Shell Lake Lunchbox was a small family-run restaurant serving breakfast and lunch daily adding dinner on Friday, in the heart of the tiny town of Shell Lake.  It’s a casual place with a combination of tables, booths and counter seats inside as well as a few outdoor tables for dining.  Music was in the background and as the name would indicate, lunchboxes filled the walls as decorations.  The menu offered a variety of choices, supplemented by daily specials.  Appropriately for Wisc, they also offer drinks, beer or wine to accompany your meal.  Food was fine, quick and reasonable and service was friendly and efficient.  I’d call our meal “nothing to write home about”, but perfectly acceptable even though it’s pretty bland.

Set-up

Food

A special that day was a double of the Mushroom and Swiss burger.  It was a 1/3 pound burger normally and this one had 2 of the patties on a Kaiser bun and added the choice of tater tots as opposed to fries.  There was a lot of meat and cheese since it was a double but unfortunately, the mushrooms were canned and bland.  The meat was cooked through but still juicy.  The tots had a good crisp exterior.

The Italian Beef sandwich came with your choice of French fries or American fries and a slice of dill pickle.  It was on a lightly toasted very fresh bun.  The beef was mild in flavor and it could have benefited from more onions, peppers or giardinera.   The fries were a frozen not-coated variety with an okay crisp on the exterior and puffy potato on the inside.  This could have been a fine sandwich, it just needed to spice it up a bit – a la the Italian designation.