Buckhorn Bar & Motel — Restaurant in Exeland

Top-notch all the way! We sorted out a reservation over Facebook and they had the perfect corner table waiting for us when we arrived. Note: they fill up!

I ordered an old fashioned. Showed up as a brandy old fashioned. Ordered another one too. Good cocktail!

Appetizer was fried pickles. Neat house-made rendition of a popular app. Their batter is what elevated this one because it had a smattering of dill in it. Really good!

Wife and I split an entrée: their 16-oz prime rib. It's a Saturday thing. Kid 2 was with us and had the same but different configuration such that I got to try more of their stuff in one sitting.

We split a salad with their house-made blue cheese dressing. Lettuce mix was all fresh, ditto for the cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. The dressing stole the show! Thick and creamy with a generous amount of chunks up to the size of a dime. The kid had their soup of the day: house-smoked pulled pork and black bean soup. She didn't love it but the wife and I demolished most of the cup. Nice tender chunks of pulled pork, tomato-based broth and black beans combined to make one fantastic soup!

Prime rib was as expected. Big, beefy flavor, served in beef broth, temp exactly as ordered (medium-rare) plus a generous cut all combined to make it a winner of a dinner! Properly seasoned and prepared while keeping the beef as the star of the show. House-made horseradish sauce was (not surprisingly) incredibly good and packs a punch. Kid's onion tanglers were very good. My baked potato was likewise cooked exactly right.

These folks have only owned the place for about 2 years. They are absolutely knocking it out of the park and everything coming out of the kitchen amazes. Can't wait to see what they do with dessert when they add it to the menu!

Photo are attached to my...

The Buckhorn Bar is my new favorite Northern Wisconsin bar/eatery. First of all, they have a one page (double sided) menu. That’s right: a single page. No overwhelming searches through six different booklets: just a single page of amazing options to please all diners. Super easy for larger parties. Second: they have options to please everyone. From burgers (the Buckhorn burger is a time-tested favorite) to fish tacos, everyone can find something they love. The portions are super generous (a few appetizers will feed a crew… until the amazing dinners make their way out of the kitchen minutes later). The prices are super reasonable. Tonight, I hooked myself up with a steak sandwich and was not disappointed. Their locally grown meat is second to none, and their steak would have been enough for two generous sandwiches and was cooked to perfection exactly as ordered. I also got their BBQ pork nachos for the table, and everyone enjoyed to the point we were scraping the platter. This is also the place too hook yourself up with some true WI cheese curds. The service was fast and the drinks were stiff. I would recommend this...

Food was delicious. However, there were barely any folks in there and it was slow to arrive. There were no issues with the quality of the food but it was expensive.

The service: ABYSMAL. The male bartender has no mind for service whatsoever. We had to wait at the bar forever (again, only 4 people at the bar including us) to get drinks. When we did finish drinks he would walk by often and not ask or notice (drinks pushed to tail) that we needed refills. Didn’t bring silverware out for our salads. Once we were finished with salads he walked past the stacked plates 10 times and brought our entree out and put them down without taking away other plates. We had to ask for them to be cleared. Paying for $30 fish, you’d expect some level of service and it was non existent. He really didn’t deserve a tip and it should have gone...