Prime rib + ambience = a Northwoods supper club experience

Rich Palzewic

Staff

November 10, 2025

MINOCQUA – Each fall, brothers John and Tom Teichmiller – owners of Norwood Pines Supper Club in Minocqua – take about six weeks to recharge and prepare for the busy winter season.

“If you’ve ever been to Minocqua during the summer, it’s pretty crazy,” John, 59, laughed. “Our staff also needs to recharge their batteries. We give the supper club a deep cleaning, where we basically take everything out of the entire restaurant, clean and put things back.”

Tom, 53, said the longtime supper club – which is set to welcome diners again Dec. 2 – also sits on a big piece of property that needs tending.

“It’s not only about what’s inside, but the outside property also needs attention,” he said. “It’s a good time to go through everything. We’ve probably done [a fall break] for the last 20 years or so.”

The brothers, who have owned Norwood Pines for the last 30 years, said the Minocqua staple delivers the relaxed elegance of one of northern Wisconsin’s oldest and finest supper clubs.

Nestled among stately red pines, the sibling restaurateurs said visitors can enjoy scenic views of Patricia Lake and often spot whitetail deer that frequently stop by for a little dinner of their own.

“I think it’s the whole experience,” John said. “People come pulling up our long driveway off the highway, you’re going through a red pine forest and you get down to the end of the driveway and see the building. It’s the whole setting and overlooking the yard and lake – it has that warm Northwoods feel to it.”

Supper classics

Upgrades over the years, Tom said, have added a variety of new features to Norwood Pines, including an outdoor fire pit and patio.

“The outside area with the fire pit we did during the COVID-19 shutdown,” he said. “Also, during the summer months, we do music outside on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and a handful of Saturdays. The music is always a really big draw and pulls in a ton of people.”

John said the kitchen has also seen plenty of updates over the years.

“In the kitchen, we’ve removed walls and made it bigger and made it more user-friendly,” he said. “Many years ago, we made our outdoor patio/deck into a three-season room. Every year, there seems to be some kind of project we’re reinvesting in for what we’ve created.”

Despite all these upgrades, Tom said the priority has always been on “preserving what was already here.”

That commitment to the property’s character, he said, is part of what makes it such a sought-after location for weddings, which Norwood Pines hosts throughout the year.

“It varies year to year on how many weddings we’ll do,” he said. “We do a lot of really small weddings and then [larger] weddings [that] we close down for – probably three or four of those a year.”

Tom said he estimates that Norwood Pines Supper Club hosts about a dozen smaller weddings – 40 to 50 guests – per year.

“Those couples really just want the dining experience and a place to do a ceremony,” he said. “They don’t really need to dance, so we don’t need to shut down the entire restaurant.”

One of Norwood Pines’ most recent changes, John said, is its online reservation system.

“We now accept reservations online for groups of nine or fewer,” he said. “You can still make reservations for groups above nine, but we [have] people call in for those.”

Tom said the new reservation change has been well received.

“It’s been slick,” he said. “I was talking about it to one of our staff members recently, and we discussed how it’s been taking away from the phone calls we receive. The phone still rings a ton, but on any given night, we probably see 75% of the reservations are ones people made online.”

John said that has allowed his staff to dedicate more time to other important tasks

“In all honesty, we can be on the phone with somebody trying to make a reservation, and somebody online is stealing the table as we’re trying to get things set up for the other person,” he laughed.

A storied history

Tom said the building currently housing Norwood Pines – which dates back to 1937 – “kind of fell into our laps.”

“The property was foreclosed on in 1994,” he said. “We looked into buying it early in 1995 and ended up purchasing it in April of that year from the bank.”

Though the building was in “great condition,” John said they had to rebuild the business to some extent, as it had declined under the previous owners.

“The building/property has had like 25 owners during its time,” he said. “With us owning it for 30 years, that’s the longest period of time anyone has owned it. There was a previous owner who had it for probably at least 10 years, but there have been a lot of ‘three-years-and-out’ owners.”

Tom said the property was originally about 200 acres and once had hotel cabins on the grounds.

“Throughout the years, little pieces got sold off, but we still have 20 acres and property on the lake,” he said. “There are no cabins, and it’s not a hotel anymore – just a supper club.  It’s been a supper club since the 1950s. There seems to have been a lot of misfortune over the years until 1995, when we bought it.”

And despite having run the supper club for more than 30 years, the brothers said “it hasn’t been easy.”

“It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of hours,” John said. “We’ve had great staff throughout the years who have allowed us to have great consistency and a really loyal customer base.”

With several years remaining in their working careers, the brothers said as of now, there are no plans to stop doing what they love doing.

“We’ll probably work until our legs quit working,” Tom laughed.

When it reopens in early December, Norwood Pines will be open from 5-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

To view Norwood Pines’ menu or make an online reservation, visit norwoodpines.com.