Where food tells a story and farmers are rock stars
The art of upholstering done the ‘Knights’ way
September 8, 2025
SHEBOYGAN FALLS – Strip Steak House – the professional dream of Owner and Executive Chef Scott Cathcart – recently opened, and despite having to overcome a few personnel challenges, he said the new, progressive-American eatery is raising the culinary “steaks” in Sheboygan Falls.
Opening five restaurants across his four decades in the restaurant industry, Le Cordon Bleu-trained Chef Cathcart said this is the first he’s “opened from scratch, just for myself.”
“It’s a dream that’s been a long time in the making – trying to get to this place,” he said. “You finally get to it, though, and it’s a mixed bag.”
In addition to the difficulty he’s had finding and training high-quality restaurant staff – due to the “very small” local talent pool – Cathcart said the Strip Steak House building was an “onion” of problems throughout its renovation between April and July.
“Every layer that you peel back, [there’s] another problem… and no chef starting out is rich,” he said. “We did a couple of soft openings, but I had to jump in because I was starting to run out of money.”
Thankfully, Cathcart said “some good business decisions” put him in a position where he could weather the storm and open Strip Steak House – located at W2873 County Road C – this summer.
“We pushed hard,” he said. “We got open July 7 – probably opened up a couple weeks earlier than we should [have, because we] needed more training for the staff, and we kind of got beat up a little bit on social media for that. But the food has always been on point.”
Overcoming those initial challenges, Cathcart said he and his team have started to work out the restaurant’s operational kinks.
“We’re starting to get that core crew together, so everybody’s in that flow state,” he said. “Everybody’s down for the cause now, wants to learn, wants to be in it and wants the restaurant to grow.”
Sunny San Diego to winter in Wisconsin
Born in San Diego, Cathcart said his first job in a restaurant was prepping lobsters at the age of 14.
“There was a restaurant called The Fish Market, and they had a restaurant [in] one of the towns that I grew up in called Del Mar,” he said. “I started during California lobster season.”
For roughly eight to 10 hours a day, five days a week during lobster season, Cathcart said he would split, clean and steam the cases of lobster delivered to him.
“If you got through that, then you were tough enough to work in the restaurant,” he said. “Everybody was very educated, so you kind of had to come up to that level.”
Progressing through The Fish Market, Cathcart said he learned everything he could – all the while he and his “buddies” talked about opening up a restaurant or having a bar together someday.
“All of us worked in restaurants,” he said. “I did everything under the moon. I’ve been a server, bartender, busboy, dishwasher, food runner, back waiter… [and] I worked at really fine-dining places.”
Cathcart said his time in the fine-dining industry “polished” his restaurant skills, and at age 27, he said he decided to attend culinary school – first in Vermont.
“I started at New England Culinary Institute in Vermont,” he said. “I did the first year of that program.”
Finding Vermont “wasn’t really [his] scene,” Cathcart said he transferred to the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, Le Cordon Bleu – where he graduated in 2001.
Fast forward a decade and change, and Cathcart said he was “starting to get really burnt out” while operating two restaurants in La Jolla, California.
“Most of my weeks were [working] 80-100 hours, [but] that’s what you bite off when you run two restaurants,” he said.
However, Cathcart said the occupational hazard of having an overstretched schedule in the restaurant industry was starting to stifle his culinary creativity.
“I wasn’t being as creative as I should be with new menus – it’s like writer’s block,” he said. “It’s just not coming out the way you want it to come out.”
With enough money saved up to “not work for a year,” Cathcart said he planned a “three-month sabbatical” that quickly “turned into a two-week sabbatical” when his then-fiancée – who’s from Wisconsin – became pregnant with their daughter.
“Jobs, right at that moment – [because] we were in winter – were sparse, so I kind of had to take what I could get,” he said. “So, I started working for a company as the executive chef and the general manager, but it wasn’t really the ideal situation for me.”
Having taken a pay cut at that job, Cathcart said he took on a side gig in catering and prepared for his daughter’s arrival in California until his then-fiancée convinced him to move to Wisconsin in 2013.
“I agreed to come out here,” he said. “We ended up splitting up in about 2016, [but I] decided to stay here and be with my daughter and not go back to San Diego.”
Over the next decade, Cathcart said he worked for and opened restaurants in Appleton, Menomonee Falls, Oshkosh and West Bend before deciding he wanted more opportunity to spend time with his daughter.
“My daughter at the time was about three, so I missed a lot of her first three years, and that was kind of gnawing at me,” he said. “Dockside Deli [in Port Washington] came along from one of my reps [who said], ‘Just hear me out before you say “no.” This deli is opening up… [and] you [complain] a lot about not seeing your daughter, so this is a good opportunity for you.’”
Though he said most chefs would consider opening a deli a step “backward” in their careers, Cathcart said he owned and operated Dockside Deli for the next six and a half years.
“It salvaged my relationship with my daughter – [giving] us a lot more time together – and it ended up being a great business decision as well,” he said. “It was a great thing, because it humbled me a lot…, going back to the basics.”
However, because “there are only so many ways [to] make a sandwich,” Cathcart said he found himself craving more of a challenge.
With his daughter turning 12 at that time, he said they moved to Sheboygan Falls as he searched for his next step.
“I had just moved to Sheboygan Falls in October 2024 and [there] was a restaurant I knew was for sale for the past couple of years,” he said. “I passed by it, and [thought], ‘Nobody’s bought yet,’ and then [I thought], ‘I think it’s time for me to sell Dockside.’ So, I had Dockside for sale for just more than a year, and then I finally found a buyer.”
The buyer’s Small Business Association loan, Cathcart said, took about another year to process.
But, as soon as it did, he said he closed on the future home of Strip Steak House.
“When we finally got the [Dockside] deal closed, that was April 15, [and] I closed on the Strip Steak House building April 25,” he said.
Falling into place
Cathcart said Strip Steak House serves progressive-American-style cuisine – which he said leaves chefs plenty of room to craft their menu based on contemporary interpretations of regionally specific food from around the world.
“I’ve had things on my menus in the past that have [had a] Vietnamese, Thai or Italian influence,” he said. “It’s just an open book for you to basically pull from wherever you want.”
Comparing his menu to that of other steakhouses, but “without the pretentiousness,” Cathcart said he wanted to ensure his menu was both delicious and accessible to the Sheboygan Falls community.
“I don’t want to pigeonhole us and make us into something we don’t want to be,” he said. “I don’t think we’re fine dining, but we are a steak house, and we use very high-end meat.”
Sourcing cuts of Certified Angus Beef from “very small farms in Iowa,” Cathcart said his patrons can always count on their order being consistently high-quality.
“Some of these [meat] brands…, it’s a program a lot of people sell into, and then they package it under a label,” he said. “I’m not saying we’re buying from just one farm, but instead of it being 100 [farms], it’s about five – so you have a much more consistent product.”
Strip Steak House’s menu – available at strip-steak-house.com – features dishes such as steamed mussels, fire-roasted asparagus, white cheddar cheese curds, salads, numerous cuts of steak, pasta dishes, as well as several poultry and seafood entrees.
With his core team starting to fall into place, Cathcart said they’ve also been able to venture off Strip Steak House’s regular menu.
“I’m starting to bring in more high-end stuff – like last week, we ran a domestic Wagyu beef New York Strip steak,” he said. “We’ve started to… break away from the menu, now [that] I feel a little bit safer with the staff. Luckily, I brought some people over from Dockside who have been very helpful and instrumental in getting this place open.”
Compiling a team of coachable and eager employees, Cathcart said, has been key in getting Strip Steak House off the ground.
“As long as people come to me, they want to work, they have a good attitude, they’re willing to learn and they can check their ego at the door, I can train anybody,” he said, “but you have to be able to do those simple things.”
Though his workdays are still long, Cathcart said living less than a mile away from Strip Steak House makes his schedule much more manageable.
“I don’t have to set aside an hour to an hour and a half every day just for drive time,” he said. “If I need to run home to do something, I can; if I forget something, I can go back home; if I’m here early and I want to work for five or six hours, I can go home, take a nap real quick and then come back if I need to. It just gives you so many more luxuries.”
Customer feedback, Cathcart said, has been mixed as he and his staff work to establish their “flow state” – but added that the response to his food has always “been very good.”
“We’ve taken some hits on our service, and I take some responsibility for that myself, [because] we probably should have waited another couple weeks to open,” he said, “but money was getting so tight… and we also were going to miss the summer.”
Despite Strip Steak House’s prior service challenges, Cathcart said the Sheboygan Falls community has continued to welcome the new restaurant with empty bellies.
“The response we’ve gotten from the majority of the people around has been great and supportive, and it’s been awesome,” he said. “When you get into that position [of] everything falling into place – all your hard work falling into place – it’s a very nice feeling.”
For more in Strip Steak House, its menu, specials and job openings, visit its website or find it on Facebook.
