The Tavern at White Stag Farm bills itself as “serving delicious food, prepared from scratch daily, using only the freshest ingredients, including produce grown on our own farm.”  However this is not a traditional Wisc. supper club.  You do enter through a separate bar area but they encouraged us to have our cocktail at the dinner table and there was no relish tray nor ice cream after dinner drinks.  Owner Michele DeYoung and her husband Jeff purchased the property that had been Club 77 in the fall of 2018 as part of their dream to create a destination for visitors that includes the restaurant as well as  an inn (McCormick House), a farm, an orchard and a dairy barn. They hope to utilize these resources to provide a changing seasonal menu.   The dining room seats up to 60 on an eclectic grouping of chairs and tables.  Some are covered with white clothes topped with black and white checked cloths and others are smaller bare marble tables.  A couple couches are on one wall and match up with the small marble tables and their chairs, which also vary at tables.  Pillows and faux fur pelts add to the decor which has lots of art on the walls and wide planked old wood floors underneath.  The ceiling felt lower, music was in the background and lots of large windows looks outside.  The wine list was more ambitious than at some places, including some pricey cabernets supplemented by lower price wines.  While their service was friendly and assured us this was fine dining, there were some not fine-dining touches.  I applaud what they are doing but don’t think I’ll be one of their regulars.

Set-Up

 

Food

We wanted to start with a cocktail which we did, but the server disappeared after taking our drink order.  She gave us time to drink a bit before taking our order.  Entrees come with their listed accompaniments so salads need to be ordered separately.  They have 2 prices next to them depending of whether you want a small or entree sized serving.  It was nice to have a range of options.  The Garden Salad came with mixed greens and garden vegetables and a choice of dressing.  We chose Bleu Cheese which came on the side.  It was nicely chunky but mildly flavored.  The grated carrots were fresh and tasty as were the tomatoes and cucumbers.

 

The Dill and Herb Salad was made with Romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, cucumber and sunflower seeds drizzled with creamy dill and herb dressing.  The tasty little tomatoes were nicely sliced in half which made it much easier to eat and the crisp greens came with the dressing on it.  It still needed some tossing but I really prefer it to be dressed before plating.  The seeds were another tasty touch.  This was a very good salad.

 

Our server asked if we wanted  bread with our meal and we replied in the affirmative.  She brought 2 lovely rolls with very hard butter.  Interestingly I heard a different server ask the adjacent table the same question and when they said yes, she asked them how many rolls did they want?  Our rolls disappeared with the salad and no more were offered so maybe the other server had a better idea, however the question totally took the other diner off guard.

 

The Grilled Filet was an 8 oz. Black Angus tenderloin from Creekstone Farms topped with garlic and herb butter and served with demi-glace, parmesean and garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus.  The meat was cooked a bit more than the requested rare but was tender.  The sauce was quite good but not enough to finish with the beef.  The mashed potatoes were average and the bottoms had not been trimmed from the asparagus.  The garlic herb butter had melted by the time it arrived and blended into the demi-glace.

 

The Crab-smothered Ribeye Grilled Filet was a 12 oz. Black Angus ribeye from Creekstone Farms that was “topped with warm butter poached crab salad and crispy garlic crunch”.  It was served with smashed crispy potatoes and grilled asparagus.  This was a disappointing plate and if you want a ribeye I suggest you order it a la carte rather than as a plate.  I thought the description was not what came out.  The topping was all fried with the crab becoming a fried blob rather than the sweet tender meat it should have been.  It was cooked too much and made the flavor turn into something a lot less desireable.  The potatoes were not smashed and they were not crispy.   I expect a ribeye to have large pockets of fat but this one also had lots of grizzle running through it.  As above the asparagus were not trimmed and had little flavor for grilled ones.

 

We had ordered another martini when the glasses from the first round were picked up, but they never arrived.  The server apologized for the wait and finally came back as we were finishing our main courses and said the drinks would be out momentarily at which point I asked to cancel the order as we were through.  Some excuse that the order got misplaced was given.