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00:00In 1962, a family in rural Wisconsin would climb into the car on a Saturday night,
00:06drive 20 minutes past the last streetlight, and pull into a gravel lot beside a frozen lake.
00:13Inside, a relish tray hit the table before anyone had ordered a thing.
00:19Number 14 on this list was once so popular that supper clubs went through it by the barrel.
00:24Number 3 was not even a real dish, yet no meal in America started without it.
00:30And number 1 fed more Saturday nights across this country than any restaurant chain ever has.
00:37These 25 dishes built a way of eating that casual chains erased in a single generation.
00:44Hit that subscribe button.
00:46Let us count down the 25 long lost supper club meals America couldn't stop ordering.
00:54Number 25, garlic cheese toast.
00:57Before the meal, before the salad, before anything, a basket landed on your table steaming under a cloth napkin.
01:05Thick slices of soft white bread, brushed with butter, smothered in garlic and a blanket of melted cheese.
01:12Broiled until the edges went brown and crackling.
01:16It cost the supper club almost nothing to make.
01:18A loaf of bread, a pound of butter, a brick of cheese.
01:23But it told you everything about where you were.
01:26This was a place that fed you before you spent a dime.
01:30Families in Wisconsin and Minnesota remember reaching across the table for that last piece.
01:36Fingers slick with garlic butter.
01:39While the grown-ups ordered another round.
01:41The casual chains kept the breadstick and the biscuit.
01:44But they put a price on abundance.
01:47The supper club never did.
01:49That basket was a promise.
01:51You were going to leave full.
01:54Number 24, rumaki.
01:56This was the appetizer that made a Tuesday feel like a celebration.
02:00A chunk of chicken liver and a slice of water chestnut, wrapped tight in a strip of bacon, brushed with
02:07soy and brown sugar, then broiled until the bacon crisped and the glaze turned sticky and dark.
02:15It came to the table on a little plate with toothpicks, three or four pieces, hot enough to burn your
02:21fingers.
02:21The liver inside stayed soft and rich.
02:25The water chestnut snapped clean, and the bacon held the whole thing together with salt and smoke.
02:32Rumaki rode the wave of the post-war fascination with the South Pacific, the tiki bars, and the luau parties.
02:40But it was the supper clubs of the Midwest that kept it alive on the appetizer menu for 30 years.
02:47A pound of chicken livers cost about a quarter in 1958.
02:51The supper club turned that quarter into something that felt expensive.
02:56Today, it has vanished almost completely.
02:59Too strange for a generation raised on mozzarella sticks.
03:03Number 23, shrimp cocktail.
03:07In the middle of the continent, a thousand miles from any ocean, the shrimp cocktail was a small miracle.
03:14Five or six chilled shrimp hooked over the rim of a footed glass, packed in crushed ice.
03:19A little cup of red cocktail sauce in the center, sharp with horseradish and lemon.
03:26For a farm family in Iowa, or a mill worker in northern Wisconsin, ordering shrimp meant something.
03:33It meant the freezer trucks had made it.
03:35That the world was bigger than the county line.
03:38That tonight, you were eating like the people in the magazines.
03:42The shrimp came frozen, of course, boiled in the back and chilled fast, but nobody cared.
03:50That first cold bite, dunked in sauce that cleared your sinuses, was the taste of arriving somewhere.
03:57A shrimp cocktail ran about 90 cents in the early 60s, more than the whole rest of some people's dinner.
04:05And it was ordered without apology.
04:07Number 22, French onion soup.
04:11It arrived in a heavy brown crock that was too hot to touch.
04:15The cheese bubbled up over the rim and browned in long, stringy ribbons down the side.
04:22Underneath that cap of broiled gruyere was a raft of soggy bread.
04:27And under that, a deep brown broth of onions, cooked down for hours, until they turned sweet and silky and
04:36almost dissolved.
04:38You had to break through the cheese with the edge of your spoon.
04:41And it stretched and pulled in long strands that you wound around like spaghetti.
04:48The first spoonful scalded your tongue every single time, and you went back for another anyway.
04:55A supper club made its onion soup from beef bones and bins of yellow onions that cost pennies a pound.
05:04And they caramelized for the better part of an afternoon.
05:07It was peasant food, dressed up in a tuxedo.
05:11The casual chains tried to sell it from a bag, thin and salty.
05:16And it was never the same.
05:18The patience left with the supper clubs.
05:21Number 21.
05:23The Wedge Salad with Blue Cheese.
05:26A quarter of an iceberg lettuce head, cut straight from the core, sat on a chilled plate like a green
05:32pyramid.
05:33Over it went a ladle of thick blue cheese dressing, so heavy it pooled at the base, dotted with chunks
05:40of real Rockford and a scatter of bacon and chopped tomato.
05:44There was no artistry to it.
05:47There was barely any knife work.
05:49But the cold crunch of that iceberg against the cool, funky, tangy dressing was its own kind of perfect.
05:56The blue cheese was the point.
05:59A good supper club made its own dressing in a five-gallon bucket, crumbling block after block of blue cheese
06:05into buttermilk and mayonnaise until it was almost too strong.
06:09And the regulars asked for extra on the side.
06:12Today, the Wedge survives on a few steakhouse menus.
06:16But the homemade dressing, that bucket of funk and cream, mostly died with the men and women who used to
06:23make it by hand.
06:25Number 20.
06:26Broasted Chicken.
06:27Here is a piece of American history most people have never heard.
06:31In 1954, a company in Beloit, Wisconsin invented a machine that pressure-fried chicken.
06:37And they called the result Broasted.
06:39It was not fried in the open.
06:42It was sealed in a pressure cooker full of hot oil, which cooked the bird fast and locked the juices
06:48inside.
06:49So the skin came out shatteringly crisp, while the meat stayed almost wet with juice.
06:56Supper clubs across the Midwest bolted these machines into their kitchens and built half their menus around them.
07:03For families who could not afford the prime rib, Broasted Chicken was the great equalizer.
07:09Half a chicken, golden and steaming, with a baked potato in that relish tray.
07:15All for under $2 in 1965.
07:19Children fought over the wings.
07:22The skin crackled.
07:23The meat pulled clean off the bone.
07:26You still find Broasted Chicken at the few supper clubs and corner taverns that kept their machines.
07:32But most of America has forgotten that the best fried chicken it ever ate was never technically fried at all.
07:40Number 19.
07:41Liver and Onions.
07:42Before liver became the dish that people made jokes about, it was a supper club staple that the regulars ordered
07:49with real hunger.
07:51Thin slices of calf's liver, dredged in flour, and seared fast in butter.
07:57Just two minutes aside, so it stayed pink and tender in the middle.
08:01Never the gray rubber that gave it a bad name.
08:04Over the top went a mountain of onions cooked low and slow until they collapsed into sweet brown ribbons.
08:12And the whole thing sat in a pool of pan drippings.
08:16It was rich.
08:17It was mineral.
08:19It was deeply savory in a way that nothing on a modern menu is.
08:24Liver cost almost nothing, maybe 20 cents a pound, because butchers had more of it than they could sell.
08:30And the supper club turned that cheap cut into something a working man would drive across the county for.
08:36A generation grew up hating liver because their mothers overcooked it at home.
08:41The supper club cooks knew better.
08:43They knew the secret was speed.
08:46Here is where things get interesting.
08:48The supper club was never really about the food.
08:51Not entirely.
08:52It was about the drive.
08:54You did not stumble into a supper club from the sidewalk.
08:57You got in the car.
08:58You left town and you wound your way out to a low building beside a lake or a highway where
09:04the parking lot was gravel and the sign was lit in neon.
09:09Inside, the lights were dim.
09:11The booths were deep.
09:13And the first thing that happened was a brandy old-fashioned, because Wisconsin drinks more brandy than any state in
09:20the Union and has since the 1893 World's Fair.
09:24You sat in the bar for an hour before they even called your table.
09:28The casual chains turned eating out into a transaction.
09:33The supper club turned it into an evening.
09:35Number 18.
09:37Frog legs.
09:38This is the one that makes people squirm, and it was once a Friday night delicacy across the Midwest.
09:44Pairs of frog legs, dredged in seasoned flour and fried golden, served on a platter with lemon wedges and a
09:53dish of melted butter.
09:54The meat was pale and delicate, somewhere between chicken and fish, and you ate it with your fingers, working the
10:02small bones the way you would a chicken wing.
10:05Supper clubs near rivers and marshes bought frog legs by the case from local trappers, and in towns along the
10:12Mississippi and the Wisconsin River, a frog leg dinner was a point of regional pride.
10:17They were cheap, because the supply was local, and the labor was somebody's teenage son, out with a flashlight and
10:24a gig.
10:25For a dollar and a quarter, you got a heaping plate.
10:28Frog legs have nearly disappeared from American menus, pushed off by squeamishness and supply.
10:34But the people who grew up on them will tell you with absolute certainty that nothing fried has ever tasted
10:40better.
10:42Number 17. Escargot
10:44In a town where most people had never left the state, the supper club served snails, and it served them
10:51without irony.
10:52Six escargots, nestled in the little dimpled metal dish, each one swimming in a pool of garlic butter and parsley
10:59so green and fragrant it perfumed the whole table.
11:03You pulled them out with a tiny, two-pronged fork, and honestly, the snail was just a vehicle.
11:09The whole reason to order escargot was that garlic parsley butter, which you sopped up afterward with bread until the
11:17dish was clean enough to put back in the cupboard.
11:19It was the most European thing on the menu.
11:22The dish that let a farmer in a string tie feel cosmopolitan for one course.
11:29The snails came canned from France.
11:31The butter was made fresh, and the combination cost the kitchen almost nothing while charging a premium that nobody minded
11:39paying.
11:41Escargot was theater.
11:43It was a small act of sophistication in a place that did not put on airs.
11:49And then the casual chains came, and nobody under 60 has ordered a snail since.
11:55Number 16.
11:57Lobster Newberg
11:58When a supper club wanted to show off, it reached for Lobster Newberg.
12:02Chunks of lobster meat folded into a sauce of cream, butter, egg yolks, sherry, and a whisper of cayenne.
12:10Cooked gently so the sauce never broke, then spooned over toast points or into a pastry shell.
12:17It was rich enough to stop a heart and elegant enough to silence a table.
12:22For the inland Midwest, lobster was the ultimate splurge, a creature from a coast most of these families had never
12:31seen.
12:31And the Newberg preparation stretched a little expensive meat a very long way with that luscious, sherried cream.
12:40It was the dish you ordered for an anniversary, a graduation, a deal closed.
12:45Lobster Newberg dates back to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, but it found its longest life in the
12:52supper clubs of the heartland, where it lingered on menus into the 1980s, before the casual chains decided cream sauces
13:00were too old-fashioned to sell.
13:03Number 15.
13:05Shrimp de Jongae
13:06Here is a dish that Chicago invented, and the Midwest fell in love with.
13:11Whole shrimp baked in a casserole under a thick crust of garlic, butter, sherry, and seasoned breadcrumbs, until the top
13:20turned golden and the whole thing bubbled at the edges.
13:24It came out of the oven smelling like a garlic dream, and you broke through that crunchy crust to find
13:30the shrimp underneath, plump and soaked in sherried butter.
13:35Shrimp de Jongae was born in a Chicago hotel run by the de Jongae brothers around the turn of the
13:41century, and from there, it spread to every white tablecloth supper club within 500 miles.
13:48It was the dish that proved a landlocked supper club could do seafood with as much swagger as any coastal
13:54restaurant.
13:55The breadcrumb crust did double duty, stretching a half-dozen shrimp into a full, satisfying plate.
14:01It cost the kitchen far less than it looked like it should, and that gap between cost and impression was
14:08the entire economic genius of the supper club.
14:11Today, outside of a few old Chicago institutions, almost nobody makes it.
14:19Number 14.
14:20Chicken a la King
14:21Tender pieces of chicken, mushrooms, pimentos, and peas, all bound in a velvety cream sauce sharpened with sherry, ladled over
14:31toast, rice, or inside a crisp puff pastry shell.
14:35Chicken a la King was the supper club's answer to comfort and elegance at the same time.
14:41The pimentos gave it little flecks of red, the mushrooms gave it depth, and the cream sauce tied a few
14:47scraps of chicken into a dish that felt generous and refined.
14:50This was the meal a supper club served at the ladies' luncheon, at the rotary dinner, at the wedding reception
14:58in the back room.
14:59It was so popular that kitchens made it by the gallon, in steam table pans, and it never lost its
15:06richness sitting under a lamp.
15:07A few cents of chicken, a splash of sherry, and a whole lot of cream produced a dish that people
15:13remembered for decades.
15:15It is the kind of food the casual chains decided was boring, and so it disappeared, replaced by grilled chicken
15:22on a bed of nothing.
15:24Number 13.
15:25Veal Oscar
15:27This was the supper club flexing every muscle it had on a single plate.
15:31A veal cutlet, pounded thin and pan-fried, topped with crab meat, blanketed in a rich bearnaise sauce, and crowned
15:40with a few spears of asparagus.
15:43Four luxuries stacked on top of each other, every one of them expensive, all arriving on one plate for a
15:49price that made it the most aspirational thing on the menu.
15:53Veal Oscar was named for a Swedish king, and it carried itself like royalty.
15:59The veal was buttery and mild, the crab was sweet, the bearnaise was tangy and warm, and the asparagus cut
16:09through all that richness with something green and clean.
16:13You did not order veal Oscar on an ordinary night.
16:16You ordered it when you had something to prove or something to celebrate.
16:20And then veal fell out of favor, bearnaise was deemed too fussy, and a dish that once defined sophistication slipped
16:28quietly off the American table.
16:31Here is what the casual chains understood, and what they used to win.
16:36The supper club meal took three hours.
16:39You drank in the bar, you grazed the relish tray, you ordered, you waited, you ate slow, you closed the
16:48place down.
16:49That was the entire point, and it was also the weakness.
16:53America in the 1980s wanted speed.
16:56It wanted to be seated, served, and back in the car in 50 minutes.
17:29Number 12.
17:32Steak Diane
17:33Some dishes were cooked in the kitchen.
17:36Steak Diane was cooked at your table, on a rolling cart, by a waiter who had practiced the show a
17:42thousand times.
17:44A thin beef tenderloin, seared fast in a pan over a burner right beside your booth,
17:51then doused with brandy, and set alight in a column of blue flame that lit up the dim dining room
17:57and made everyone turn to look.
18:00Into the pan went mustard, Worcestershire, cream, and a swirl of butter, and the waiter spooned that sauce over the
18:09steak with the confidence of a magician.
18:11It was dinner and a performance at the same time.
18:15The flambe was the entire appeal, a moment of fire and drama that turned an ordinary cut of beef into
18:22the most exciting thing in the room.
18:24Table side cooking required a trained staff, expensive carts and time, all the things the casual chains refused to spend
18:33money on.
18:34So they killed it.
18:36A whole generation of Americans has never once watched their dinner catch fire three feet from their face, and they
18:44have no idea what they missed.
18:47Number 11.
18:48Beef Wellington
18:49A whole beef tenderloin, coated in a paste of mushrooms and shallots, wrapped in pate, then sealed inside a golden
18:58shell of puff pastry, and baked until the crust shattered and the beef inside stayed pink and tender.
19:05Beef Wellington was the most ambitious thing a supper club kitchen ever attempted.
19:11A dish so complex and so impressive that ordering it was practically a dare.
19:16When the waiter sliced into a table side, and the pastry crackled to reveal that ribbon of pink beef, wrapped
19:24in dark mushroom, the whole table fell silent.
19:28It was named for the Duke of Wellington.
19:31It took the better part of a day to prepare, and it represented everything the supper club aspired to be.
19:38Generous, theatrical, and just a little bit grand.
19:42Wellington was the special occasion dish, the one a couple ordered to split on their 25th anniversary.
19:49It was far too labor-intensive to survive the chain era, where every dish had to be assembled by a
19:56teenager in under four minutes.
19:58The skill it required walked out the door with the last generation of supper club chefs.
20:04Number 10.
20:06The twice-baked potato.
20:07Every supper club entree came with a potato, and the twice-baked potato was the crown of them all.
20:14A russet baked until soft, then split open.
20:18The inside scooped out and whipped with butter, sour cream, cheese, and chives,
20:25then piled back into the shell and run under the broiler until the top browned and crisped.
20:31It came to the table looking like more effort than it was, and that was the magic.
20:36A potato cost a nickel, whipped up with a little dairy, and baked twice.
20:41It became a side dish people specifically remembered.
20:45Some clubs did au gratin instead, thin potato slices layered in cream and cheese,
20:51and baked until the whole pan turned bubbling and golden at the edges.
20:56Either way, the potato was never an afterthought.
20:59It was a statement.
21:01The casual chains gave you a foil-wrapped baked potato with a packet of margarine
21:06and a tub of imitation sour cream, and called it the same thing.
21:11It was not the same thing.
21:13The twice-baked potato was love, scooped and rebaked by hand.
21:19Number 9.
21:19The Friday Fish Fry.
21:21This was not a meal so much as a ritual, and in the upper Midwest it was practically a law.
21:26Every Friday the supper club fried fish, and the whole town turned out for it.
21:32Lake perch, walleye, bluegill, or cod, dipped in beer batter or breadcrumbs and fried golden,
21:40piled high on a plate with a scoop of coleslaw, a pile of fries or German potato salad,
21:47a slice of rye bread, and a little cup of tartar sauce.
21:51The tradition came from the old Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays,
21:57and in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, it became something everyone observed, Catholic or not.
22:03The fish was fresh from the lakes that the supper club sat beside,
22:07and the batter was a secret each cook guarded.
22:10For a few dollars, you got a mountain of fish and a community,
22:15because Friday night the place was packed wall-to-wall with families you had known your whole life.
22:21The fish fry is one of the few supper club traditions that survives,
22:25but in most of America it has gone entirely,
22:28a casualty of the chains that fry their fish from a frozen box.
22:34Number 8.
22:35Baked Alaska.
22:36When the lights in the dining room dimmed even further,
22:39and a glow appeared at the kitchen door,
22:42the whole room knew someone had ordered the baked Alaska.
22:45A dome of ice cream set on a layer of cake,
22:48covered completely in a thick shell of meringue,
22:51and then, impossibly, baked in a hot oven,
22:55or torched at the table so the meringue browned and crisped,
22:59while the ice cream inside stayed frozen solid.
23:02Sometimes it arrived flaming, doused in warm liqueur,
23:06and lit on fire as the waiter carried it through the dark room to applause.
23:11It was a dessert that defied physics, hot and cold at the same time,
23:15and it was worth every bit of effort because of the gasp it pulled from the table.
23:19The chains replaced it with a chocolate cake from a freezer truck and a single sad candle.
23:25The fire, the drama, the impossible science of it all vanished.
23:32Number 7.
23:33Cherries Jubilee.
23:34Another dessert cooked in flames at your table.
23:37Dark, sweet cherries warmed in their syrup in a pan over a burner,
23:43then flooded with brandy or kirsch and set alight,
23:47the blue flame dancing over the surface while the waiter swirled the pan.
23:52Once the fire died down, that hot, boozy cherry sauce was spooned over a scoop of vanilla ice cream,
24:00where it melted little rivers into the cold cream.
24:03The contrast was everything.
24:05The warm, spiced cherries against the icy vanilla,
24:10the smell of caramelized sugar and brandy hanging over the table.
24:16Cherries.
24:18Jubilee was supposedly created for one of Queen Victoria's jubilees,
24:23and it carried that air of occasion right into the supper club booth.
24:28It was the dessert you ordered when you wanted the night to end on a high note,
24:33with a little fire and a little ceremony.
24:36The casual chains decided customers could not be trusted around open flames,
24:40and the tableside service cost too much, so they snuffed it out.
24:45A whole art of cooking dessert in front of the people eating it simply disappeared.
24:52Number 6.
24:53Bananas Foster
24:55Born at Brennan's in New Orleans in 1951,
24:59and carried up the river to the supper clubs of the Midwest,
25:02Bananas Foster was the warm, decadent cousin of Cherries Jubilee.
25:06Sliced bananas, cooked in a bubbling pan of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon,
25:13until they softened and caramelized,
25:15then splashed with rum and banana liqueur,
25:18and set ablaze tableside in a sheet of flame that drew every eye in the room.
25:24The whole thing was poured, still flickering, over vanilla ice cream,
25:29and the cold cream collapsed into the hot caramel sauce.
25:34The smell alone, butterscotch and rum and warm banana,
25:38was enough to make the next table order one, too.
25:42Bananas
25:43Foster still clings to life in a few old line restaurants,
25:47but as a regular Saturday night offering at a small town supper club,
25:51it is almost entirely a thing of the past.
25:55Number 5.
25:56The Grasshopper
25:57Here is where dessert and drink became the same thing.
26:01The Grasshopper was a milkshake for adults,
26:04a blend of green creme de month,
26:07white creme de cacao,
26:09and a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream,
26:13whipped until thick and pale green,
26:15and poured into a chilled glass.
26:18It tasted like a melted mint chocolate chip,
26:21cool and creamy and sweet,
26:23with just enough booze to make the room a little softer.
26:27In Wisconsin's supper clubs,
26:30the Grasshopper was not ordered after dinner.
26:32It was dinner's grand finale,
26:35sipped slow in the booth while the kids fell asleep against the vinyl.
26:39Some clubs made theirs so thick you needed a spoon.
26:42It was the kind of indulgence that felt sophisticated and silly at the same time,
26:47a grown-up treat in a state that takes its ice cream drinks more seriously than anywhere on earth.
26:54The chains gave America the frozen margarita and the cookie skillet and quietly let the ice cream cocktail die.
27:02But in the supper club,
27:04that green glass sweating on the table was the perfect way to end a night.
27:08Number 4.
27:11The Pink Squirrel
27:12If the Grasshopper was green,
27:15the Pink Squirrel was its rosy twin,
27:17and it has the better origin story.
27:20It was invented at Bryant's Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee,
27:24a blend of creme de noyer,
27:26which gives it that almond flavor and pale pink color.
27:29White creme de cacao and vanilla ice cream
27:33all whipped together into a frozen dessert you drank through a straw.
27:38It tasted like cherry almond candy melted into a milkshake,
27:42sweet and nutty and impossibly smooth.
27:47Ordering a Pink Squirrel was a small declaration that the meal was over
27:51and the relaxing had begun.
27:53It was the drink for people who did not really drink,
27:56sweet enough to be a treat,
27:58boozy enough to count.
28:00Wisconsin held on to the Pink Squirrel
28:03long after the rest of the country forgot it ever existed,
28:06because Wisconsin understood something the chains never did,
28:10that a meal should end with a little joy,
28:13not a check slapped on the table.
28:16The Pink Squirrel is the taste of a supper club Saturday,
28:19and almost nowhere else in America can you even find one anymore.
28:25Number 3.
28:26The Relish Tray
28:27It was not a dish you ordered.
28:29It arrived whether you wanted it or not the moment you sat down,
28:33and it was the soul of the entire supper club experience.
28:37A lazy Susan or a divided tray,
28:40spinning on the table,
28:41loaded with cold, crisp vegetables and small indulgences.
28:45Carrot sticks, carrot sticks, celery, radishes, green onions, pickled beets,
28:51marinated mushrooms,
28:53a crock of liver pâté or Braunschweiger spread,
28:57a tub of sharp cheese spread,
28:59a pile of crackers,
29:01sometimes a few pickled herring for the brave.
29:03You grazed it while you waited,
29:06spinning the tray,
29:07spreading the pâté on a cracker,
29:10salting a radish,
29:11and it cost the kitchen almost nothing while it did the most important job in the building.
29:16It made you feel taken care of before you spent a dollar.
29:20It said sit, relax, the night is long.
29:24Eat something while we get to your table.
29:26No casual chain ever brought you a relish tray,
29:30because no casual chain wanted you to slow down.
29:32They wanted you fed and gone.
29:35The relish tray was generosity made of vegetables,
29:38and when it disappeared,
29:40something gentle in American dining disappeared with it.
29:45Number 2.
29:46The Brandy Old Fashioned
29:47Before you ate a single bite,
29:50before the relish tray even stopped spinning,
29:53you ordered one of these,
29:54because in the supper club,
29:56the meal began with brandy,
29:58not whiskey brandy,
30:00because Wisconsin fell in love with California brandy
30:03at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago,
30:06and never let go,
30:08and to this day drinks more of it than any state in the country.
30:12The bartender muddled a sugar cube with bitters
30:15and an orange slice and a cherry,
30:18added a generous pour of corbel,
30:20and topped it with sweet soda if you wanted it sweet,
30:23sour if you wanted it sour,
30:26or 7-up if you were somewhere in between.
30:29It came in a short heavy glass,
30:31garnished with fruit,
30:32and it was the official handshake of the supper club.
30:35You sipped it in the bar for an hour
30:38before they called your table.
30:40It set the pace of the entire evening,
30:42slow and warm and unhurried.
30:45The casual chains poured wine by the glass
30:49and called it a night.
30:50But the brandy old-fashioned was a ritual,
30:54a sweet amber signal that you had arrived somewhere
30:56that intended to take its time with you.
31:00Number 1. Prime Rib
31:02At the top of every supper club menu,
31:04in the largest letters,
31:06sat the dish the whole institution was built around,
31:09a standing rib roast rubbed with salt and pepper,
31:13and roasted low and slow for hours until the outside was crusted,
31:17and the inside ran rosy pink from edge to edge.
31:21It was carved to order,
31:23and the waiter asked you how big a cut you wanted.
31:26The queen cut,
31:27the king cut,
31:29the end cut for the people who liked it well done.
31:32It came to the table on a warm plate,
31:34swimming in its own au jus,
31:36with a little dish of horseradish so sharp it made your eyes water,
31:40and a twice-baked potato beside it.
31:43The first bite was buttery and beefy and tender enough to cut with a fork.
31:48Prime Rib was the reason you got in the car on a Saturday night
31:52and drove out past the streetlights.
31:54It was the centerpiece of the whole, long, slow, generous evening.
32:00The casual chains could never sell it,
32:03because real Prime Rib takes hours and skill
32:06and a roast that costs real money,
32:09so they let it fade.
32:11But for one golden generation,
32:13that pink, glistening slab of beef under a ladle of au jus
32:17was the taste of a Saturday night in America,
32:21and nothing the chains put on a laminated menu has ever come close.
32:27So here is my challenge.
32:30Find a supper club that is still standing,
32:32the kind out by a lake with a gravel lot and a neon sign,
32:37and go on a Saturday night.
32:39Order the brandy old-fashioned,
32:42graze the relish tray,
32:44get the prime rib,
32:45and watch them carve it.
32:47These were not just meals.
32:49They were a whole way of spending an evening
32:51that we traded for speed
32:52and forgot we ever had.
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