Castle Hill works magic with potatoes, prime rib

Sunday, Oct. 28, 2007

There’s only one serious problem with Castle Hill Supper Club.

The kitchen sometimes runs out of Potato Skins.

We don’t mean the appetite killers popularized by fern bars in the 1970s, those scooped-out baked potato halves deep-fried into oil-soaked leather, then layered with fat on fat: sour cream, bacon bits, Cheddar cheese, even butter.

Castle Hill’s chefs bake large Idaho Russets for a variety of dishes. To make their Potato Skins, they carefully peel long, broad strips of Russet skin, leaving just enough potato flesh beneath, then deep-fry them lightly and toss them with salt and seasonings.

The result? What a dining companion called “potato chips for adults”: delicious and memorable savory nibbles with intense potato flavor and exactly the right ratio of crisp to crunch to tender-soft, $4.99. We would travel happily all the way to Merrillan — from Eau Claire or almost anywhere else — just for these.

If the Potato Skins are gone, get the hash browns. Two of our three hash brown orders were perfect: radically crisp and beautifully reddish-brown without, still somewhat creamy-moist within. The third was merely good.

We asked chef and co-owner Mike Hensel how he works such hash brown magic. He said: “There really is no secret.”

After a short pause, he added: “Well, we do cook them stove-top in cast-iron skillets.” And then: “We’ve been doing it that way for more than 30 years.”

That’s Castle Hill.

If you can’t order Potato Skins, skip the appetizers altogether; all the rest are purchased and deep-fried from frozen. Spend time instead with the comforting house-baked kaiser rolls and the classic supper club relishes — crisp carrots, celery and radishes interlaid withcrystal-clear ice cubes in a chilled glass boat.

Also skip the soups, which tend to taste of commercial broths and bases. Opt instead for the simple lettuce salad. The mild blue cheese dressing is house-made.

We have strong advice about what entrees to order here — and when.

Mistrust the ribs; ours were dry within and chewy-tough. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, go for steaks, fried shrimp and walleye.

Castle Hill bills itself as “Famous for Steaks” and offers the familiar cuts in a good range of sizes and prices: 5-ounce tenderloin, $14.99; 8-ounce filet mignon, $19.99; 10-ounce ribeye, $16.99; 12-ounce New York strip, $20.99; 8- or 16-ounce top sirloin, $12.99 or $19.99; 20-ounce T-bone, $24.99. With the help of generous friends, we tried them all.

Each of our steaks came underseasoned but otherwise fully acceptable — cooked to our requested temperatures, tasty and tender enough. But only one made us yearn to eat it again and again: the aged top sirloin.

Ordered medium-rare, it was gently grill-marked, juicy and very tender, with a persuasively beefy flavor. To our delight, the 8-ounce top sirloin is Castle Hill’s best-selling and least expensive steak. It went nicely with the well-prepared buttered button mushrooms, $4.99.

The large butterflied shrimp are deep-fried in an unusually light house-made batter reminiscent of Japanese tempura. Ours tasted sweet, moist and clean in a delicate, crisp coating, $16.99.

The huge walleye fillet is baked in parsley butter. It forked easily into flavorful moist flakes and was best with a squeeze of fresh lemon, $14.99.

At Friday’s grand seafood buffet — an astonishing value at $10.99 — try everything, sure, but focus on the dishes of distinction. The outstanding fish boil — another 30-year tradition here — expertly simmers good cod, red potatoes and massive white onions together in a spiced court bouillon that makes the fish wonderfully moist, the potatoes velvety and the onions crisp, sweet and tender.

There’s also fine cracker-meal-fried catfish and more moist cod in a deep-fried, dark-caramel-crisp, beer-battered casing that crunches and crackles pleasantly in the mouth. And a baked chicken dish so succulent that the bones threatened to slip from the meat on the way to our plates.

Don’t miss dessert. Head baker Donna Murphy fills and refills a buffet table with an ever-changing assortment of sweet things. Her talents show best in the scratch-made pies, little cookies and moist cakes. Secret: Friday diners who don’t choose the buffet still may visit the dessert bar for $2.50.

Castle Hill is also justly proud of its prime rib, served on Saturdays only. According to Mike Hensel, the chefs hand-select their rib roasts, age them in-house, rub them lightly with house-blended spices and slow-roast them overnight. Ours was simply the best prime rib we’ve had in Wisconsin.

In the cozy, time-polished old dining room on a recent Thursday night, a waitress brought a slice of cake,candle-lit, to a corner table of three. The older woman at the table started singing “Happy Birthday” in a quiet voice. The waitress, already halfway across the room, turned back and joined in. And then the next table did, and our table did, and then each of the tables behind us.

That’s Castle Hill too.

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram’s restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners’ Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.