A View & a Side Car: The Boathouse

After co-owning a house on Lake Emma just outside of my hometown Rhinelander, Wisconsin, I and two of my sisters found it to be, sadly, time to sell this property.  So my trip home this summer was bittersweet.  I'm sure I'll be back to the Northwoods some day, but for now I wanted to celebrate some of the wonderful meals we had this summer with this, the second of several blog entries.

If you live in northern Wisconsin, chances are pretty good that you go to Minocqua at least once a year, especially during summer or what we call "tourist season."

In many ways, Minocqua, which is about an hour north of my hometown of Rhinelander, is the quintessential tourist town, not unlike a miniature version of, say, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  

Along Minocqua's four- or-five-block main street are bars, restaurants, and souvenir, fudge and popcorn shops.  

However, nestled between several very large lakes, this Northwoods city is in the perfect location for dining-with- a-view, as several of its restaurants are perched on the water's edge.  

One of our favorite lunch places is The Boathouse, formerly known as Bosackis's.  

While I've never had a bad meal here, the main attraction is sitting in the porch section of the restaurant and looking out at Lake Minocqua.  When we dined here, we were entertained by watching the local Min-Aqua Bats Ski Club practice their jumps and mounts.  

I had a very fresh and tasty Greek salad.  On top of the crispy greens were red onion rings, grape tomatoes, Kalamata olives, crumbled feta cheese, and a dusting of Parmesan.  This salad also had, to my liking, a generous portion of pepperoncini peppers.  I like to bite the "heads" off of these and sprinkle the juice on my salads for a little extra zing.

My husband had the sandwich called The Boathouse.  The good-sized serving of roast beef was topped with sauteéd mushrooms and onions and melted provolone cheese.  He said the sandwich was delicious and rivaled the roast beef version of the signature South Louisiana sandwich the po' boy.  Served au jus, it also came with a serving of coleslaw, his favorite side, and Italian pasta salad.  

The Boathouse also boasts a very visually impressive, even regal, bar.  Many of the bars in northern Wisconsin have similar statement-making bars.

Which leads me to the Bloody Marys.

If there is a trifecta of Wisconsin cocktails, it would consist of 1) an Old Fashioned, 2) any after-dinner ice cream drink, and 3) a Bloody Mary.

I like to think of a Wisconsin Bloody Mary as a salad, or sometimes a meal, in a glass.  Garnishes usually consist of an olive, a celery stalk and a pickle spear.  

This one also included a pepperoncini and a sausage stick, but I've also had cheese cubes, a strip of bacon, a piece of beef jerky, and/or a boiled shrimp in my Bloody Mary.  I once went to a bar in Milwaukee which garnished their Bloody Marys with a beef slider on a skewer!

And then there is the "side car."  

At The Boathouse, and many other places in Wisconsin, you get a small beer chaser to accompany your Bloody Mary.  

Some places just give you the cheapest beer on tap, but at The Boathouse the waiter offered us a list of at least seven options.  Clearly Wisconsites are particular about their side cars.

Having a Bloody Mary at The Boathouse on this visit reminded me of a previous meal we had here when a man at a table of people adjacent to us asked us if we were having whiskey with our Bloody Marys.  

(Even though it was 11:30 in the morning, that would not be outside the realm of possibility in northern Wisconsin.)

We explained that, no, it was beer, but the question alone made it clear that these people were not from Wisconsin.  

They were probably from Illinois.

But I tried not to hold that against them.