My wife and I had a lot of stressful stuff going on in our lives with both sides of the families earlier this summer and we decided that we just needed to get away for a long weekend to ourselves. We chose to take a trip to Wisconsin and settled in Madison for a couple days. One evening, we were trying to figure out places to go to, a place we hadn't been to before. I suggested a couple places and my wife found a place on the far northern end of Lake Mendota that looked like a supper club. I initially rejected that because it was about a 25 to 30 minute drive from out hotel in suburban Middleton. Then I thought, "What the hell? Let's do it!" We ended up making the drive out to The Mariner's Inn.
The Mariner's Inn dates back to 1966, but the original owner/founder Bill Rutenberg had previous experience in the restaurant business. Rutenberg was born in Chicago just before the Great Depression and joined the Marine Corps right at the end of World War II after graduating from high school. After getting an honorable discharge in 1948, Bill made his way to Madison and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin where he was a member of the 1952 Wisconsin football Big Ten Conference co-champions who went on to play Southern California in the 1953 Rose Bowl. A hard charging fullback for the Badgers, Rutenberg was given the nickname "Mr. Hustle" by this coaches and teammates.
While at Wisconsin, Rutenberg met his future wife Betty. Betty's parents and grandparents ran Neesvig's Meats, a food purveyor who sold beef to restaurants and butchers around southern Wisconsin. After graduating and getting married, Bill and Betty went to work in her family's business. In 1961, a small hamburger stand just off Madison's Capitol Square - the Nibble Nook - was for up sale. Bill and Betty decided to buy the eight stool restaurant and start their own restaurant.
Bill had an affinity for the two lakes surrounding Madison often boating on Lake Mendota when he could. There was a supper club on the far north end of the lake - Jake Burke's Supper Club - that went up for sale in 1966. Jack Burke had approached the Rutenbergs about buying the restaurant. Although they weren't really prepared to buy a full service restaurant, they borrowed $2000 from Betty's grandfather as a downpayment and put the rest on a 20-year-note.
After selling The Nibble Nook, Bill and Betty bought the supper club and renamed it The Mariner's Inn. Bill was the bartender, Betty was the cook and they kept one of the waitresses from the old supper club to cover tables. Over the years, the Rutenbergs expanded the menu to include seafood items and added on to the building a handful of times to accommodate their growing clientele.
Bill and Betty had three sons - Bill, Jr., Jack and Robert - who all started out in the restaurant business at a very young age. Bill, Jr., and Jack started out cutting onions and sweeping floors at The Nibble Nook, then moved over to help their mother in the kitchen at The Mariner's Inn. Robert was born three months before the Rutenbergs bought The Mariner's Inn and he was working in the restaurant when he was a young boy.
Over the years, the Rutenbergs - who took on their original family name of von Rutenberg - expanded their operations under their von Rutenberg Ventures which was their corporate name since they bought The Nibble Nook in 1961. In 1982, the family opened the nearby Nau-Ti-Gal, a casual seafood cafe that was the first restaurant in the Madison area with outdoor seating. (The restaurant closed in 2022.) Also in 1982, Captain Bill's Seafood Restaurant opened in suburban Middleton. (Captain Bill's closed in 2020 due to COVID-19 related issues.) 1982 was a busy year for von Rutenberg Ventures as they also opened a marina at The Mariner's Inn and Nau-Ti-Gal called Westport Marine.
In 1996, Betty von Rutenberg died of an unexpected illness at the age of 64. Bill, Jr. had been involved with the restaurant for a number of years, and his brother Jack quit medical school at the University of Wisconsin in the middle 80's to join in the family business. The brothers bought the business from their father after their mother's death. In 1998, the von Rutenberg's took a chance on starting a dinner cruise ship on Lake Mendota and named it after their late mother. A lot of dinner cruise ventures on the lake had not made it over the years, but the brothers were undeterred. Betty Lou Cruises offers public and private cruises on four boats around Lake Mendota and Lake Monona 7 days a week from May to mid-October and features varied theme menus including a Mexican Fiesta, Italian, and a Wisconsin staple, the Friday Night Fish Fry.
Pictured right - Robert, Bill and Jack von Rutenberg.
In 1998, Bill and Jack's younger brother Robert was living in Manhattan and working his dream job in the corporate world. After the company he worked for was purchased, Robert didn't get along his new CEO. Now miserable in his job, he got a double-dose of bad news when his partner came down with leukemia and passed away three months later. Robert was in a bad place in life and when a mutual friend told Bill and Jack how bad Robert was taking all the misfortune in life, they went to New York City and brought their brother back to Madison.
Robert never envisioned working in a restaurant, but he slowly realized that he was enthralled with food - the cooking and flavors and textures. After working in the restaurant with his brothers for a couple years, Robert decided to look for a cooking school to become a chef. He found that Madison Area Technical College had a very good culinary program and Robert graduated from the school in his early 40's. His older brothers brought him in as an equal partner during that process. Bill von Rutenberg recently retired from the business leaving Jack and Robert in charge.
We made a reservation for 7:30 on the OpenTable application that I have on my phone. We took off for the restaurant around 6:50 figuring we'd get there 7:15/7:20. But after some cross country travel, a turn onto a side road, then pulling into another side road that opened up into a large parking lot, we were at The Mariner's Inn about 20 minutes after we left the hotel. (see map)
Since we were there early, the hostess said that our table wasn't ready, but to have a seat at the bar. The bar area was really nice - dark pine wood paneling along the back bar allowed for the accent lighting to really stand out. The liquor shelves were lit giving each of the bottles a colorful glow of their own. My wife ordered her standard dirty martini with Stoli vodka. I asked what kind of a hazy IPA they had and the bartender pulled out a 16 ounce can of the hazy IPA from City Lights Brewing Company out of Milwaukee.
The bar area was just off the main dining room. It was a nice cozy room with a fireplace in the center of the opposite wall between two windows. The only problem is that no one was in there. I was sort of incredulous that we couldn't be seated right away as soon as we got there.
The reason why we couldn't get seated right away is that all the servers were taking care of people who were seated outside listening to a guitarist playing that evening. We had the option of eating outside, but the sun was just getting ready to set and it was sort of cool out for a mid-summer evening. We decided to go for a table inside.
When we were approached by the hostess to tell us that we could be seated in the dining area, we had our choice of rooms. Just around the corner from the bar was a small room that featured barn board walls and had a bit of a nautical theme to it. The bar area wrapped around to a small bar at the head of the room which could be closed off for private dining, receptions or meetings.
Around the corner from that dining room was a small room with large windows that looked out to the back outdoor patio. The hostess sat us at a two-seat table near the wall. It was a bit cramped. It wasn't much longer until the manager - who turned out to be Jack von Rutenberg - came in and moved another table from a six-seat set up to our table to give us more room. "The people who were supposed to have this table decided to eat outside," he said as he moved the table with the table cloth still on top. "This will give you folks a little room to spread out.
The hostess had left off a couple menus which featured steaks, seafood, and a stuffed chicken breast named after Betty von Rutenberg. I was sort of surprised they only featured one pasta item - a vegetarian pasta - and no pork or lamb chops. But it was also good to see that they were focusing on a handful of items and were probably doing them very well. On Friday nights, The Mariner's Inn features broiled or fried haddock, lake perch or walleye dinners.
Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Kimberly. Outgoing and effervescent, she was a joy all night long. I was ready for another hazy IPA when she came around to greet us, and my wife ordered up a glass of the Santa Rita cabernet when she was through with her martini.
Kimberly talked us into a couple things to try before we ordered our main course - the stuffed mushroom combo and the house-made clam chowder. The stuffed mushrooms came six to the platter - three stuffed with chèvre cheese and spinach and the other three with shrimp and crabmeat. The mushrooms were baked, then topped with a hollandaise sauce. The mushrooms and sauce were very good, but very rich.
The clam chowder was, well - OK. It wasn't bad, but it was far from the best clam chowder that I've had. It was a light cream chowder with small chunks of clams mixed in. The clam chowder was adorned with 3 house-made croutons.
We both got beef that evening - I went with the thin cut filet. Onion rings came with the steak. I asked Kimberly to bring a bowl of the whisky-peppercorn cream sauce and some sautéed mushrooms to put on the steak. For my side, I was intrigued by the description of the potatoes au gratin - once again, named after the late matriarch of the von Gutenberg family.
My wife got the tenderloin medallions that were under the "lighter fare" part of the menu. The medallions were topped with a béarnaise sauce by request from my wife. Onion rings also came with my wife filet medallions and she got the hash browns which were termed as "legendary" in the menu.
I ordered my filet rare, but it came out more to done side of medium-rare. But it was tender and it tasted all right - I wasn't going to send it back because of that. The onion rings were cut sort of thin, but were very salty. In fact, the potatoes au gratin were salty, as were the sautéed mushrooms. It wasn't a deal breaker for the meal, it's just that I don't salt much of anything and I could really tell that they used it in the preparation.
My wife - who does like to salt her food - remarked that she thought the bearnaise sauce was salty. Once again, it wasn't obtrusive. But she also said her hash browns were salty. We shared the potato dishes, but between the very rich stuffed mushrooms and the ample amounts of beef, we couldn't finish them all.
Of course, Kimberly tried to entice us with some dessert. We ended up getting a piece of the key lime pie with two forks. It was good - it had a nice tangy and sweet taste with a thick graham cracker crust.
As we were enjoying the key lime pie, Jack von Rutenberg came over to see how our dinner was. We told him it was our first visit to The Mariner's Inn and that we had usually gone to The Avenue Bar when we would come to Madison, up until my buddy whose mother and father founded that restaurant had sold the place. Jack Rutenberg asked, "How did you know him?" I told him that we were roommates and friends when we went to Iowa. Jack said, "I played football at Iowa!"
I told him that I lived with a handful of baseball players in the early to mid-80's at Iowa. He asked me if I knew one of the players. "He was my roommate," I said. He named another one - he was a roommate of mine, as well. We figured out that we had probably been at the same place at the same time on many occasions while we were both going to school at Iowa. My wife was completely incredulous with the small world connection that Jack von Rutenberg and I had.
Jack told me at the time he went by the name of Rutenberg at the time. "We went back to the original family spelling of the name later on," he said.
He said, "I was recruited by (former Iowa football coach) Hayden Fry. I loved that man. I didn't play much, but he was such a great influence on my life." He said that Hayden was the one who told him to follow his heart.
He told us that he didn't expect to get into the family's restaurant business - he was a pre-med student while going to Iowa on the football scholarship. He was just starting to go through his first year of medical school at Wisconsin and one day during a class he found himself looking longingly out the window at Lake Mendota. He said, "I decided that I liked the lake more than I liked med school."
He joined his parents and his older brother in the business soon thereafter. "Been here for almost 40 years full-time," Jack said. "I'm a (Wisconsin) Badgers fan, of course. But I still follow Iowa."
I asked him about the hodgepodge of dining areas in the restaurant. "Oh, yeah," he acknowledged. "We've added on six or seven times over the years." He said it seems like the restaurant is always a work in progress.
Meeting Jack von Rutenberg (who knows - we could have known each other peripherally 40 years ago) was the highlight of our initial visit to The Mariner's Inn. The food was good, the atmosphere was cozy and comfortable. The Mariner's Inn continues the great tradition Wisconsin supper clubs have garnered over the years. My wife and I both said that we would love to come back again at some point. It's a bit of a drive if you're in Madison, but I think it would be worth the time spent to drive out to The Mariner's Inn and have a good supper club-style meal.
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