FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Apparently, if you want to read up on supper clubs, there are several books that deal with the subject.

I might have to educate myself.  These days "supper club" calls to mind Friday fish fry, and weekend prime rib, and a relish tray (meaning celery slices and the likes) and no reservations, so chill at the bar and enjoy some brandy old fashioneds until your name is called.  But then there's this.  "Supper clubs went through phases, like the novelty restaurants of the '60s: Dutch's Sukiyaki House on Milwaukee's south side; the futuristic Hartwig's Gobbler Supper Club and Motel in Johnson Creek; the Pyramid outside Beaver Dam, shaped like an actual pyramid that rose from the surrounding farm fields."  That sukiyaki house by the airport was a favorite with my parents, who went so far as to buy an electric frying pan to make their own version of sukiyaki at home.  Later they, and then their children, figured out stir frying.  But a supper club in the Japanese fashion?  Might have to get the book just for that.

It gets better.

Supper club owners through the decades were characters in their own right, including bootleggers and makers of moonshine during Prohibition and gambling scofflaws. [Author Ron] Faiola documents scrapes, a bombing and other rough (and even lethal) stuff.

And there were the one-of-a-kind club owners, like Paul "Frenchy" La Pointe of Frenchy's on the east side. "He was kind of a Runyonesque character," Faiola said.

La Pointe, who operated a speakeasy downtown in Prohibition, hired the likes of Louis Armstrong and Bobby Short to perform at his midcentury supper club; a song, "Frenchy's Boogie," was written for La Pointe, Faiola said. Later, the club served exotic-game dinners.

That's what I recall about Frenchy's, the exotica on the menu, something Lombardi era Packers also remarked upon.  Didn't strike me as belonging to the same category as Clifford's Supper Club, still in business with the same neon sign they had when your Superintendent was in grade school, along Forest Home Avenue in Hales Corners.  In addition, the first establishment the author could find that called itself a "supper club" was in London.  The article notes it wanted somebody with good bartending skills.  No mention of fish fries (well, fish and chips) or prime rib in the article.  Perhaps in the book.