The Dreamland Supper Club is not far off Highway 2 when heading east out of Superior, Wisc. The current owners, Dan and Terri Patterson have had the place for 19 years. Dan runs the front of the house and bar while Terri is the chef in the kitchen. It is only open for dinner and has a good flashing bulb and neon sign signaling you to turn in. You enter into the large dining room and the good sized bar is to your right. Most people seemed to be having their cocktails at the table rather than in the bar, so we followed their lead. The carpeted dining room has well spaced tables covered with an oil cloth set with paper placemats. A cloth napkin stuffed with flatware is at each place. The place is filled with paintings and one large mural of dogsleds in winter. Half walls divide the room and the open spaces are decorated with artificial ivy. The lights are lowered, music is in the background and the ceiling is loaded with stars and glitter – a real dreamland-like affect. They are open Thursday through Sunday and in addition to the regular menu have a special offered every night.
We started our meal with a martini, which was made properly and tasty enough to order seconds.
All the meals are 4 courses and start with a supper club tradition, a relish tray. It also comes with breadsticks and a variety of crackers. The relish tray contained raw vegetables, cottage cheese, pickled herring, bean relish and cabbage relish. The two relishes are made in house and were quite tasty. The raw vegetables included carrots, celery, radish, peppers, olives and pickles. It was all nice and good to snack on with drinks. At the same time our order of Beer Battered Onion Rings arrived and they were crisp and nice with some good onion flavor, but overall would only rate average. The bread sticks were soft rather than the crisp thin variety. They came with packets of real butter and made a nice companion to the relish tray. There were a good number of cracker types and some crisp breadsticks in there if you desired.
Next course is soup or juice. We chose soup and the nights’ choices were chicken and dumpling or tomato basil. The tomato basil was light and loaded with basil. It was served warm and was a nice rendition.
Third course was salad or coleslaw and we both chose salad. The nice mix of greens, onion, cucumber and tomato came with a choice of dressings – Blue Cheese, French, Ranch and Thousand Island. The French was a bit sweet, the Ranch had a bit of tartness and the Blue Cheese had mild lumps of blue cheese in a traditional creamy base. It was my choice and did a nice job of coating the salad and binding it together.
Frankie’s not afraid of bears
For our main course we had one of their specialties, King Cut Prime AuJus, a 20 ounce bone in prime rib of beef. It was cooked, as requested, nicely rare and served surrounded by drippings from the meat. It was tender and had a good amount of beef flavor. With your plate you also get a choice of oven brown potatoes, fries, au gratin hash browns or vegetable medley. I chose the cheesy hash browns and they came with the cheese mixed in with the hasbrowns and then browned in the oven. It was a fun new way to combine these ingredients and surprisingly un-greasy. It was quite good. The oven brown potato is a baked potato cut and then deep fried. It was not as crispy as I’d like but again, a nice change to the regular options.
For dessert we had fried cookie dough with ice cream and cookie dough sauce. It was cookie dough from peanut butter cookies which was wrapped in their special coating mix (a ball invented by owner Dan) that is on their deep fried turkey, another one of their specialties . It had a good amount of texture between the crisp and the gooey and then the creaminess of the ice cream – it was totally sweet and wonderful. A great way to end a fun dining experience. Check this place out – all the people are super welcoming and friendly.
