As noted in my article last week about Kohler, Wisconsin, The American Club opened in 1918 as living quarters for the Kohler company's factory workers, complete with pub, bowling alley and barbershop, all surrounded by 500 acres of lush woodlands and rivers. In 1978 the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After being closed for three years, The American Club was reconfigured in 1981 as a grand inn, and it is as splendid a Late Gothic-Victorian structure as may be found in the nation. The original 100-foot flagpole still flies an American banner, and the magnificent blue slate roof has been carefully maintained.
Every inch of the building was restored to contemporary standards of luxury, its oak paneling buffed and expanded, and each guest room was created to honor Americans of unique achievement, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Pickford, Ernest Hemingway and Lou Gehrig. My wife and I stayed in the John James Audubon room, decorated with reproductions of the artist's work and memorabilia. All the rooms are spacious, many with gas fireplaces, all with minibars, and, since this is a Kohler showcase, you can only imagine how luxuriously the bathrooms are designed and appointed. You could hardly conceive of a better advertisement for good plumbing.
I particularly loved the Library (left) , where I could spend days on end picking through volumes of classic American and European literature from the shelves, settling down in a comfortable chair and ordering tea or a cocktail as I wile away hours ripping through a volume or two of James Fenimore Cooper or boning up on Wisconsin wildlife.
Amenities are first rate throughout, and I had no trouble with WiFi. Kohler has also initiated a children's program, and while this is very much an adult hotel in cast and sophistication, younger children can sill enjoy it; teenagers will probably sit in their room and play with their iPhones (as they always do). Shuttle carts take you wherever you wish on the property, including four world-class golf courses designed by the noted (some say notorious) architect Pete Dye.
There are six dining rooms in the Club, and where the bowling alley once stood there is now the cheery Horse & Plow Pub, decked out with antique farm tools--the tabletops are made from the bowling alley planking--and serving very good American fare. Here I wholly enjoyed a beer-and-cheese soup, a juicy burger piled high with Wisconsin sharp cheddar on a housemade Stieber bun (right), and some hearty grilled bratwurst served with bacon-studded sauerkraut, grilled onions and Stout-spiked mustard on a toasted hard roll.
The most formal dining venue in the Club is the Wisconsin Room (above), where seasonality invests a continental-style menu featuring items like Great Lakes perch and Wisconsin char along with bison tenderloin and grass-fed Prime rib, with main courses ranging from $25 to $54 and a three-course "Farmer's Tasting Menu" at $45. Dishes tend to be overwrought, when simpler renditions would be better.
A former laundry room has been converted into a warren of small, intimate dining areas called the Immigrant Restaurant & Winery Bar, each reflecting a different ethnic heritage of the Kohler workers of the past. This is the most ambitious of the restaurants at the Club, with entrée prices from $46 to $62, and wine pairings are crafted from a stellar 40-page list, also featured at The Winery bar next to the restaurant. Here wine and cheese tastings are part of the nightly fare, and it's a beautiful, secluded spot in which to end an evening with a glass of Port or Brandy and talk about one's experience on the golf greens that afternoon.
Outside the main building are other venues where one can stay or eat, some geared to the golf courses on which they sit: Black Wolf Run (above), magnificently timbered, features an American grill menu with dishes like corn-and-sausage chowder ($7), dill and citrus walleye pike on sourdough bread ($14), and stuffed cheese steak ($11); if still warm, outside on the terrace you can enjoy your meal and drinks in front of a grand fieldstone fireplace.
My favorite of the estate's smaller restaurants was River Wildlife's Lodge Restaurant, set in a log cabin for which the term rustic is a bit ingenuous. Still, notes its brochure, "Everything carried in must be carried out." For, although it has all the lineaments of a cabin in the woods, it is also the epitome of an American style that evokes Beretta shotguns, Irish tweeds, Ralph Lauren boots, stacks of magazines like Sports Afield and Field & Stream, a copy of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and a good stock of rare Scotches. Here the menu is happily Midwestern, with excellent, hearty soups glaze ($6), pheasant BLT with applewood bacon ($16), and autumn fruit crisp ($8). Dinner is served at the Lodge on weekends.
Off site, in a village called the Shops at Woodlake, Kohler also runs the Craverie Chocolatier Café, using the resort's own recipes for fancy chocolates--tastings are available--and also offering a light but substantial menu of soups and sandwiches, as well as freshly baked pastries and ice creams. The dishes include roasted cauliflower soup and Waldorf chicken salad wrap, and for breakfast an egg and Wisconsin cheddar cheese croissant.
Also at the Shops is Cucina, a good-looking modern Italian restaurant that needs improvement in the kitchen; the best way to go is with the variety of steaks and chops cooked over a wood grill, with main courses $21-$35.
Kohler also has some superb private clubs, including the baronial Riverbend, with two dining rooms.
Destination Kohler is well named, for although it's only an hour from Milwaukee, it seems remote in the sense of being of another, quieter, slower paced era, buoyed by Midwestern hospitality, far from the bustle and rush of a big city.