Took a little detour off the freeway to see the Sky Club Supper Club, established in 1935, in Plover, Wisconsin.
What’s so special about the Sky Club? It’s where the Salad Bar was invented in the late 1940s!
I stopped at the club and was dejected to find it was closed, and they didn’t open until 4 pm. I was about to leave and then I noticed a younger guy pulling his car around back. Then I saw there were a few employees going in the back door, and I asked one if I could see the world’s first salad bar.
Next thing you know, the head honcho Eric Freund was giving me a personal tour of one of the great Wisconsin supper clubs, his family’s business (“I grew up in the house next door,” he said), and a beautiful place that still serves hundreds of people every week. Everyone inside the club was getting ready for a big Saturday night as he gave me the tour.
The building has been enlarged several times since 1935, and he showed me the old part of the building where the original salad bar was invented in the late 1940s.
“For the first year or two, it was just a table,” he explained. “But things kept spoiling and going bad. Then in 1952, they got the idea to put it all on ice, and put the salad items inside these pewter bowls, which kept everything ice cold.“ He showed me where the original salad bar table sat, by the front door, then he showed me the second iteration of the refrigerated salad bar, which was in operation from 1952 until the 1970s.
Currently the Sky Club, the place that holds the honor of inventing the salad bar, has a fancy, new, and very big salad bar in the main dining room. And if you’ve ever grabbed a cold plate, then dished up ice-cold iceberg lettuce and veggies and cheese and croutons and your choice of salad dressings, you owe a tip of the hat to the Sky Club Supper Club here in Plover, Wisconsin, for starting it all. Thanks for the tour, Eric! Can’t wait to come back here and eat supper sometime!
