Alice, Larry, Cindy, JoAnna, & Eddie
From the exterior, the Fawn Supper Club in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, looks like a Depression-era roadhouse, complete with gravel parking lot. The only concession to modern times is a handicapped-accessible ramp, a legal requirement for doing business nowadays. Once you step inside, the rough-hewn, pinewood paneling makes it feel, at best, as though you’ve entered a 1950s time warp. I’d guess that the Fawn has been in business for at least 50 years without the owners giving a single thought to remodeling. The restaurant’s floor plan – a sizable U-shaped bar, tightly-packed clusters of tables and chairs, and a haphazard arrangement of hot and cold buffet serving tables – leaves no room for anyone in a wheelchair to maneuver his way around. The aforementioned ramp is nothing more than a cynical appendage.
(And about that bar. The majority of people sitting there are smoking cigarettes like its still 1958.)
Eddie and I skipped the salad and soup bar and headed directly to the real food: mashed potatoes, gravy, sauerkraut*, corn dogs, potato wedges*, broasted chicken*, turkey*, ham, beef*, “southwestern” cod*, breaded shrimp*, and meatballs (in a thin brown gravy). My two trips included modest servings of the asterisked entrees. If I would have served myself a second helping of the same entree, it would have been the chicken. The beef, we agreed, came close to the realm of mystery meat. Actually, it was a mystery as to just what cut of beef it was. Cindy wondered if the kitchen help had added a few too many beef bouillon cubes to the meatballs. They were way too salty for her taste. It wasn’t just the meatballs, as it turns out. Back in Middleton, I found myself drinking a glass of water every 15 minutes throughout the late afternoon and into the evening. Salt must be the only seasoning that the Fawn uses.
True confession: I’d go back there again; it’s soooooooooooooooooooooo wonderfully Wisconsin.
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