Draft pick a sign of success for Port restaurant

Anders Dowd and Ashley Heun have spent their last year as owners of  Moonlight Tavern returning the former Port Hotel restaurant to its roots as a Wisconsin supper club.

This month, they and their head chefs are headed to Green Bay to represent the restaurant at the NFL’s Taste of the Draft event showcasing 20 of the states’ supper clubs.

Dowd said being selected for the event,  which takes place a day before the draft that is expected to have hundreds of thousands in attendance, signals Moonlight’s acceptance into the uniquely Wisconsin restaurant tradition.

“We are certainly the youngest of the bunch,” he said, noting that when they took over at Moonlight, the restaurant that had been open for two years was considered fine dining or at most supper club-themed.

But, Dowd said, he and his wife have tried to imbue the restaurant with the intangible things that make up a supper club beyond a menu focused on old fashioneds and prime ribs.

Moonlight, like all good supper clubs, has become a “community meeting place,” he said.

People have told them they’ve become the “Cheers” of Port Washington, Dowd said, where everyone knows everyone.

“It’s not a place to come and sit at the bar and not talk to anyone,” he said.

Heun said they’ve been surprised at the community Moonlight has built over the course of the year.

“It’s a club — not an exclusive club — but a club,” she said.

Heun said they applied for the draft event after she saw a social media post about it.

“I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true, but we applied and they reached out to us,” she said.

It’s that attitude, of being open to opportunities as they come that has propelled Moonlight, Heun said.

“Not in an irresponsible way, but in a ‘Let’s just jump in and do it’ way,” she said.

Moonlight was selected for its Parmesan crusted salmon, which will be featured at the event.

Dowd said the dish was created by head chefs Mate Gal and Paul Livingston, who started in August, and added that he is proud they will be recognized for it.

“They are in the back cooking all day so it’s good to give them a spotlight,” he said.

The exclusive event will benefit GENYOUth, a nonprofit organization aimed at improving student access to healthy meals and will be attended by the movers and shakers of the draft, Dowd said, adding most are similar to Moonlight’s target clientele of business travelers and tourists.

The Port Hotel offers comfortable amenities for long-term stays, while its location means travelers are close to Milwaukee yet away from the city and Moonlight is an ideal place to get a whiskey and steak, Dowd said.

Dowd said he is excited to promote both Moonlight and Port Washington to those attending the draft.

“I’ve worked in Cedarburg, downtown West Bend and Milwaukee,” he said. “All of those areas are busy but Port Washington has the best shops, restaurants, businesses.”

Moonlight has a Saturday brunch and is open every day except Sunday for dinner and lunch.

A lunch menu is something the couple added after they took over the restaurant, Heun said, filling a gap in lunch options in Port.

“To sustain yourself and survive you have to open up more hours,” she said.

Dowd said the biggest challenge has been dealing with inflation, with some ingredient prices jumping 40% in the span of a week.

“You can’t up your menu prices weekly,” he said.

Dowd said he’s proud of Moonlight’s whiskey selection, noting his goal was to make it “that place” for whiskey in Port.

He set the goal of having 150 whiskey options, Dowd said, and now has more than 220.

“I’m running out of space,” he said.

The Port Hotel was built in 1902 as the Thill Hotel and later became the Mayer Hotel. The restaurant closed in 2017, although it was home to Ashley’s Bar-B-Que for a short time, and the inn followed a short time later.

The building was renovated and both the inn and restaurant were opened in 2022 by Angel Tello, owner of Tello’s Grille and Cafe in Port, and architect Jim Read.

Moonlight is named after an 1856 tall ship of the same name that visited Port Washington.

The renovation brought luxury amenities to the building’s 10 rooms and rejuvenated the restaurant space.

A room formerly known as the jury room after its role as a space for sequestered juries serving in the Ozaukee County courthouse was converted into a garden room that opens to a patio.

Another room is called the “library room” for its wallpaper depicting shelves of books and the fireplace, while the dining room adjacent to the bar features a converted Sheboygan Falls-built Richardson boat light fixture.