by David Brierley
The Nightingale Supper Club has been serving customers on the north side of Sturgeon Bay for nearly 110 years. According to Farrah Tafacory and John Heikkila, the married couple who owns it now, that won’t be changing anytime soon.
With a number of classic Wisconsin supper clubs closing their doors these days, it’s refreshing to see the tradition carried on at this historic restaurant.
The supper club sits on a triangular slice of property at the intersection of Business 42 (Egg Harbor Road) and Alabama Street. There are parking lots on both sides of the building, so you should be able to find a spot even on busy summer nights.
The building itself is classic supper club style: Single story, neat and tidy, beige exterior with dark green trim, and a dark brown roof.
You enter through the main door on the Egg Harbor Road side, and find yourself in a small entryway with french doors open to welcome you into the interior. Straight ahead you’ll find the host stand where you can check in with your reservation.
The atmosphere throughout the restaurant is nicely upscale while retaining the comfortable, come-as-you-are supper club vibe. Perfect mood lighting, white tablecloths, and cloth napkins add to both the classy and the comfy factors.
As you face the host stand, the dining room is to your left through a doorway topped by a large neon Dining Room sign – a very cool old school touch. But we’re not headed there quite yet, first it’s time for a cocktail (and maybe an appetizer) at the bar.
The barroom has a large bar with lots of rounded corners – perfect for making conversation without giving yourself a sore neck – a dark ceiling, and a cozy lounge area with comfortable seating and a fireplace.
Grab yourself a seat and order up your favorite drink. The old fashioneds are outstanding, for what it’s worth. You can also look over a menu and order an appetizer if you’re extra hungry.
Appetizers include bacon wrapped scallops, beer battered onion rings, chicken tenders, house smoked local whitefish cakes, loaded potato skins, prime rib nachos (what?!), Renard’s deep fried cheese curds, spinach and artichoke dip, and stuffed button mushrooms. All the delicious classics, plus some unique snacks that sound even better.
The Nightingale is the type of place where you can easily strike up a conversation with a complete stranger at the bar. Many locals frequent the supper club (which says a lot about the food and service), and most are more than happy to chat.
Once you’ve enjoyed a few drinks, maybe a couple of appetizers, and some stimulating conversation, it’s time to head to your table for the main course.
Once seated, your server will check to see if you need drink refills and give you time to look over the menu if you didn’t have a chance to study it at the bar.
Nightingale has specials every night of the week they’re open (all except Sunday and Tuesday, as of this writing). Monday is lobster or surf & turf night. Wednesday and Friday are fish fry night: Cod, perch, walleye, or whitefish. Thursday and Saturday are prime rib night.
I don’t say this lightly, but Nightingale offers a very tasty prime rib – possibly one of the best I’ve experienced at a supper club.
Other steak offerings include a ribeye and a beef tenderloin, and all of their steaks can be ordered with toppings like mushrooms, onions, blue cheese, or blackened cajun seasoning.
Pork chops, barbecued baby back ribs, and smothered chicken breast round out the meatier entrees.
The seafood section is quite impressive, with lobster, scallops, shrimp, cod, salmon, whitefish, perch, and walleye all available.
Entrees come with a choice of side, plus soup or a salad, and delicious fresh baked bread. Some of the sides rotate, and some are standard every night. Depending on what day of the week you’re there, you’ll be able to choose from baked potato, french fries, sour cream chive wedges, American fries, vegetable of the day, apple sauce, cottage cheese, parsley buttered potatoes, American potato salad, creamy coleslaw, and garlic mashed potatoes.
The menu is rounded out by a selection of burgers and sandwiches, pasta, soups, salads, and options for kids like grilled cheese, a hamburger, and chicken tenders.
It seems no matter what you order it’s bound to be delicious, and served hot and fresh from the kitchen. The staff at Nightingale is outstanding, and service is prompt, courteous, and friendly. It seems they go out of their way to make sure you have a perfect experience.
The Nightingale has your sweet tooth covered, too, with options like pies, cakes, and cheesecakes, so be sure to save room. Plus, who can forget the ice cream drinks at the bar? A perfect end to your Door County supper club experience.
Be sure to check out the Nightingale’s website to see their menu and place an online order or reservation. You can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with announcements and specials.
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to join our Supper Club VIP group; you’ll be entered in our monthly drawing for a $50 gift card to an area supper club. You can also check out our past articles, as well as an interactive map that shows the supper clubs we’ve visited to find one near you. And, as always, there will be plenty more supper club fun to come.
Interview with Farrah Tafacory and John Heikkila, owners
O&AW: How long have you owned the Nightingale?
JH: We’ve been running it since 2020, and we took over proper ownership in July 2021.
O&AW: How did you come to own it?
FT: My father [Dave Ripp] owned it since 1984. When COVID hit, he said, “I’m done.” But it’s such a staple of the community, you can’t just be done. Everything was very old school: hand-written paper tickets, a credit card machine that used a phone jack, and just one phone line. When COVID hit, we knew he needed to update a few things, one of which was the phone. People would call, and on average it would take them 30 to 40 minutes to get through on the phone.
JH: It was just a single line with call waiting, so we got a lot of negative comments about how every time they’d call they’d get a busy signal, and they’d just want to place a to-go order. At that time, that was our only source of revenue. We put in a new phone system that allows multiple phone calls and a waiting queue, so they don’t have to keep calling back, which allows us to take multiple orders at once. We added a new POS [point of sale] system so things were more digital, and that allowed for online ordering, which opened up a bigger revenue stream as well.
O&AW: What do you know about the supper club’s history?
FT: It started as a cafe in 1913. When supper clubs became big because of prohibition, that’s when it changed to a supper club.
JH: I don’t know the exact date, but it was in the 1930s. I want to say it was 1934 or 1935, because that’s when they added on a dance hall, which was common for supper clubs back then. In 1972, the original building burned down, and they rebuilt it in the same year into the current structure. In 1984, my father-in-law purchased it, and in 1985 or 1986, he added an additional dining room. The Nightingale has always been well known, but Dave did a really good job of making it what it is today.
FT: We’re still working with the chef that was here when [Dave] bought it in 1984 – those two together made it what it is today. Luckily, she [Chef Marcia Brauer] is still with us. We’ve started remodeling, and she totally loves everything that we’re doing.
O&AW: What did you do before this?
FT: Before this, I was working on my PhD in biomedical sciences.
JH: I manage an IT department for a food service equipment company in Sturgeon Bay – I still do that.
O&AW: Everyone has a different definition of a supper club. To you, what makes this a supper club?
FT: There are five things to me that make a supper club:
- Old fashioneds are your main drink – a traditional Wisconsin old fashioned.
- The bar and dining room are separate.
- You get a side, and it also comes with your choice of soup or salad.
- We have different daily sides.
- We used to offer free cheese and crackers [in the lounge], but that kind of went away with COVID. Now we’re trying to decide how to bring that back but not have it be the same as it used to be.
JH: I always feel that it’s also about the experience. Coming in, sitting at the bar and having a couple drinks, enjoying the company of other people, moving into the dining room for a filling meal that’s usually fairly priced, and going back out to the bar to finish the night with an ice cream drink or a white russian or something along those lines. It’s more of a social affair rather than a traditional, “I’m coming in at my reservation time, I’m eating, and I’m getting out.” It’s more of a full-on experience.
O&AW: Do you do any of the cooking yourselves?
FT: We do everything. Hiring has been a challenge, and not just for us. We always have a good core staff because we’re open all winter, we just have to beef up for summer. This summer was tough, we cooked a lot. Right now, [John] is cooking a day a week and I’m still cooking two days a week. But we fill in – I’ve served, bartended, hosted, dishwashed…
O&AW: Did you have any formal training, or did you learn from experience?
FT: Marcia, the head chef, trained us. She does the steaks, [etc.]. When I’m there I usually do the plating and frying.
O&AW: What are your more popular menu items?
JH: Prime rib is number one any day of the week, except Fridays or Wednesdays when it’s traditionally fish.
FT: We do a really good pan-fried perch and walleye.
JH: And we only serve those on Wednesdays and Fridays so people pile in for that. Outside of prime rib, a big one that we just brought back is our Monday special of lobster or surf & turf. I was kind of blown away at the feedback we got to bring it back. We had to remove it only because of prices for lobster and the availability. We’re finally in a place where we can bring it back after a year of not having it as our Monday special and it’s been very welcomed by the community.
O&AW: What do you do differently that sets your supper club apart from others?
JH: We’re always there – that’s another supper club thing, the owners are usually onsite, talking to guests and giving them that little extra customer care. One thing that sets us apart from most restaurants nowadays is we’re still more than willing to take larger groups. We’ve got a group of 120 coming in a month that most other restaurants, since COVID, won’t even push tables together.
JH: One thing the community always says that sets us apart from everyone – because we’ve had the same chef for 38 years – is consistency. Everything is always cooked the same way. You don’t come in and have an excellent prime rib and then come in the next day and have something bad. We get a lot of comments that our prime rib is the best.
O&AW: Tell me about the Wall of Honor.
FT: Dave was a Vietnam veteran, and he started a tradition where people could submit their photos and he’d put them on a poster and put them up on the wall, and soon it became where the entire bar had single or double layers of military photos. We kept it, we just put it in a poster display, otherwise we were running out of wall space.
JH: People still talk about us, saying, “You’re the place with all the vet photos on the wall.”
FT: Every time someone comes in with their friends or family, they’ll find their photo and say, “Hey look, here’s my picture!” We have photos from as far back as World War I.
JH: All you see right now is a poster display, but this winter we’re going to dress it up and put some more stationary posters up, and name it – Dave called it the Wall of Honor, so we’ll maintain that name.
O&AW: How did the Nightingale get its name?
JH: It was called the Nightingale Cafe [when it opened] in 1913.
O&AW: What are your plans for the supper club moving forward?
FT: There’s going to be more remodeling to come, but we’re not changing anything drastically. We plan to dress it up without changing its integrity. We’re about a third of the way there.
JH: Dave was picky about who he sold to, he didn’t want it to change.
FT: I don’t think we could ever change it.
O&AW: How do you stay going year round in a tourist area?
FT: We have a good solid core [of locals].JH: This is true of most Door County businesses: The summer is when you make money, the rest of the year is entertaining locals. You don’t really make much, but you’re here for them.
Where in Wisconsin is this supper club?
Address: 1541 Egg Harbor Rd, Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
Nearby landmarks: About halfway up the Door Peninsula on the north side of Sturgeon Bay.
Website: www.nightingalesupperclub.com
Three can’t-miss features:
1. Operating since 1913
2. Wall of Honor
3. Same chef for 38 years