Van Acre — Restaurant in Town of Rib Mountain

I’m a very picky eater who grew up with a single parent that really didn’t understand how to not overcook food. It was after branching out on my own as an adult, reading Bon Appetite magazine and watching cooking shows that I learned how to cook “out of the box”. My entire life I have been a very picky eater. I only mention all of this because it’s where I grew as a home cook who cooks like they want to eat. I have had several fine dining experiences where the food was very good. With saying that, I have to admit that my dining experience at Van Acres was above and beyond any previous experiences. The service was second to none! The food was phenomenal! My husband ordered the sea bass and not only was he pleased but, both of us noticed how exceptional the sear was on his bass! I ordered the Harissa Chicken and was very pleased with the dish. I must admit that this was the first time ever that an executive chef asked me/us about our food. Arkielle came to our table to ask about our first few bites. Chef Arkielle not only personally visited many tables, I witnessed her jumping into the open kitchen to help her staff when they got busy and maintained her positive, encouraging spirit. I can’t leave a review without mentioning how phenomenal her brown butter rice with charred radicchio was! Yes , I did tell her so! I will definitely return to Van Acre at least as long as they have Arkielle creating their menu with her recipes. I have lived in Wisconsin for 22 years and had many fine dining experiences over that time throughout the entire state and I can honestly say that my dining experience and food at Van Acre has been the...

The dinner and breakfast experience is night and day, my running theory is that this is a phenomenal dinner place bullied into also serving hotel breakfast. For every unbelievably amazing thought put into every level of the dinner service is an equally appalling counterweight at breakfast that is a perfect example of Newtons Third Law.

I never expected to be so blown out of the water by any hotel restaurant, but our dinner experience will have us swooning for a long time. The salmon was perfect, the salad refreshing, the bread service to die for, an imaginative cocktail menu, and attentive and informed service fit for a Michelin restaurant.

But for every care that was put into each ramiken of smoked apple butter at dinner was equal carelessness in the single packets of smuckers jam and corn syrup honey for our untoasted morning bagels. Every impassioned char line on the evening salmon was matched in our inability to get properly cooked eggs (our request for over-medium resulted in a bowl of soft poached, and then a single fried hard egg when they tried again). The measured eggwash than perfectly complimented the in-house dinner rolls matched by the morning's limp, wet, flavorless hashbrowns and bacon.

Truely an experience that left us spinning. Cant...

The second time at Van Acre, I have to say it was very similar to our first experience. I'll first say that everything food and drink wise is amazing and delicious. There seems to be some disconnect between the different sections of the house. There's a manager, the hostess, waitresses, and cooks, but I'm not sure they are helping each other out. Sometimes things come through right away, other times you are waiting 20+ min for drinks, plates sit while 3 hostess/bussers are seemingly looking for something to do, the manager is looking at the line but not running anything or maybe expediting? Seems like if everyone helped each other out and all the pieces worked together, this place would be a fine-tuned machine. 2.5 hours from sitting down until closing our check for 5 people is mildly excessive. Like I said, everything is amazing here, but just missing a little magic fairy dust. The quality is there. We struggle with the supporting factors. We will be back for sure.

For food, we had the smoke plate, Kimchi, brisket queso, filet, Philly cheese steak pizza, rice and beans, street corn salad with steak, house chop salad with chicken and a bunch of...