Like olives, mayonnaise and the eighth grade, Creekside Supper Club can either draw excitement or fear, depending on who you ask.
"We were squealing," an acquaintance told me, still buzzing from her recent visit. The pleasures of supper clubs certainly can be affecting for those familiar with their rituals, down to the look and feel.
At Creekside in Minneapolis, which opened just before the new year, I'm told the aesthetic has been nailed down to a T. See: floral carpet that matches those grandma curtains slung in frocks. The wood paneling that looks and smells like a throwback, too. Dim, fluorescent lighting that lingers like smoke. The cigarette machine. The retro TV. The cat motifs littered throughout the walls, and a dusty glass case in the corner that enshrines them. And, right by the host booth, an oversized rock waterfall formation, sprouting with leaves and coins — much like the relics my old-school, money-grubbing Singapore dentist used to keep in his office.
Three visits were enough to make me understand the appeal of being trapped in what felt like an episode of "The Twilight Zone." It will likely take more than that for me to embrace Creekside as fully as its target audience: the ones in the know — the ones who appear to genuflect at the altar of what (I'm told) is a slightly more upscale take on the classic Wisconsin supper club.
Said otherwise: I'm out of my element.
Supper clubs, I learn, are as sacred to the state's culture as hobnobbing academic clubs are to Boston and dim sum parlors are to Hong Kong. They're classy and — varyingly — clubby, but never stuffy. You go with friends, have a laugh and stay for a bit. It's not the place to conduct business deals. When the weather turns, supper clubs almost always remain open; snowmobile parking spots are common in more rural parts of the state. "You just put on your coat over your fancy clothes and go," a supper club vet says.
So revered are they that the rituals never change, like the fish-fry offerings, prime ribs and surfeit of sides — always served in portions big enough to feed an army. And the cocktails, too, don't waver from their original recipes: There's the Wisconsin-style Korbel brandy Old-Fashioned, which resembles the contents of a lava lamp and is as sweet as Robitussin. After my first sip, I wasn't sure whether to ride that sugar high or book a return visit to my fortune-seeking dentist.
When co-owners Ward Johnson, Eddie Landenberger, and Eli Wollenzien transformed the space that was formerly El Burrito/Pepitos with all the (quaint) trimmings, they clearly were all in.
