Randy’s Frozen Custard

Oh-so-conveniently located across from our beloved Happy Fisherman, this Osage Beach favorite has been around for decades. Randy’s Frozen Custard is one of those places that drips with cool, sweet happiness every hot summer evening, as folks line up for frozen treats.




Every vacation area has a place like this. In northern Ohio, for instance, up by Cedar Point amusement park, there’s the Pied Piper—been around since the fifties.

At Missouri’s hot and humid Lake of the Ozarks, by evening, most vacationers have already spent hours in the sunshine, boating, fishing, swimming, golfing, jet-skiing, staggering in and out of shops, and all the rest of that tourist stuff. (Don’t forget the skee-ball, go-karts, and bumper cars!) Naturally, you work up an appetite for frozen custard!

And hey, the locals enjoy Randy’s, too—they’ve spent the day taking care of all those tourists, and they need to replenish the nine billion calories they burned up doing that!




Randy’s specialty is the Ozark Turtle—a sundae made with frozen custard, gooey-sweet, warm caramel sauce, hot fudge, and topped with plenty of incredibly well-toasted pecans, that have a superb crunch and just enough salt to balance the sweetness of the rest. Check out the sizes: the “small” one is what I’d call a “regular” serving!

Yes, there are other places to get frozen dairy treats down at the lake, but you should put Randy’s at the top of your list—just for the nostalgia factor, if not for the value and the sheer deliciousness of the Ozark Turtle.




I recently tried to order a mock turtle sundae at our neighborhood soft-serve place, and there was no comparison. The pecans were listless, bland, and lacked crunch. The caramel was more sticky than flavorful. And it was built of that soft-serve stuff, vacant, not like delicious frozen custard. They meant well; they tried. But you get the picture. There, I think I’ll just stick to blueberry milkshakes and chocolate dip cones.

When at the lake, go to Randy’s. (And don’t confuse it with Andy’s, which seems to be an explosively expanding joint from Springdale or Springfield or somewhere, coming soon with four-billion-watt bright lights to a development near you.) Go to Randy’s.




One more thing: If you need a Randy’s fix and you’re stuck in Columbia for some reason, don’t fret—just head to the Hy-Vee shopping area out on West Broadway: There’s a Randy’s outpost there! A bonus of that location is that it’s close to Shakespeare’s Pizza West! So close, in fact, you can smell the pizza while you wait for your concretes and sundaes. (Heaven must be a lot like this, huh?)

“Kid-friendly” is, of course, a given. —So bring the family! Don’t be put off by a long line during peak hours; that just means it’s totally worth it!





One more thing—true story—one night this past week, it was about eight o’clock, and Sue and I drove all the way to Columbia just to get Ozark Turtles. Yes: it’s that good.

Shorty Pants Lounge, Lake of the Ozarks

On Sunday, Sue and I made an impromptu trip to the Lake of the Ozarks and ate, for a second time, at Shorty Pants Lounge. Again, we were favorably impressed by the food. Enough to want to tell you about it!




I’m not very familiar with this restaurant yet, but I can tell you that everything we’ve had there has been not only delicious, but also carefully prepared. The presentations aren’t stellar in a Michelin-star kind of way, but their efforts to make the dishes look good are successful.

You can tell that most of the food here was prepared from scratch onsite. Take, for instance, one of the place’s most remarkable appetizers, the “alligator eggs.” This is their version of the now-ubiquitous jalapeno popper. “Poppers” at most restaurants come premade and frozen, ready for the deep fryer—and boring.

At Shorty Pants, however, the “alligator eggs” must be a painstaking affair for someone in the kitchen. They start with real, fresh jalapenos: They cut off the tops and carefully core the chilis. Then, I understand, they bake them until they are almost completely cooked. After that, I imagine they must let them cool a little—right? Then, they carefully pipe in the cheese mixture—cream cheese in a smooth blend with four others: provolone, mozzarella, parmesan, and feta. Then, they wrap each stuffed chili with a slice of prosciutto.




These appetizers are finished in the oven, just to heat them through, melt the cheese, and make the edges of the ham a little crispy. Five “eggs” come with each order, garnished with mixed greens and served with Shorty Pants’ homemade raspberry-habanero dipping sauce—which adds another, completely welcome, flavor dimension.




Shorty Pants is famous for their barbeque (you can smell the smoke from far away) as well as for their many Cajun/Creole dishes. As far as we can tell, it’s all fresh and delicious.

The menu’s broad categories include appetizers, soups and salads, wraps, sandwiches, burgers, a kids’ menu, desserts, “Bourbon Street Eats” (étouffée, jambalaya, red beans and rice with andouille, voodoo chicken, and more), and “Signature Entrées” of lobster, steak, fish, ribs—that sort of thing. Quantities are generous.

Here’s their andouille sausage po’boy, with a side of their “vegetable medley”; after that, a side of red beans and rice:






There’s a nice big lounge area, plenty of alcohol and other beverages, an upstairs loft for extra seating, and lots of outside lakefront seating on their big porch and patio. In cooler weather, you can still enjoy the outdoors: The covered patio just outside the entryway is set up with comfy chairs, coffee tables, a big screen TV, and a fireplace.

You can get there by car or by boat. They have their own dock and, by all accounts, an excellent marina and gas dock; if you’re out on the water, you can find them at the 21.2 mile marker.

There are two drawbacks, as far as I can see. First, the place is extremely popular, so if you go at dinnertime or bar-partytime on a Friday or Saturday night, expect a wait and then a loud, boisterous atmosphere. But if you go there on an off-night or during non-peak hours, it can be incredibly relaxing and cozy, the servers attentive.

The other drawback is that Shorty Pants can be challenging to find by car—it’s not on any “strip” or “strip mall,” with no glaring billboards to mesmerize you from afar. To get there from Highway 54, turn west on Route KK (like you’re going to Tan-Tar-A); then turn right on Three Seasons Road (after passing most of Dogwood Hills golf course). Follow Three Seasons Road (and signs for Shorty Pants) all the way to the restaurant. As you approach it, you’ll see it’s right on the Lake. The road curves to the right and descends rather steeply to the parking lot.




One final note—if you don’t want to take my word for it, listen to this: Shorty Pants was voted “Best Dining on the Water” in Lake Lifestyles magazine’s 2010 “Best of the Lake.” The reviews on UrbanSpoon are very favorable, too.

Long story “short”? Shorty Pants is highly recommended, and worth seeking out.

Happy Fisherman: Open Again!

Remember last March when I told you about the Happy Fisherman, at the Lake of the Ozarks? Well, they regularly close for the winter season. Sad, I know.

This is just a reminder that they’re open again now, so you can once again go to the Lake and get your Baitcaster’s Special and have an amazing, enlightening trip to the “Salad Boat.” Check out the rock shrimp, too!




On a lark, Sue and I toodled to the Lake last night (“I want to go somewhere for dinner tonight!”), and we were thrilled to see the Happy Fisherman open again. And it didn’t disappoint.

I had the frog legs (fried—though you can also get them sautéed with onions). Yum-yum! They don’t have frog legs at Appledies!

And the Salad Boat was full of imaginative salads that, well . . . they just remind me of church ladies’ cooking. There was a yellow hominy–based salad, for instance, made with Italian dressing, that was pretty dang good. But my favorite “take” from the Salad Boat was a slaw made with red cabbage, some pieces of bacon, and (I guess) coleslaw dressing. Very simple, very colorful, and yes, very tasty.

Anyway . . . we had a great time. For more on this restaurant, see my earlier post about it.

The Blue Heron, Lake Ozark, Missouri

First, I’m going to tell you right away that this is a positive review. Yes. But I hope you’ll read on to find out why I like the Blue Heron. It’s really quite unique—a very special place. If you are not sure you want to dine there, read on; some of what I describe are things you could decide are drawbacks or virtues; at least you will get an idea of what the place is like, and you can decide for yourself.

Regular readers: I know by now you’re thinkin’ that I’m all in love with down-home cookin’, church suppers, German home cooking, and retro recipes, but I want you to know I have another side. In fact, Gourmet has been my absolute favorite magazine—no, my ONLY magazine—for years and years, and its demise has me in a huge funk. So don’t be surprised now when I start telling you about the Blue Heron at the Lake of the Ozarks.

Walking in the Door

Don’t get me wrong—there is something homelike about the Blue Heron. But you know how the Olive Garden says, “When you’re here, you’re Family”? The Blue Heron isn’t like that. Instead, at the Blue Heron, it’s like you’re visiting someone else’s family. Someone with a fantastic chef. And tonight you’re the guest of honor.




It begins when you step through the door. When we walked in, the owner himself, Joseph Boer, welcomed us cheerfully, with a big smile, and chatted with us for a little while. We had arrived right at opening time—5 p.m.—and after introductions and some light conversation, and some pleasant joshing around, he motioned us jovially toward the lounge, with its doorway to the outdoor pool area: “Go swimming!”

Great American Songbook, classic jazzy vocalists were playing in the sound system. I had a quick flashback to Las Vegas.

I noticed there are ramps everywhere there might have been a step or two. This makes it easy for people with physical disabilities, and it makes it easy for the waitstaff to cart the platters of food to the tables. Yes, they use real wooden carts. You never have to worry about a waiter dropping a tray of ice waters down your back.

Throughout, we found the service attentive but not omnipresent, which is the way we like it. The young woman who was our waiter knew the menu well and advised and served us gracefully.

Relaxing in the Lounge

The lounge. The lounge? Hey, we didn’t ask to be seated in the lounge! But wait—we are here to relax, aren’t we. And we just got off the highway. We’re here to enjoy ourselves! So, okay. Throw us into the briar patch! (Yeah, we could have requested immediate seating.)

This isn’t like Ruby Tewsdee’s, where you stand uncomfortably in the drafty entryway holding an oily surprise-buzzer in your hand, waiting anxiously for a table so you can be fed and outta there ASAP. Here, indeed, it’s not a “wait” to be seated—there were plenty of open tables when we arrived—instead, relaxing in the lounge before dinner is part of the experience. (If you had dinner guests at your house, wouldn’t you have them relax in the living room for a spell before inviting them all to the dinner table? Yes, you would.)

It also gave us a chance to examine the menu at our leisure.




Nota bene: The Blue Heron doesn’t take reservations; it’s first come, first served. It behooves you to arrive early, or else just resign yourself to an actual true wait. They don’t rush their customers through dinner.

In the lounge, we settled into some comfortable furniture around a small table with a blue votive (on a doily) on it. A waiter brought us a complimentary small plate of light hors d’oeuvres, with spiced mixed nuts, a sampling of olives, a seasoned cream cheese dip, and water crackers, and then served us beverages. They have an extensive wine and spirits list and proudly advertise that they’ve received Wine Spectator awards consecutively since 1983.




Sue and my dad wandered outside to the pool area to enjoy the sunset and had a terrific time chatting and enjoying the absolutely spectacular view of the Lake of the Ozarks. The Blue Heron stands on a bluff overlooking Horseshoe Bend, and the pool patio affords a fabulous sunset view. There are plenty of café tables out there, plus a romantic little gazebo. As well as several striking sculptures of herons and a few enormous wind chimes.








Dining

After we’d had this chance to relax for a bit, our server told us our table was ready, and we were led to a nice table next to a window. This time of night, at this time of year, the darkness obscured the view, but during the height of the season, I’ll bet many tables get wonderful views of the lake.




The Blue Heron is a large restaurant with at least a few serving rooms, and as we dined, the place began to fill up. Nevertheless, our service was excellent and never seemed rushed, and we never felt crowded. They have comfortable chairs, too, which my mom and her bad back enjoyed.

There is a nice selection of appetizers. When we saw that they offer escargots, we couldn’t resist. Not many restaurants in Central Missouri offer it—I suspect that many midwesterners (who nevertheless will snarf down brain sandwiches and braunschweiger) can’t abide by the thought of eating “snails.” The Blue Heron offers them in the shell or “homeless” (we chose the latter), and you can get your half-dozen of them in either a traditional garlicky butter sauce, or two in a curry sauce, two in pesto, and two in the butter-garlic. We chose the latter and greatly enjoyed them and the thin light toasts they were served with.

The bread basket included a nice array of fresh rolls and bread slices, and the green salad is tossed with a variety of ingredients ranging from slivers of carrots to radish slices to bean sprouts and is served family-style in funky retro-modern white plastic bowls. The dressings—three—are brought to the table in small dispensers. All are homemade: French, house poppyseed, and ranch. Croutons (homemade, buttery, with the flavor of real, fresh garlic) were served separately in a small bowl, and toasted pine nuts were available in a shaker (like the kind used at pizza restaurants for parmesan, but cleverly modified for pine nuts with a single, larger hole at the center).




The vegetable of the day was cooked summer squash and onions sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese. For my druthers, it seemed a tad overcooked and oversauced. Since I knew the entrées would be filling, I would have preferred lighter, simpler, “healthier” veggies with a cleaner presentation; something more of a foil for the lavish meat dishes . . . but the squash preparation was certainly delicious.

Entrées

I had studied the menu online before we drove down to the lake, but I still had a hard time deciding what to order. The dishes are mainly classic Western European and American entrées, grouped into categories by meat type. Seafood, beef, poultry, and so on.

Note: As far as I can tell, there is not a single vegetarian entrée—not even the tried-and-true “roasted vegetables in a phyllo shell” that makes good use of last night’s leftover side dish (it simply amazes me that in 2009 they don’t have a vegetarian option).

Here’s a partial list of what we had to choose from.

Seafood: Cape Cod seafood pot pie; baked or champagne lobster tail; 1 lb. Maine chicken lobster; Russian crab leg; shrimp de Jonghe (a casserole of shrimp, garlic, sherry, and bread crumbs).

Meats: aged NY strip; “B&B twin” (filets with Bearnaise and Bordelaise sauces); beef kabob; steak and lobster stack; steak and trout combination; center-cut tournedos; veal schnitzel with foie gras; peppercorn-roasted lamb rack; smoked lamb rack.

Poultry: chicken morel; fried chicken breasts; Cornish game hen; pecan encrusted chicken.

They also offer, as a “post script” to the menu, trotter osso buco, which I was sorely tempted to get, except that for the sake of providing a quality review for you, I ordered one of the Blue Heron’s most famous dishes instead.

So I ordered one of their signature dishes, an entrée that is original to this restaurant: batter-fried lobster tail, served on a bed of shoestring potatoes, with hot butter for dipping. Yes, you read that right: batter-fried lobster tail. And it seems a strange thing to do to such a top-notch piece of seafood. Then again . . . the dish was executed well. The batter was light and crispy, and the huge chunk of meat inside delicate and moist. Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever order it again, because in the grand scheme of things, I think there are better ways to prepare such a fine foodstuff. Plus the crispy shoestring potatoes seemed to be not so much for eating as for keeping the tail from looking lonely on the platter.




Indeed, the dish—as with all the entrées—comes with a choice of potatoes: baked, shoestring, French fried, or Dutch whipped. I had to try the Dutch whipped. In fact, everyone at our table selected this form of potato, since none of us could remember having it before.

Dutch-whipped potatoes are quite a bit like twice-baked potatoes; they are finely whipped potatoes (with, apparently, butter and cream and seasonings), piped into a ramekin and baked until the top gets a nice crisp surface. Very creamy and enjoyable.




Mom ordered the 14-ounce Kansas City strip steak, which was enormous and (of course) comes cooked to your specification. I didn’t hear any complaints from her about it! It certainly looked good.

Dad, as is his wont, ordered the lightest, healthiest-looking item on the menu, the salmon Florentine, which came with asparagus. It was just the ticket for him, and it looked fabulous.

I was sorely tempted to get one of the restaurant’s three Dover sole dishes: the Dover sole Waleska (served with a creamy sauce with bits of chopped lobster), the Dover sole meunière yearling, 14 oz., or the Dover sole 18 oz. Hmmm. Sue ordered the 14-ounce sole meunière, in part because of the story about Julia Child’s Rouen revelation regarding this dish.




But I’m pretty sure that a service mix-up caused her to receive the sole Waleska instead; the plate that Sue received had two lovely pieces of sole with a creamy sauce, small chunks of shellfish, and a rounded mold of white rice, in addition to a beautifully carved lemon garnish. It was not the typical simple preparation of fish dredged in flour and cooked with brown butter, à la meunière. We didn’t ask, though we should have (indeed there is a price difference); at any rate, it was delicious and decadent.

Desserts, Coffee, Cordials

We didn’t have room for dessert, but FYI, here is a small list of items I got from the Blue Heron’s Web site: apple “phyllo bouquet”; chocolate soufflé; creme brulée; cream puffs with chocolate bath . . . you get the idea.

They offer a fabulous selection of after-dinner cordials, spirits, and liqueurs. They encourage you to enjoy desserts and cordials out by the pool, if you wish.




Additionally, they offer some terrific after-dinner coffee preparations: espresso tableside; French presse; and small or large vaculator (that’s a vacuum coffee maker—most of us would view it as a “retro” coffee preparation; I’m dying to try it. The contraption looks like a cross between a swanky manual-drip coffeemaker and a bong).

Also, they offer Kopi Luwak, which I wish I had ordered, and would have, if I had recognized the name: Its other name is “civet coffee”; you might have heard of it. It’s made from coffee berries that have been ingested and excreted by Southeast Asian civets. Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, and many say it’s the most delicious—bright, with no bitterness, with a certain “je ne sais quoi” imparted by the unique “enzyme treatment” the beans receive. So—my goodness!—does the Blue Heron sell the real thing, true Indonesian weasel coffee? I guess we need to go back and find out.

Prices

The prices aren’t listed on their Web site; I guess to do so would be tacky. A place like this isn’t cheap, but remember that in addition to all the carefully prepared foods on your table, you are also paying for the view, the service, and the fact that you are absolutely not rushed here. They don’t have to turn over the tables ASAP at the Blue Heron, so you can linger and talk all you want.

The least-expensive entrée was about thirty dollars, but most are in the range of forty to just under fifty. The breads, salad, and vegetable come with the meal. Appetizers, drinks, coffee, and desserts are extra.

Ambience

They’ve worked hard at creating a romantic, elegant, grown-up restaurant, so this is not the place to bring toddlers and ill-behaved children. In fact, they might not allow little kids in there at all (call them if you need to know). Also, don’t insult the other diners by wearing inappropriate clothing or behaving like a country rube. And overall: This is not where you go to “grab a bite” before dashing off to do something else. If you need your food right away, this restaurant (and much of Europe, for that matter) probably isn’t the place for you.

Instead, bring someone special here for a memorable night. Order some old-school, traditional gourmet foods that you never make at home. Finish with some excellent cognac. Make an evening out of it. This is the idea at the Blue Heron; the restaurant experience is itself the evening’s entertainment.




It may or may not agree with you, but the décor—particularly outdoors—is all blue-themed. It’s rather kitschy because it’s almost too much blue-blue-blue. The spherical outdoor lamps are fitted with blue light bulbs and emit a blue glow. The patio furniture is blue. The wood trim is blue. And so on. I sense that a high-class designer or big-city guru of taste would think it’s too much, but I enjoy the exuberance and the fun of it. I sense a bona fide personal touch, with a bit of a sense of humor about it. Thumbs-up.




A Word about the Owner

There’s more on the Blue Heron’s Web site, but here is a brief recap: Joseph H. Boer came to America from Holland at age twenty after working and studying in Holland and Switzerland; he worked at fine restaurants in Kansas City and Topeka. At age twenty-six, he began his first restaurant at Osage Beach, “The Top Deck.” Two years later he opened “Lefty’s Little Chef’s Steakhouse” on the Bagnell Dam Strip, which is where he developed the batter-fried lobster tail.

He took a sabbatical from running restaurants to study business administration at the University of Missouri, then returned in 1972 to Osage Beach, opening the venerable Potted Steer Restaurant at Grand Glaize, and opening the Blue Heron, at the intersection of Business 54 and Route HH, in 1984. This past year, construction on the Highway 54 expressway forced the closure of the Potted Steer (to the grief of many), so the Blue Heron remains this cordial and enterprising Dutchman’s only restaurant.

He makes a real effort to greet his customers at the door and to approach them toward the end of their meal to make sure everything was satisfactory. He’s a real character, a memorable fellow with lots of stories and a quick wit. If you go there, tell him hi for me. Tell him I’m the one he thought looked “devilish.” (Maybe he saw me trying to take photographs of our dinners and figured I was trouble!)

When They’re Open

I hate to say this, but the Blue Heron is closing for the season on November 21. Additionally, they are only open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, which by my count leaves you with only six more nights this year to head to the lake to enjoy the Blue Heron. They’ll reopen for the new season in April. Check their Web site or call them for the official word on next season’s opening, but for the remainder of this fall, they’re open 5 to 9:30 pm on Thursdays and Fridays, and 5 to 10 on Saturdays.

I do encourage you to take some time out and enjoy a relaxing evening at the Blue Heron.

The Happy Fisherman

It’s a restaurant at the Lake of the Ozarks. No, it’s not haute cuisine, so get down off your high horse and just relax and go with the flow. The colorful cutouts of the cartoon mascot fisherman and his shrimpy and fishy friends stuck to the outside of the restaurant are your first hint that this is a place to have fun. The tablecloths are vinyl, for instance, not fine linen.

But first off, it’s locally owned. Always choose the local establishments over the Rubee Tuesdees and all those sorts of places.

I swear, when you go down to th’ Lake, it used to be you’d find all kinds of nifty local restaurants. Diners and such. Now, Chili’s and Starbucks have moved in. Horrors! If you can’t find Middle America in Middle America, then where the heck is it supposed to be?

I’m ecstatic that the Happy Fisherman is still there, in Osage Beach on the east side of Highway 54, just south of the big outlet mall. You can’t miss it—there’s a huge sign. The place looks like some kind of nautical fishin’ village (or a spoof of one). There are fake giant clam shells along the road, with loony cartoon eyes peering out at you, luring you in.

I fished around a bit on the Internet trying to see what people were saying about the place, and the reviews are kinda mixed. Which I guess is appropriate, since this is not a place that attempts to make every soul in the universe mildly happy (the way a chain restaurant would).

They do make some allowances for “diversity”: If you’re not into fish, can’t handle the bones, or whatever, you will indeed find menu items featuring big-boned terrestrial creatures for you to consume. They’re particularly proud of their steaks. So “The Lake’s Seafood Authority since 1975” does widen its net to include pisciphobes.

. . . Anyway, we went down there last weekend for Sue’s birthday (she wanted fried fish, and I refused to take her out to Cap’n D’s or Big John Silver’s’s’s). It had been a few years since we’d visited the Happy Fisherman, and although they’d changed the menu slightly, we weren’t let down.

First off, unless you order just an appetizer, every dinner automatically comes with a trip to the salad boat. Yeah, you read that right: salad boat. (Ahoy, mateys!) And this is distinctive all in itself.

I think we all have preconceptions about what “should” constitute yer basic salad bar, right? It’s lettuce, plus a bunch of other veggie-type stuff to add to your lettuce salad. Pieces of broccoli, sliced mushrooms, grated carrots, sprouts, garbanzo beans. Am I right? The other types of salads (potato salad, pasta salad, three-bean, etc.) are there at the end, almost as an afterthought. You add a little dab of that to the side of your lettuce salad, where space permits.

Well, it’s different at the Happy Fisherman. Think: potluck. Think: church basements. Think: what would your mom or grandma serve as a salad? Would it necessarily be a lettuce salad with toppings? Nuh-uh. Let us recall our church-ladies cookbooks from the fifties!

Folks, trust me, they had lettuce and stuff in the salad boat, but they had no less than fourteen different other salads and relishes to enjoy. Seriously! Seven along one side, seven on the other, plus one in the middle after the line of dressings.

Let’s see if I can remember them all. I’m not a professional restaurant reviewer, and I don’t have a photographic memory. Here goes: Creamy broccoli salad. Sauerkraut salad with Italian dressing (apparently) (Sue liked it; I thought it was abominable; both opinions are valid). Green pea and cheese cube salad. Carrot and raisin salad—boy, when’s the last time you had that? Bell peppers and onions in another Italian-type dressing. Pickled beets (I suspect homemade). Pickled onion slices colored deep green. (What a trip!) Spiced apples with a nice clove flavor, also deep green. I think there was a Jell-o salad. I think there was a potato salad. There was a pasta salad. And coleslaw (the creamy kind). What else. Three-bean salad! Of course.

Oh yeah. And there was one salad that I had to ask our waiter about. I was stumped, absolutely stumped about what I was eating. It was orange, it was sweet, it was tart, it had thinly sliced carrots to crunch on, and . . . what was the other stuff?

Turns out the cook has fun with a mandoline or other food slicer: In addition to the carrots, this salad had radishes and broccoli stems, all sliced incredibly thinly. And the sauce? French dressing. Yes, and it was actually pretty good. It didn’t look all that great, which is why (the waiter said), the cook calls the dish “Yuck.” I’m not joking. This is exactly what she told me.

I have to hand it to the chef: What a clever way of using the broccoli stems, which would otherwise just go to waste! I suspect it’s a “mom” recipe—a way to get kids (and spouses, for that matter) to swallow veggies.

While we were eating, a family arrived at the salad boat, and I overheard the young son asking his dad, “What is this?” The dad shrugged and said, “I don’t know, son; just take a little on your plate and see if you like it.” Ha! Isn’t that funny? Like I said—think “potluck.”

See, I like this kind of dining experience sometimes. It’s one reason to visit ethnic restaurants, either in America or overseas: You get to try new things. Only in this case, we only had to drive down to th’ Lake.

More on the Happy Fisherman. First, because it was Sue’s birthday, I encouraged her to enjoy the house drink, lovingly named the “Happy Hooker.” (Get it? Get it?) Served in a Mason jar, it’s one of those pinkish fruity concoctions with a cherry in it. Sweet, but not cloyingly so. Probably overpriced, but whatever. Sue seemed to enjoy it okay. I’ve had ’em before, and they remind me of mai tais.

We got an appetizer, and it turned out to be my favorite part of the meal. Fried dill pickles, in a form I’ve never had. Yeah, I’ve had them as spears, and as chunky wedges of whole dill pickles cut at an angle, and both types can be as hot as napalm inside, but this is the first time I’ve had them sliced so thinly, lengthwise. (Like I said, I suspect someone back there in the kitchen loves his or her mandoline or other slicer.) The result was good! More surface area for the breading to stick to. And the dipping sauce was truly spicy (in Missouri, when you get something labeled “spicy” that actually is, it’s always worth commenting on).

I got the “Baitcaster’s Platter,” which is yer basic sampler plate, and Sue got the “Ozark Fish Fry.” The latter seemed a misnomer, since the fish was tilapia, but it was good, and they were generous with two big fillets. The “Baitcaster’s” dish also came with a tilapia fillet, plus a whole fried catfish (don’t get it if you’re bone-phobic), plus a pile of fried clams, some shrimps, and shrimp sauce. Unless a dish is specified on the menu as fried in corn meal, it will have rice flour as the breading, and (indeed, as the menu noted) it creates a lighter, crispier fry. Two thumbs up.

Both meals came with choice of potato, a hushpuppy, and the restaurant’s own tartar sauce. Garnished with a nice piece of kale and a lemon wedge. The baked potatoes were modest in size, which I appreciate. We were gonna be stuffed, anyway. (Some restaurants give you baked potatoes that are as big as shoes, and what’s the use of that? Who can eat it? And if you can eat it, then you probably shouldn’t.)

Okay, the verdict on all the fried stuff is: Good. Yummy. No, it’s probably not the very best fried fish you could ever have, but it all tasted fine to me. The fish wasn’t over- or undercooked (it was certainly done, but it was juicy). It wasn’t greasy. I’m not a fine connoisseur of fried fish, but it all tasted delicious to me. I can’t talk about any of the beef, chicken, or other dishes, but I imagine they’re good enough for the one insane person in each party who won’t touch fish.

The price for the Happy Hooker, my O’Dull’s nonalcoholic brew, the fried pickles, and the two meals (which, as I said, each come with an edifying trip to the salad boat) was about $43.00. We were stuffed; we couldn’t finish it all. And it was all plenty good enough.

Part of the fun of the Happy Fisherman is the decor. I have to mention the decor. The theme is “boats and fishing,” so just about everything in there is decorated appropriately. The “salad boat” fits the decor, of course. Oh, you can imagine—there’s all kinds of fishy, nautical, anglin’, hip-wader-type stuff in there. Right before you get to the cash register at the end, there’s a small fish tank made out of an antique battery jar. One of the ladies working there told me it was once used to power a home. (Batteries used to require water. If you don’t understand that, try looking on Wikipedia.)

But most remarkable among the decorations is the impressive collection of vintage outboard motors attached to the rafters. Our table, for instance, was situated beneath a Johnson Seahorse Model JW10 (“Single cylinder motor built in 1954; develops 3 horsepower”) and an Evinrude Model A (“Single cylinder with Brass Base; manufactured 1914–1916”). The labels were helpful. I’m personally not into boat motors, but I can really dig how cool this is. I also recognize how “boatin’ and fishin’” is a large part of Lake culture, and I noted that other diners were nodding admiringly at the collection.

So here is the bottom line: When you’re at the Lake, go to the Happy Fisherman. Enjoy the local color. Eat some delicious fried fish. And explore some genuine mystery salads from the salad boat. Finally, don’t forget to relax and smile. This is vacationland.