McGregor’s Blink Bonnie Supper Club  was started by Jack andJudy McGregor in 1971.   More of a steakhouse than a traditional supper club it has been wildly popular with locals and tourists.  Now owned by the third generation of McGregors – James and his two sons. The name Blink Bonnie is Scottish in origin roughly translated to “welcome warmly”.  They open at 4:00 pm and the line can start as early as 3:30.  The dining room has just 11 tables so the first wave fills it and if you’re not in that you are looking at a couple hours wait.  However the room you enter in is a bar with stools at the counter and a few tables.  No food is served in here but drinks are strong and reasonably priced.  The walls in the bar are covered with mounted animals whereas the dining room had more fish mounts and equipment.   The dark wood bare tables are all the same size but a couple of them had fold outs to accommodate tables of 6. No music was in the background but there were a lot of windows to the outside.   Steaks come on a sizzling platter which is their trademark and it doesn’t take long for a haze to fill the room even with a ‘smoke eater’ machine but it is a wonderful smell and conducive to an appetite.  This place is mentioned in many lists of supper clubs but there is no relish tray and dessert choices are limited.  It was a fun experience, since I’ve heard about it for some time but I’m not rushing back.  Maybe if I lived closer I’d feel differently.

Set-Up

 

Food

Bread was served as a small warm loaf on a cutting board. Butter is available in packets on the table.  The bread was delicious, not especially crusty but doughy with a light crisp on the exterior.

 

Salad was a standard toss of greens with croutons and sesame sticks.   It was okay and your choice of dressing was on the side.  Blue cheese crumbles were offered for an extra charge and I opted for that to mix with the blue cheese dressing, that the server said was made in-house.  Both were too mild to give the salad any flavor.  The croutons were bought, not made from their lovely bread.

 

Filet Mignon was available in 2 sizes, 7 or 10 ounce.  All dinners include starch and salad.  We asked for the meat to be cut rare on the larger size and added mushrooms and onions to the top.  For a starch we chose hashbrowns and left them plain (as opposed to topping with onions and  cheese – smothered and covered) so they’d stay crispy.  They did a great job on the cooking and the tender meat was nicely red inside.  It did come out sizzling on the platter.   Tenderloin doesn’t usually have much flavor on its own and this was no exception, so a topping of some kind really helps.  The mushrooms were flavorful and generous as were the onions.  It also helped to mix in a little butter from the table, but I think I enjoyed the toppings more than the meat.  The hashbrowns were tasty but could have been crisper.  They were good to mix with the toppings too.

 

We passed on dessert.  Choices included 2 kinds of cheesecake or ice cream sundae.