Fishermen's Inn
For several weeks I've been thinking about going to an open house at a local restaurant/banquet hall. Fishermen's Inn has been well-known in the area for longer than we've been here, but it closed a few years back and sat unused for a while. I was excited to hear that a family member of the prior owner was opening it back up, so when I heard they were holding an all-day open house, well, what the heck.
The only time I recalled going inside was for my parents' anniversary sometime when I was in college. Their 19th? Possibly 20th? Not sure which, but we went to the restaurant and I recall ordering a ground beef steak with onion rings, because I really wanted the onion rings. Turned out it was a hamburger without the patty and the onion rings were these little slivers curled on top, not thick battered and fried bracelets like I'd expected. Oh well. Somehow I think maybe we drove downtown intending to go to the top floor of the Sears Tower that same night, but I could be mistaken. Anyway. So that was my only experience there, though I've driven past it a number of times, and I figured the grounds would be lovely, so I really wanted to go.
Mom ended up being game and we went this afternoon. It ended up being cloudy, but that was fine because neither of us was hot, and I find colors pop better when it's not super bright out. The open house seemed decently attended--the one parking lot was fairly full, but the adjacent lots on the other side of the building weren't entirely, which was nice.
The place has a lot of acreage, including multiple ponds, roughly ten. Dad said after we got home that the Inn, in its restaurant days, was known for growing its own trout. Now it's strictly banquets, and I don't know about the fish, but the ponds remain. A number of them are just there with no special parts to them, but one had a small bridge leading to a smaller island with a lookout, and another had a peninsula with a lighthouse, and another was next to a windmill. One had a large frog poking its head out from the water along the edge, and hilariously the frog was still there the second time we went by, which had to have been a good 45 minutes later. There was a brick pathway around part of the place, which took us past a small water wheel, around a few of the ponds, and ending at a small altar area where chairs were set up to simulate an outdoor wedding.
After a little while we went inside, where we saw the first banquet area on the lower level. That place was really nice--set up with seating for a ceremony toward the front part of the room, overlooking the nearest pond, and then tables for eating toward the back and the doorway. That room was so nice that mom went, that's it, you're getting married here. Upstairs there were two more rooms, which were also nice but were darker. The one room was directly above the one on the lower level and had an outdoor deck off of it, which was nice. The second room, to the other side, had multiple levels, like you could have eating on the lower sides and then dancing up in the middle, something like that. That would probably be better for a get-together aside from a wedding, like a reunion or something, but the room was still nice. I think that had been the former restaurant seating area. The other interesting thing was that I passed by someone who wondered about the second level; his companion told him, you're *on* the second level. I wondered why they said that until we wandered some more and found a door, from that level, leading to the outside. That had been the main doorway before, I believe, as directly outside was a driveway where you could drop people off and it was on the same level. The driveway then led to the parking lots on either side.
We were there for a good hour, I'd say, and ended up walking the space twice. It was really nice and I'm glad I went, because I don't know that we really walked the grounds the last time we were there, though dad said we did. The funniest part is that the Inn is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and as mom and I walked through the farther parking lot I went, do I hear chickens? Is that a rooster? Sure enough, the house across the street must have had them, and the rooster crowed constantly. It was pretty funny and a reminder that we weren't in the city any longer.
The only time I recalled going inside was for my parents' anniversary sometime when I was in college. Their 19th? Possibly 20th? Not sure which, but we went to the restaurant and I recall ordering a ground beef steak with onion rings, because I really wanted the onion rings. Turned out it was a hamburger without the patty and the onion rings were these little slivers curled on top, not thick battered and fried bracelets like I'd expected. Oh well. Somehow I think maybe we drove downtown intending to go to the top floor of the Sears Tower that same night, but I could be mistaken. Anyway. So that was my only experience there, though I've driven past it a number of times, and I figured the grounds would be lovely, so I really wanted to go.
Mom ended up being game and we went this afternoon. It ended up being cloudy, but that was fine because neither of us was hot, and I find colors pop better when it's not super bright out. The open house seemed decently attended--the one parking lot was fairly full, but the adjacent lots on the other side of the building weren't entirely, which was nice.
The place has a lot of acreage, including multiple ponds, roughly ten. Dad said after we got home that the Inn, in its restaurant days, was known for growing its own trout. Now it's strictly banquets, and I don't know about the fish, but the ponds remain. A number of them are just there with no special parts to them, but one had a small bridge leading to a smaller island with a lookout, and another had a peninsula with a lighthouse, and another was next to a windmill. One had a large frog poking its head out from the water along the edge, and hilariously the frog was still there the second time we went by, which had to have been a good 45 minutes later. There was a brick pathway around part of the place, which took us past a small water wheel, around a few of the ponds, and ending at a small altar area where chairs were set up to simulate an outdoor wedding.
After a little while we went inside, where we saw the first banquet area on the lower level. That place was really nice--set up with seating for a ceremony toward the front part of the room, overlooking the nearest pond, and then tables for eating toward the back and the doorway. That room was so nice that mom went, that's it, you're getting married here. Upstairs there were two more rooms, which were also nice but were darker. The one room was directly above the one on the lower level and had an outdoor deck off of it, which was nice. The second room, to the other side, had multiple levels, like you could have eating on the lower sides and then dancing up in the middle, something like that. That would probably be better for a get-together aside from a wedding, like a reunion or something, but the room was still nice. I think that had been the former restaurant seating area. The other interesting thing was that I passed by someone who wondered about the second level; his companion told him, you're *on* the second level. I wondered why they said that until we wandered some more and found a door, from that level, leading to the outside. That had been the main doorway before, I believe, as directly outside was a driveway where you could drop people off and it was on the same level. The driveway then led to the parking lots on either side.
We were there for a good hour, I'd say, and ended up walking the space twice. It was really nice and I'm glad I went, because I don't know that we really walked the grounds the last time we were there, though dad said we did. The funniest part is that the Inn is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and as mom and I walked through the farther parking lot I went, do I hear chickens? Is that a rooster? Sure enough, the house across the street must have had them, and the rooster crowed constantly. It was pretty funny and a reminder that we weren't in the city any longer.