeJonghe’s Hotel and Restaurant at 12 E. Monroe Street. Their most famous dish, the one Henri deJonghe or their chef, Emil Zehr, is said to have created, is Shrimp deJonghe. Heston Supper Club has it on their menu as Sautéed deJonghe. They also serve frog legs, an old fashioned supper club dish if there ever was one and one even harder to find than Shrimp deJonghe. Ditto for The Sleepy Owl, though they call theirs Shrimp Scampi which really is pretty much the same. And yes, they have frog legs as well.

Lobster, ribs, prime rib, perch and Friday night fish fries are also popular supper club items. Oh and don’t forget, the relish tray and/or salad bar.

Drinking is part of the experience. That’s one reason there are so many Wisconsin supper clubs further north like in Door County says Faiola. During Prohibition as liquor was offloaded from boats coming from Canada and delivered via back roads to the big cities, supper clubs out in the boonies got their orders filled as gangsters, avoiding the highways and the cops, stopped by.

The cocktails people drank back then are popular again. But the thing with supper clubs is they never went out of style. In Wisconsin, the big one is the brandy old-fashioned sweet. I’d never heard of it but according to Faiola—and he should know—people in Wisconsin drink more brandy than anyone else in the U.S. and that’s usually by consuming a lot of brandy old-fashioned sweets.

Courtesy of Greenwood Supper Club which opened in 1929 in Fish Harbor in Door County.

But supper clubs aren’t cookie cutters, says Faiola. Each is unique because of the family factor. Just like going to one friend’s home versus another.

Courtesy of Florian Supper Club in Bailey Harbor, Wisconsin.

His books make great guides and people use them to explore the state, choosing which supper club to try next. Even in these days when we really can’t go anywhere yet, they’re still fun to look at—both a step back in time and a look forward when we can hit the road again. Also, I’m also going to be on the hunt for more Michigan supper clubs so if anyone knows of any, let me know.

RECIPES

Here is the original recipe served at the deJonghe Brothers’ various restaurants. It’s interesting because it calls for ingredients not usually associated with fish dishes—nutmeg and mace. But while both are more pie ingredients today, in Europe a century and more ago, they were often used in savory cooking as well.

As for why last place the deJonghe Brothers owned closed, supposedly it was because of liquor violations during Prohibition. But that doesn’t really sound like Chicago, does it?

Also, shrimp can be expensive. A reasonable substitute (after all, this dish is really about the butter, garlic and breadcrumbs) is a tender, mild white fish or even cauliflower that’s cooked in boiling water until barely tender just like the shrimp. For fresh mild white fish, it’ll bake in the oven and doesn’t need to be parboiled beforehand.

The Original Shrimp deJonghe

2 pounds large shrimp (40), or 48 slightly smaller

1 large garlic clove, mashed with the side of a knife or finely minced

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chervil

Pinch of dried thyme crumbled between your fingers and thumb

1 shallot, minced (very finely chopped)

1 tablespoon minced onion

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups fine dry breadcrumbs

Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of mace (optional)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Cook shrimp in a 4-quart pot of boiling salted water (see note below) until just cooked through, about 1 1/2 minutes. Drain shrimp in a colander, then immediately transfer to a large bowl of ice water to stop cooking.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mash garlic to a paste with 1/4 teaspoon salt using a mortar and pestle (or mince and mash garlic with salt using a large knife), then stir together with fresh and dried herbs, shallot, onion, 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter, 1 cup bread crumbs, nutmeg, mace, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.

Melt remaining 1/2 stick butter and stir together with remaining 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper to make topping.

Arrange shrimp in 1 layer (slightly overlapping if necessary) in a buttered 3-quart flameproof gratin dish or other wide shallow ceramic baking dish. Cover with herbed breadcrumb mixture, then sprinkle with topping. Bake in upper third of oven until golden, about 15 minutes. Turn on broiler and broil until crumbs are golden brown, about 2 minutes.

Note: When salting water for cooking, use 1 tablespoon for every 4 quarts water.

Note: This can also be made in 8 small baking ramekins for appetizers, or 4 larger individual baking dishes for main dish-sized.

Relish Tray

These are all suggestions. Add or subtract as you like.

Spreadable cheese and crackers

Black olives

Green olives

Olives stuffed with blue cheese

Gherkins

Bread and butter pickles

Sweet pickles

Pickled beets