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"A vegetarian menu executed so well, you'll never miss the meat." 
Driving to dinner through the heart of Wisconsin Dells, we pass a whole funhouse of little surprises. There are Storybook Gardens and Serpent Safari, Wisconsin Opry and Robot World. Ripley's Believe It or Not boasts, according to our Dells attraction guidebook, a host of "weird oddities." "What do you think that means?" my friend, Brian, muses. We start constructing a list of possibilities, wondering what would be weirdly odd enough to raise eyebrows in Dairyland's version of Las Vegas, but we don't have time to speculate much. Rounding a corner we see The Cheese Factory Restaurant, our dinner destination, and view the day's weirdest oddity. In fact, anything Ripley's could cook up would be hard-pressed to beat our restaurant for the evening.
That's because nothing along this neon-
lined carnival strip would seem more out of place than a bona fide, stir-fry-and-
tofu-happy, all-veggie-all-the time, alcohol-free, semi-organic restaurant.
Forget robots, candy corn and the surf-and-turf palaces. Drawn to a touch of soothing, green-friendly flower power that can seem as tranquil as a '60s flashback, the mob at The Cheese Factory opts for a different kind of Dells. Even The Cheese Factory, though, gives into some subtle gimmicks. Part of what draws the crowds is the place's festive look. The restaurant's good bones help: Housed in a wood-and-brick building that once was a cheese factory, the place blends the look of a '50s ice cream parlor with the homespun feel of a country diner. There are knotty pine walls and black-and-white tiled floors. Ceiling fans circle slowly over the white linen-topped tables, a mammoth jukebox and a fully outfitted soda fountain staffed by a waiter decked out in a peppermint-striped shirt and red bow tie.
"We want the
restaurant to radiate
manager Darla Coleman tells me. Coleman and her colleagues may be the other key to The Cheese Factory's success. Radiating an almost palpable sense of joy themselves, everyone here believes in service with a smile; our endlessly cheerful waiter doesn't lose his happy grin for a moment, even when the man at the table behind us asks why he can't find any steaks on the menu. "I like mine rare," he needlessly confides.
The key to all this tranquil good cheer lies in The Cheese Factory's final big surprise.
While the restaurant may look like the last of the mom-and-pop diners, the moms and pops here consist of the 300 plus students and teachers of "A Course in Miracles" at Endeavor Academy. "We come from all over the world, from Holland, Germany, Australia and everywhere in the States," Coleman says. What draws them to the academy in Lake Delton, the Dells' twin city, is a non-denominational version of Christianity that stresses love, forgiveness and individual spirituality, and never dishes up any kind of preaching with the food. |
"The restaurant is really an extension of our lessons in joy and everyone chooses the kind of work they do," Coleman says. "Some people work in the herb and spice garden that supplies the restaurant, some people wait tables and some people cook."
While the voluntary system may sound haphazard, the payoff is obvious; as it turns out, the team of Cheese Factory chefs is mostly seasoned culinary veterans. The result is probably the best explanation for the diner's success:
The kitchen's international range of vegetarian dishes is consistently memorable and surprisingly complex. Our appetizer selections alone hint at the restaurant's finesse and immediately suggest the sheer variety of vegetarian cuisine. A mound of hummus topped with paprika comes surrounded by pillowy triangles of pita bread. A bruschetta special offers melted cheddar and Monterey jack cheeses and crunchy chunks of charbroiled carrots, eggplant, apples and zucchini laid over fresh French bread. Seasoned tofu is robed in a peanut curry sauce and a creamy satisfying clam-free clam chowder suggests the kitchen's ability to find meat and fish substitutes that taste remarkably like the real thing. This skillful culinary camouflage reaches a climax with our global round of entrees. Perhaps most surprising is a big plate of perfectly al dente linguini topped by a subtle Sicilian tomato sauce and chunks of vegetable protein that have the dense peppery flavor and texture of the best Italian sausage.
A Thai stir-fry puts generic
This one tosses fresh broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, baby
corn and spinach in a lightly spicy peanut coconut curry sauce that manages to be rich but
never overstated. A mushroom potato stroganoff roused by a burgundy sour-cream sauce lays
portabella, shiitake and button mushrooms over a tangle of egg noodles; and spanikopita
offers spinach, feta cheese, eggs and onions stacked between flaky layers of phyllo
pastry. Even the more familiar dishes reveal a purist's attention to detail. A big square
of lasagna comes piled high with spinach and mushrooms and mozzarella, Romano and ricotta
cheeses, adding an Italian accent to the pan-national buffet; and a flour tortilla stuffed
with locally grown black beans, rice, green peppers and Monterey Jack cheese offers a
Latin flourish.
All these recipes have become so popular that The Cheese Factory chefs recently published a cookbook, titled Vegetarian International Cuisine,
but the real sign of the kitchen's success is more immediate. As we leave, the carnivore at the table behind us who was hoping for his rare steak is happily tucking into a stir-fry platter.
When he looks up from the plate, he has the rapturous look of someone tasting the best sirloin substitute of his life.
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