Steak on the bayou
New Orleans flavors meet supper club spirit at Edgewater in Pewaukee.
Pewaukee Lake isn’t exactly a bayou, but a waterfront restaurant does seem like a good place to weave New Orleans flavors into a Wisconsin menu.
Edgewater Supper Club does just that. It looks random, at first — a Wisconsin supper club, with Creole and Cajun dishes? — but it makes more sense when you consider the background of the chef, Erik “Mars” Mahr, who previously cooked in New Orleans and for the Bartolotta group at its Joey Gerard’s supper club. In the land of the melting pot, why not?
The restaurant takes over the remodeled main level of what was the Sandbar sports bar. Edgewater owner Bernie Kook gave the 1923 building a fresh face; the dining room has expansive windows for that milliondollar view of the lake.
Seats at the bar and a banquette beyond it are positioned to give diners a lake view. One night, in this lull between winter and summer lake activities, waterfowl diving for their dinners provided the show. Dinner in the restaurant is considerably easier. It starts the supper club way, with warm bread and a relish tray — carrots, celery, radishes, black olives, cornichons. The classics, in other words.
This is comforting, but things start getting interesting with the appetizers, where most of the dishes have roots down South.
The chef takes maque choux, the Louisiana dish of skillet-fried corn with onion and bell pepper, one step further and turns it into golden, crisp fritters ($8.95), served with jalapeño hollandaise, a sauce with a very light bite.
Barbecue shrimp ($11.95) are served New Orleans style, which means that neither grilling nor barbecue sauce is involved, and that the shrimp come with their heads on. The sauce is creamier than the usual butter Worcestershire combination, and it’s altogether delicious.
Wisconsin has adopted crab cakes with such enthusiasm that they now read as universal instead of coastal. The crab cake at Edgewater ($13.95) really is quite perfect; it’s lush with lump crabmeat, sitting on a bed of maque choux that’s ringed with a spicy-sweet cayenne glaze.
Likewise, the seafood gumbo ($8.95), knitted together with an admirably dark roux, is the best I’ve come across, short of a trip to New Orleans.
Just about then I was thinking, "Why not take the menu entirely over to New Orleans?" But a daily soup, an excellent beer-cheese, did make a good argument for including Wisconsin dishes.
The menu’s strength really is in the plates that look to Creole and Cajun traditions.
The menu bridges Wisconsin and NOLA in places — gentle Creole seasoning, for instance, on a walleye fillet ($24.95) and lamb loin ($27.95) that was generously portioned but a touch dry. (It would be interesting to see a little more crossover between supper club and New Orleans like that, between South and North. Pickled okra on the relish tray, maybe.)
Steaks are straightforward supper club: A filet ($36.95 for 6 ounces, $42.95 for 10 ounces) was very good, well-seasoned and deeply beefy. Bone-in ribeye, though ($39.95 for 14 ounces, $47.95 for 18 ounces), came off as dry by comparison. It’s not the priciest rib-eye around, and maybe that’s why it wasn’t a knockout.
Better to have the bison T-bone ($37.95 for 16 ounces), a steak with more presence. With any steak or chop, try the dandy house Worcestershire sauce; a sauce is included in the price, as are two side dishes. This isn't A La Carte Land.
New Orleans flavors are like the sun here, pulling the best entrées into orbit — like excellent Creole surf and turf ($39.95), a filet served with grilled asparagus, mashed sweet potatoes and crawfish tails in buttery hot sauce, the kind you wish you’d saved some bread for. Its spicier cousin, Cajun surf and turf ($34.95), set a grilled bone-in boar chop over classic jambalaya, dotted with andouille and garnished with tender shrimp.
Duck confit ($32.95) speaks almost entirely of Wisconsin, with wild rice pilaf and mixed mushrooms plus cherry sauce — except the sauce is rounded with bourbon.
One Wisconsin favorite also suggests the roots of the chef, who was born in Austria: Wienerschnitzel ($27.95), served with potato wedges and kraut made of brussels sprouts. Likely from being laid over the steaming vegetables, the schnitzel’s breading didn’t cling entirely as it should have.
Many dishes here might make you think of New Orleans or Wisconsin, but quail pasta ($28.95) was its own thing (though the Alfredo sauce with it is amped up with Cajun spices). The plate might look as if the pasta were forgotten, with two little quails nestled in the sauce with peas and bacon. Cut into the partly deboned birds, though, and there’s the linguine: tidily rolled, a culinary parlor trick. The pasta was springy — just right.
The bar does its own thing, too, with some cocktail classics, like a brandy Old Fashioned made with blood orange, or a fruity but balanced Manhattan goosed with apple schnapps. Wines largely were familiar vintners and varietals; the list is focused on value, and markups seemed lower than typical.
Come dessert, New Orleans won me over again. The dessert that stood apart was the airy beignets ($7.95) garnished with syrup flavored with satsuma oranges.
The Lake Country Glacier ($8.95), a take on baked Alaska, was a looker: a disc of moist chocolate cake and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, encased in a swirl of browned meringue. Impressive, but just shy of perfect, with a bit of unmelted sugar crunching in the meringue.
Custard-like bread pudding ($8.95) flavored with Pewaukee’s own Rumchata liqueur was a clever and delicious New Orleans-meets-Wisconsin dessert, but a slice of fudgy chocolate torte fried in tempura ($8.95) fell flat.
Servers mostly were young and still honing their craft, with some small bumps here and there, but their hospitality came across as effortless.
Edgewater does feel like a restaurant that still is maturing (it’s been open only since December). But the Louisiana-inspired dishes were like a trip to New Orleans itself; Edgewater could be a destination for those alone.
Look for Carol Deptolla’s restaurant news column, Side Dish, in Friday’s Weekend Tap section. Contact her at (414) 224-2841, carol.deptolla@jrn.com or on Twitter, @mkediner.