The Craftsman: A culinary tribute to trades workers

Matthew Day

Staff

October 13, 2025

EAGLE RIVER – For the past five years, two brothers have brought “Justice” to Eagle River’s restaurant options.

When opening The Craftsman American Tavern at 118 South Main St. in 2020, Matthew Justice said he and his brother, Brian, set out to elevate the local dining scene by offering “delectable fare” (per the building’s signage) and craft drinks worthy of any foodie, without leaving town.

“You can come with high expectations if you appreciate quality, and if you enjoy good craft beer, good craft cocktails [and] you want your meal to be not just a meal, but an experience,” he said. “If you want to spend time here – if it’s not just in-and-out, but you want to experience the restaurant – this is a great place to do that.” 

Crafting the menu 

Offering options for lunch and dinner, The Craftsman’s food menu (available at thecraftsmanamericantavern.com) features appetizers such as maple-candied pork belly bites; entrees like organic ribeye; Friday fish fry with haddock or shrimp; and an array of gourmet smashburgers, sandwiches, tacos, flatbreads and salads. 

One of those smashburgers – The Craftsman 2.0 – Justice said, is a top-seller, which he credits to the high-quality, local beef the restaurant sources. 

“All our beef is organic, grass-fed and Wisconsin[-raised] beef,” he said. “Wisconsin, being a dairy state, we have access… to some really small, organic farmers and ranchers who have phenomenal beef… We can get that beef directly, and honestly, that is the burger, right? Everything else in the accouterment.” 

Justice said The Craftsman also takes extra steps to accommodate a range of health and dietary needs – including the use of separate fryers with minimally processed oils, some of which are gluten-free and vegan.

In doing so, he said the restaurant has “positioned [itself] to be the health-conscious” local option for food. 

For libations, Justice said The Craftsman’s bar serves a plethora of beers and cocktails of a suitably “craft” nature. 

“By far, our most famous cocktail – and we like to say it’s the most famous cocktail in northern Wisconsin – is our Wild Blue Mule,” he said. 

Justice said the drink is easy on both the eyes and the palate, featuring wild blueberries so common to the region. 

Born and raised in Eagle River, he said Incorporating “quintessential Northwoods ingredients is a must” – even as The Craftsman brings in food and drink recipes otherwise uncommon to the area. 

“I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for school, [and there’s a] big craft beer scene there – big craft cocktail scene,” he said. “I wanted to bring that up north a little bit.” 

Crafting the building 

Justice said he bought the downtown Eagle River property in 2015 – which, per The Craftsman’s website, dates back to the 1950s, largely serving as a tavern and/or liquor store. 

When he bought the foreclosed building, Justice said he saw a potential “passion project – a way for my brother and I to do something together, to build a business together, to work together.” 

“We had worked together ever since we were 15 and 16,” he said. “My brother started a [construction] business when he was very young, and I worked for him, so it was an opportunity for us to work together again. We have a very close relationship.” 

Justice said it also gave them a chance to follow in their parents’ and grandparents’ footsteps and become third-generation downtown Eagle River business owners, while working to revive their then-languishing hometown. 

“Back in 2015, [the downtown] looked a lot different than it does now,” he said. “There were quite a few businesses that were going under.”

Justice said his original vision for the establishment was “a much smaller-scale” pub, where the “restaurant was more a complement, but not necessarily a focus.” 

Justice – who, at the time, was the sole owner of the business-to-be – said he hired Brian to remodel the building, which would provide an opportunity for the brothers to again work side by side. 

“As we got into the building process, we got more and more excited…,” he said. “We got halfway through it, and we realized we could really do this differently – [that] we could make this a real downtown Eagle River landmark.” 

As their vision grew, so did costs, to where Justice said it made the most sense to bring Brian on as a full partner on the still-nameless business. 

Justice said the work progressed as best as it could, given his full-time career in the Army National Guard and Brian’s obligations to his family, construction company and ongoing college education. 

Because the work unfolded over several years, he said they had the luxury of allowing The Craftsman name/brand to take shape organically. 

“One of the advantages of taking our time and doing all the work ourselves, is that we didn’t have to commit to a vision,” he said. “We could let the building grow and influence what the menu, cocktails and offerings were going to look like – and we’re really happy we did that.” 

With both brothers having spent considerable time in trades work, and spending any available time immersed in the restaurant remodel, Justice said it was only natural they decided upon “a tradesman-themed restaurant, dedicated to the hard-working people of northern Wisconsin.” 

With the name further nodding to the establishment’s craft menu items, he said the full name – The Craftsman American Tavern – further embodies the intended ambiance. 

“It’s called a tavern, so we want it to feel very brooding and masculine and warm – lots of wood and warmth and natural decorations and things like that,” he said. “We wanted to feel Northwoods, but not tacky or gauche… We wanted to provide a different, uniquely modern but Northwoods atmosphere.” 

The wood wall 

Justice said The Craftsman’s most prominent feature is its “wood wall.” 

At 13 feet tall and 25-30 feet wide, he said he and Brian constructed the wall to resemble stacked/corded firewood and “give the impression of campfires.” 

“We took a log – these logs were 24-30 inches in diameter – and then we cut slices about two-and-a-half-to-three inches thick across the length of the log,” he said. “We dried them out in Brian’s garage, and then we chopped them up to make them look like the ends of corded firewood. Then we individually mounted every single one of those pieces onto a wall.” 

After sanding, covering nail holes and sealing the raw wood, Justice said the result was “incredible.” 

“[It was an] incredibly labor-intensive project, but we knew that was going to be the main visual focus of the restaurant – the impression people left with when they came into and left our restaurant,” he said. 

‘A very hard needle to thread’ 

Though they didn’t have a hard deadline for finishing the remodel, Justice said after years of dedicating “every night, weekend and spare moment” working on The Craftsman, the push to finish came from a shared desire to “get back to a normal life.” 

In total, Justice said the work lasted five years, with the restaurant/tavern holding its soft opening in March 2020, scheduled several days before a grand opening. 

“Summer is ‘showtime’ in the Northwoods, so we wanted to make sure we had a few months prior to summer to work out the kinks,” he said. 

Unfortunately, Justice said, these ideal plans coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We opened on a Thursday, and then we got shut down by the state on the day before our grand opening,” he said. “You couldn’t have picked worse timing.” 

Fortunately, since The Craftsman was able to open in earnest, Justice said Eagle River, Vilas County and the region’s many tourists have embraced the establishment. 

He’s all the more grateful for its sustained success, he said, because presenting “a more refined atmosphere… in an approachable, Northwoods setting [represented] a very hard needle to thread.”  

Justice said he and Brian had solicited positive feedback from the community ahead of opening, but they were still aware that their food, drink options or prices were not necessarily common to the area. 

“We weren’t fully confident at any point in time, but we trusted our vision, and we knew that it doesn’t matter where you are – northern Wisconsin or Madison – people appreciate good food, good cocktails and good craft beer,” he said.  

Today, Justice said The Craftsman draws a diverse range of clientele, from locals to tourists. 

Eagle River’s official population may be less than 2,000, but he said this doesn’t take into account, for example, the tens of thousands of visitors who come for the city’s annual Fourth of July parade. 

“It’s unbelievable how many people descend on Eagle River in the summer months,” he said, “and that’s what really keeps us afloat.” 

‘A job well done’ 

After five years of work on the building, and five years of operation, Justice said customer feedback has largely lived up to The Craftsman’s slogan: “A Job Well Done.” 

Much of the credit, he said, goes to its staff, who ideally work all year, not just seasonally. 

“The only way you can get really great staff is to employ them year-round,” he said, noting that in a community like Eagle River, all businesses are competing for talented service workers for the summer. 

The day-to-day operations and leadership responsibilities of The Craftsman are overseen by Danny Goodrich, who Justice said is “the best general manager in the area.” 

The Craftsman’s talented team, he said, is key to earning customers, who have no shortage of regional dining and entertainment options. 

“We know we’re not just competing with other restaurants – we’re competing with how people want to spend their time, whether on the lake or behind a grill or in their condo – all these beautiful places where they could spend their very limited vacation time,” he said. “[By] providing them a good, fun, aesthetic location to have a meal and have a family gathering, it’s not been hard at all to find our footing.” 

Beyond his and Brian’s initial work, Justice said a number of other features have helped maximize customers’ experience at The Craftsman – including a glass-ceilinged outdoor patio “that basically doubles our capacity in the summer.” 

“It’s so funny, because we spent so much time on the inside, [the patio] was kind of an afterthought – then we’ve realized in the summer, everybody wants to be outside,” he laughed.  

The covered patio, Justice said, as well as its free-to-play indoor games – including a 22-foot shuffleboard table, furniture-grade pool table and a ping-pong table – and many large, 10-plus-seat dining tables help accommodate what he said makes for the biggest rush at The Craftsman: rain. 

“Downtown Eagle River explodes when it’s rainy, because everybody comes off the lakes – they want to come downtown,” he said. 

This heartening trend, Justice said, signifies the revitalization of the downtown area he and Brian sought for their generation. 

“We might be in a new period of downtown Eagle River unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” he said. 

Not only are all the storefronts full, but Justice said there’s a new energy thanks to other younger business owners. 

The Craftsman, he said, will continue to do its part to elevate Eagle River by improving its processes, tweaking its menu and, overall, honing its craft(s). 

“We’re not a company that’s hyper-focused on our reviews,” he said. “We care more [for in-person customers to] give us the feedback. We want it, [and] we know we have the talent in place to make changes and to keep doing better things.”