My wife wanted to take a day trip up to Galena, IL not long before the Christmas holiday and while it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, I still did it. But after a walk up and down the main drag along Main Street dodging holiday shoppers and other day-trippers from Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, even my wife said it was time to get out of there. It was later in the afternoon and we hadn't really had anything to eat all day long. I remembered something a friend of mine said to me not long ago about a supper club in Kieler, WI that supposedly had great prime rib. We got in the car and headed up to Kieler to give the Village Bar Supper Club a try.
Supper clubs are a staple in Upper Midwest culture with Wisconsin and Minnesota boasting, by far, the most supper clubs in the region. Northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin have a large number of supper clubs, but the state of Wisconsin has over 250 restaurants that are designated as supper clubs. (For a complete listing of current supper clubs in Wisconsin, click here.) They are usually found in small towns, on lake front property, or at country crossroads. Each of them has their own unique character and history. And the Village Bar Supper Club is certainly one of those unique little places.
The original building the Village Bar Supper Club sits in dates back to the days of Prohibition in the late 1920's and early 1930's. German immigrants Bruno and Helen Heinrich were the original owners of the place that may or may not have once been a combination speakeasy and brothel. It is said that Al Capone used to dine there as he came to Dubuque on a regular basis to run illegal liquor into the area in the late 20's using the Mississippi River to transport booze to cities and towns up and down the river.
During World War II, anti-German sentiment was at a high, even amongst German-Americans in the area who thought the Heinrich's were Nazi sympathizers. Their little bar/restaurant was vandalized on many occasions with the bar actually being pushed over by a group of young men one evening. By the late 1940's, the Heinrich's decided to sell their bar.
In the early 1950's, a gentleman by the name of Dick Alderson took over ownership of the place and renamed it the Village Bar Supper Club. The original dining room was small and they had a second dining area on the second floor - an area that eventually became an apartment years later. Alderson owned it for a number of years before selling it to a man by the name of Claire Fiedler. By the time that Bruce Symonds bought the place in the 1990's, a total of five different people had once owned the place up to that point.
Also in the 1990's, Kurt and Shelley Thumser both had full-time factory jobs around the Dubuque area, but they also had a part of the 19th Hole restaurant just outside of East Dubuque, a small tavern that was well-known for their good burgers. Shelley Thumser was looking to do something more than just slinging burgers at a small place at nights and on the weekends. Kurt just happened to be sitting at the bar at the Village Bar Supper Club talking with Bruce Symonds at one point when Thumser made the proposal to buy the place. Symonds contemplated it for awhile, and in 2001 the Thumsers took over possession of the Village Bar Supper Club.
The Thumsers wanted to distinguish themselves as different from previous iterations of the Village Bar Supper club. From the first day they owned the place, Kurt Thumser declared that the Village Bar would have the best prime rib around. Sourcing top notch beef from a local purveyor, it wasn't long before the Village Bar was known around Southwest Wisconsin, Northwest Illinois and Northeast Iowa as having excellent prime rib.
It was a less than 20-mile drive up backroads in northwest Illinois crossing over into southwest Wisconsin to get to Kieler from Galena. Now, we had been to Kieler before a few years ago when my former neighbor and his wife took us to there on our way up to Green Bay to have a couple drinks at the Kieler Mall, a small bar just off Highway 61/151. My former neighbor is a descendent of the village's founder John Kieler and the story he loved to tell was the time they were in Kieler a number of years ago visiting with other family members. Someone had mentioned that they were going to go to the Kieler Mall and his somewhat proper aunt from Green Bay, not knowing that the Kieler Mall was a bar and not a shopping outlet, jumped at the chance to go with the group. "You can almost imagine how she felt when she walked into a small hole-in-the-wall joint thinking that she was going shopping," my neighbor laughingly told us on our visit to the Kieler Mall.
The Village Bar Supper Club is on the north side of Kieler right at the corner of County Road H and County Road HHH which curves through Kieler. (see map) They open the bar at 4 p.m. and start serving dinner at 4:30. We got there just about 4:30 and walked inside. We encountered a small bar area just as you come in the door with a small dining room in front of the bar area. We were immediately greeted by one of the bartenders behind the bar who asked us if we had a reservation. We found out later on that reservations are probably a good thing to have on a Friday or Saturday night. The phone was ringing off the hook when we were there from people putting their name and time in for reservations later in the evening. Even so, the bartender told us that he could get us seated right away.
He took us to a corner table for two in the main dining room just off the bar area and it wasn't long until another lady came out from the kitchen area with a couple menus for us to look through. There was already another couple in the dining room and they appeared to already be eating their main course. It wasn't long before a party of 8 came into the room, then another couple came in and was seated at the table next to ours. Our same server waited on them and they didn't even hesitate when she came over to greet them with a couple menus. "He's on a mission," the lady told the server. They both placed their orders without even looking at the menus. The had their food in no time, ate it quickly, gathered up whatever remained in to-go boxes, and were out of there before we got our food. Yes, I would say he was on a mission.
The wine and craft beer prospects at the Village Bar were limited - they did have New Glarus Spotted Cow, but I've never been a big fan of New Glarus beers. They had some house wines, but my wife decided just to get a Tito's vodka and cranberry while I got a domestic beer that was served in a can with no glass. Hey, I didn't say that The Village Bar was a classy place.
Most of the items found on the menu at the Village Bar are typical of what you'd fine in most Upper Midwest supper clubs - of course, they had their famous prime rib that came in 3 sizes - a 16-ounce petite cut, a 24-ounce queen cut, and a 40-ounce king cut. (I understand that they can also cut a 60-ounce "King-and-a-Half", or for the gargantuan appetite they can cut an 80-ounce "Double King" slab of prime rib.) Steaks, chicken, pork chops, ribs and pasta dishes also are found on the menu. An extensive seafood part of the menu offered lobster tails, scallops, jumbo shrimp and king crab legs. In fact, one of the ladies in the part of 8 at a table near us got the king crab legs and they were huge. My wife and I were both amazed by the size of the crab legs they brought out to her. The menu had a little bit of everything for everyone, which is exactly how most supper clubs are.
And like any supper club worth their salt, the prerequisite relish tray made its way to our table. It featured celery sticks, baby carrots and radishes with bowls of braunschweiger, ranch dressing, whipped cheddar cheese and a crab dip that my wife surmised was made with imitation crab dip. The braunschweiger was actually pretty tasty, but it left sort of a metallic taste in my mouth, similar to a taste I remember from my youth drinking out of an old water pump on our farm. My wife said that her grandmother made braunschweiger as a little kid and she can't really stand the taste of it any longer. "Too much of that iron aftertaste," she said. But the relish tray is still a great touch.
Along with the relish tray, we had our choice of either cottage cheese or cole slaw to come out in lieu of a salad to start out. My wife got the cole slaw, which was a creamy-style of cole slaw; and I got the cottage cheese which was pretty basic cottage cheese.
For dinner that night, my wife - who is not very big on prime rib - declared she was going to get a steak. They had an 8-ounce or 12-ounce tenderloin filet, a 16-ounce T-bone, a 12-ounce sirloin, and a 16-ounce ribeye steak. My wife was sort of taken aback by the large cuts of steaks, but rationalized that she could get a to-go box to take home with her. She ended up ordering the ribeye. She had the option of a choice of potato, rice or a vegetable medley. She got the vegetable medley which was really nothing more than some steamed frozen veggies. But she didn't mind that as she was going to concentrate on making a big dent in her steak
Me - I was in full bore on the prime rib. Even though I wasn't that hungry, I went with the 24-ounce queen cut - as rare of a cut the person cutting the prime rib in the kitchen could find. I, too, figured that I could take some home with me. I got sautéed mushrooms on the prime rib and for my side I got the hash browns mixed in with cheddar cheese and sautéed onions. The cut of prime rib was very rare.
Both of our meals were simply excellent. My wife ordered her steak medium and it had a hint of a pink middle just as she likes it. The vegetable medley turned out to be somewhat "meh!", as was the somewhat stale dinner roll they served with the cottage cheese and cole slaw. But she was more than happy and impressed with the cut, quality and taste of her steak.
My prime rib was everything that my friend said it would be - juicy, tender, flavorful, just an outstanding cut of prime rib. The sautéed mushrooms were fresh and had that great earthy taste and texture that went well with the beef. The hash browns with the cheese and onions were also very good, as well. I offered them up to my wife after she turned up her nose at the veggie medley after a couple of bites. "I should have gotten the hash browns," she said after her third forkful.
Our waitress came over to check on us and we had pretty much hit the wall after both of us finishing just about half of the beef that was on our plates. She got us some to-go boxes and said, "I take it you guys probably aren't interested in any dessert." We both emphatically said no. We were able to make a second meal at home out of the leftover ribeye and prime rib the next day.
I have absolutely no complaints about the meal that we had at The Village Bar Supper Club. But the thing that really got me was how good of a value the meal really was. With all the food we had, a mixed drink and a couple beers, plus the add-ons for the sautéed mushrooms on my prime rib, and the cheese and sautéed onions on the hash browns, the bill came to just over $60 bucks and change. The service was efficient and friendly, the place was clean and cozy, and the food was superb. It's about a 75 minute drive from our home to The Village Bar Supper Club in Kieler, WI and we'll have no problem making that trek again at some point.
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