For many Wisconsinites, the supper club is such a part of life that it’s easy to forget—or even realize—that it has little meaning outside state lines. Filmmaker Holly De Ruyter never gave her local supper club, Colonial House in Freedom, a second thought while growing up outside Green Bay. Then she went to college in Chicago.
“I didn’t think it would be that different, but I was shocked at the cultural differences,” she says. “People in Chicago don’t eat at supper clubs or even know what they are! This place that was such a regular part of my family’s life.”