Walrus Room updates supper club fare in Geneva

GENEVA – The Walrus Room, at 415 W. State St., Geneva, opened in June as "a modern take on the classic Midwest supper club."

The Walrus Room opens at 4 p.m. and offers traditional Wisconsin supper club fare such as a Friday night fish fry and Saturday night prime rib, said owner Marshall McCarty, who also lives in Geneva.

“I was the executive chef of Nobel House,” McCarty said at a Geneva Committee of the Whole meeting where his liquor license was approved. “More recently, we had an opportunity to get out on our own. It was kind of our lifelong dream to have our own restaurant.”

Before his time as executive chef at Nobel House, McCarty said he worked in the food business for 16 years.

“This is the culmination of hard work and paying close attention to great mentors,” McCarty said.

Though the Walrus Room is an homage to supper club staples, it is also a contemporary restaurant with Midwestern product, he said.

“We search the farms all around the Midwest, mostly here in Illinois, but also in Iowa and Minnesota, Michigan and Indiana,” McCarty said. “As far as a contemporary restaurant goes, to me that means you are sourcing things ad nearby as possible for the best ingredients possible. … It is a supper club of sorts.”

The restaurant also offers a cocktail list that is “what I would call the best cocktail list in town,” McCarty said.

As to the name, The Walrus Room, McCarty said it happened by accident with the aid of his 3-year-old daughter’s penchant for watching “Alice in Wonderland.”

“We went round and round and round trying to figure out what the best way was to put it in perspective,” McCarty said. “It needed to be memorable. The spot is a little off of State Street.”

The Walrus and the Carpenter coax oysters out of the sea to eat them.

“Walrus was food-related enough,” McCarty said.

The Walrus Room is open five days a week, from 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and closed Sunday and Monday.

This past Friday was the first time the restaurant offered live music starting at 9 p.m., McCarty said.

More information is available by calling 630-881-7557 or by visiting thewalrusgeneva.com.