Introducing TAKE OUT, the result of when we call in an order of mischief and meals with restaurant owners, chefs and mixologists.
Peter Kuenzi walks into Town Council Kitchen & Bar (TCKB) holding a small bowl of ground cherries from the garden alongside his restaurant – Zuppas Market, Café and Catering. He drapes his chef coat over a chair as TCKB executive chef Jon Horan rounds the corner of the bar. Despite both owning restaurants in Neenah, they have a groovy kind of kinship. They sit down to have a cocktail crafted by Sean Hathaway Casey, TCKB’s bartender and front of house manager, and begin to weigh in on the rise of Neenah’s downtown and what motivates them to get up every morning. Kuenzi opened Zuppas 17 years before TCKB came on the scene (this past March), but the two have remained close since first meeting in 2008 when Horan started working as a cook at Zuppas. R+B gets them back on the line together to prepare some of TCKB’s specialties after a brief rendezvous at Copperstill Bourbon Bar, owned by Neenah brothers Tom and Tony Kuhr who have a combined 40-plus years of bar management and food service under their belts. Diners enjoyed the randomness that was Horan and Kuenzi cooking side-by-side and the cameras pacing between the ends of the bar; after all, the restaurant is rather cozy with only 45 seats. In the end, it was the TCKB meal, spirits and company that brought it all home.
CREDITS
Text: Alison Mayer
Photo: John Adams
