Butler Inn of Pewaukee

Was excited to get a good steak. It has been a few years since I was last here and Iive nearby. Service was poor. Ordered The Louie five star steak medium. It came rare and was fair at best. Seems like this place is going down hill. The other reviews seemed to mirror mine and my family’s experience. Plenty of other places to spend $ 50 on a steak and get a consistent great steak.
Disappointed experience tonight. Not sure I will be back.

This place is an over priced façade of a «Fine Dining» restaurant that is serving nothing better than your local corner family restaurant, spruced up to look fancy.
4 people $ 175 for four entrees and a round of drinks.
I feel like we were duped.

We had 6:00 reservations, got there early to have a drink at the bar. The bar was full so we sat at a bar table. Had to get our own drinks, the bartenders don’t come to the table. We were seated on time. Our server was great! Our food was delicious! I had shrimp and ribs. Shrimp seemed like frozen, something you could get at the grocery store, but was still good. Ribs could have used more sauce but were still great! My sister got steak, she shared a bite with me, so good! Wish I ordered a steak. Very expensive at $ 65 each for dinner drinks a bottle of wine and one dessert. Very good experience and will go back!

Well, I came to this restaurant after reading the 3 Star A-​Ok ratings and guess what? The ratings… they do not lie.
This supper club in Pewaukee had really great steak, a mile high pile of onion strings, and a fairly vast drink menu. Everyone at our table had their food cooked well and everything tasted great. You can tell it’s got the old supper club vibe going on when they still have their Christmas drinks on the menu. For the most part, the staff was pleasant and they take reservations which is helpful because they do get a bit busy.
So, what makes this place just A-​Okay you ask? The ambiance, atmosphere, the building itself. This place has not been updated since it’s opening and it is painfully obvious. The slat wall mirror dining room, hand painted greek fountain statues and the old black vinyl chairs really took us all back to the 80’s which is not where I was planning on this evening. They had a performance duo playing and boy did they belt it out. Dinner conversation was near impossible. The music wasn’t anything calming like Barry Manalow, Michael Buble, or maybe a cover of Frank Sinatra… oh no… we were listening to full on Michael Jackson, Bruno Mars and in between for their breaks they would blast JLo and Beyonce…
Overall, my food told me that I was in an upscale joint, but everything else reminded me that I was in the middle of classy olé’ Wisconsin.

Great food. Slow to be seated. Prices are steep and atmosphere is so so but the filets are good

With all due respect to the negative reviewers, I think people are being pretty harsh here. I’ve dined here about 15 times over the years. I’ve always been pleased with my experience. The food is quite good. Their signature entrée is the Louie’s 5 Star steak. It has a seasoned butter topping which should be melted, but it isn’t always served that way and often arrives as a big glob of butter on the neat. It comes with soup or salad and a simple bread basket. Bread is served warm and salad is fresh. Soups include French onion, which is heavy on onions and lacking in rich broth. Broiled scallops are quite tasty. The seafood platter is okay, a little heavy on the batter. The grasshopper or the brandy Alexander are a must-​have for dessert. Service has always been friendly and professional. The restaurant is clean, a bit dark, but has that supper club ambience. The negative that has been a consistent problem is the noise. The music is REALLY LOUD every time I’ve been there! People are forced to scream to be heard. It’s impossible to hold a conversation so people everywhere are screaming to be heard and that adds to the decibel level. The musicians were pretty good, just painfully loud. Forget sitting in the bar unless you enjoy that kind of thing.

Good fish fry and very good service. We had a large group for a fish fry and did have to wait a long time to be seated but the staff was very apologetic for the wait and gave us two complimentary appetizers to apologies. The staff was fast and on top of all our needs the fish and sides were also very good and the price was not unreasonable. I will be going back.

Price is too high. Food is not always the best. Greeter (front door) is very moody. This place was a great restaurant (many years ago), built a good reputation locally, but they didn’t keep it up.

Amazing, I met with some friends to celebrate our birthday’s. We picked Butler Inn because we’ve enjoyed it before. So we expected great food, what we didn’t expect was great service and not to be rushed as we all laughed and enjoyed the evening. I had the Louise special steak which was amazing and hand blended Grasshopper drink for dessert also amazing. Thanks Butler Inn we’ll be back!

Went back again. BIG mistake. Had reservations for 7:00 and I was 10 minutes early. I waited 40 minutes to be seated. WTF is the purpose of a reservation when you still need to wait. We were seated at 7:40 and the outdoor section had 4 tables open. Why the wait? To see if we would sit in the bar and drink $ 7.00 mixer?. Never again, they have lost a regular customer.

Overpriced for what we got. Ribs were on the special. I ordered a half rack, my husband ordered a full rack-​he got three more bone little pieces than I did. I thought he would have gotten double of what I ordered. Called for a reservation for seven, hostess said 730 or later would work better. No problem. Arrived after 715. Thought we would sit at the bar and have a drink. The place was dead! Asked if we could sit on the patio she said there would a longer wait. Decided to go in the main dining room-​there were only two tables filled there. Ordered hashbrowns with the meal. The waitress brought them and said they were a little extra crispy, (Which was an understatement) she said if we didn’t like them cooked that way we could send them back. !! Don’t think they should’ve been served in the first place. I believe she felt the same way but brought them anyway. Mojitos on special-​each ordered one. Foolishly when we got the bill, they were $ 10.00 each. Not happy with choice we made

Fun supper club. Lively staff and reasonably priced food. I just wish they would updateaged décor… its a sad step back in time to the 1980’s.

Bad service to start. Hostess told us to have a drink at the bar and wait for our table. The décor was out dated before i was born and I’m 35… yikes! The bar area had a terrible cigarette odor.
We were sat 45min after our reservation time. Our waiters seem to only want to sell us the Friday fish fry special and lack knowledge.
I ordered my NY Strip mid-​rare, came out medium and of course my waitress was a real peach about bringing it back. Our waitress had a discussion with another waitress in the distance, both looked over at us, I got a smerk from one and an eyeroll from the other then my plate was brought to the kitchen. Let me tell you that was reassuring.
When my wife finished her meal my steak was brought back out. This time rare… I decided to have it wrapped for breakfast the next morning.
A manager never came over to the table but the wait staff was sure aware of our table. I know this because the dirty looks never stopped.
Although my wife enjoyed her walleye we won’t be back.

The Butler Inn is a very nice restaurant with screened patio seating. Our waitress was very friendly. There is a supper club, older crowd here and the dress was casual.
Our neighbors recommended this place and told us to get the tenderloin steak sandwich (back of the menu). It was phenomenal. The French onion soup was delicious as well.

One of our favorite places for fish fry and steaks. Others on our list is 5O’clock club any of the Weissberger restaurants and Genesee Depot café. Butler Inn is right up there. From haddock to cod to perch and walleye. Crisp and done just right. Comes with cole slaw, choice of potato and soup. I usually substitute a salad for the soup at an additional cost. The potato pancakes I recommend. A good selection of wines and beers. Desserts I recommend key lime pie or grasshopper drink. Service very attentive and sometimes overly attentive as I am not finished and they are ready to take your plate! But over all 5 stars for great wait staff which means well trained. Make a reservation if you can and in the summer months there is seating on an enclosed deck!

I am writing to complain about the awful service that we had New Year’s Eve. Many people had recommended your restaurant for your steak, so our group was excited to try it for New Year’s Eve. While I understand that it was NYE and it was busy, for the prices you charge, customers should be receiving top-​notch service! Especially when we’re hit with a 20% gratuity on our bill.
Our waitress, Peggy, whose name we didn’t know the entire night but only saw on the bill, did not deserve the 20% that she received in any way.
To start the evening, my husband asked what kind of porter beers you had. She couldn’t even tell us… she just said «Black something».
We quickly placed our order and waited quite some time for our meals to be served, which came out tasting like they had been sitting done for quite some time.
When our dishes were served, Peggy was not careful at all with the steak knives that she was carrying along with the plates. My husband had to pull me out of the way as one came near my head. Knives should never be held and given to customers in that manner. She also didn’t even pay attention to who she was serving meals to and gave my husband’s plate to someone else.
Once we received our meals, Peggy didn’t even ask if we needed anything else when my husband’s beer glass was clearly empty.
She came back again and still didn’t take notice of the empty beer glass. My husband finally had to initiate that request.
When Peggy brought the beer, she set down the bottle and began clearing dishes out of the way that were no longer needed including my husband’s beer glass and didn’t even seem to notice that she had left him without a glass. When we asked for another glass, she said «Oh, you want a glass with that?» When he had one with the first beer.
It took Peggy quite awhile to come back to our table to offer dessert and then once the dessert was brought, she immediately gave us the check without asking if anyone wanted anything else.
Our group of six figured out what each of us owed and gave Peggy our payments. It wasn’t until after she had already run credit cards that she told us that she had added the 20% gratuity. It wasn’t even on the bill when she first presented it to us for payment. We obliged in paying this amount, but each and every one of us felt that it was not deserved and was pretty crappy that it was put on the bill after the fact.
Needless to say, our experience was less than stellar for a restaurant that is supposed to have the highest standards in dining as stated on your website. I would never recommend a place like this to anyone for the price you have to pay and the quality of service you receive. There are so many better restaurants to pick from that offer a high quality level of service.

My husband and I, along with a group of friends, went to the Butler Inn for dinner on New Year’s Eve. We had a reservation for our group that was made approximately 2 weeks prior. When we arrived, we were told that there would be a slight wait, that they were waiting for a table to clear. Okay, fine. In the meantime, we encountered a VERY rude hostess when she asked us to move away from the piano/​check in desk area. She could have asked us to move in a much nicer way. She also copped an attitude with one of the cocktail waitresses. After waiting for roughly 35 minutes, our group decided to leave and go to another restaurant that was willing to accommodate us. Butler Inn lost 9 paying customers tonight.

I was a guest of a group party we had at Butler’s on a Friday night to celebrate a birthday. It was nice to see that the wait staff was able to accommodate all of our requests. Just to get it out of the way now, the service was up to par here; however, I think it’s ridiculous that they charge $ 1 per person since we brought our own specialty cake.
The restaurant is perfect for a nice occasion or a romantic date night. The dimly lit room was quite pleasing and added to the loving evening we had in store.
The way the menu worked was for each person to choose a soup, entrée, and side. The two choices I was given were Chicken Dumpling Soup and Clam Chowder. I chose the Chicken Dumpling Soup. The soup had a lot of appealing flavors, but the dumplings were definitely the best part of the soup, being soft and savory.
I chose the Alaskan salmon for my entrée with a side of Crispy Hash Browns. The meal also came with Coleslaw, which was not edible for me due to the intense amount of mayonnaise or whatever the creamy sauce was. The salmon was cooked at medium with such a wonderful aromatic taste. There was nothing special about the hash browns; however, I was able to try some of the potato pancakes and they were delightful! I didn’t want to order hash browns, but there weren’t many side item choices that I was interesting in eating.
I also had some of the fried perch, and although there was no distinctive taste to what fish I was eating because of the fish being so heavily breaded, it was good enough for me to appreciate it.
All in all, A-​OK!

Was there for dinner a couple of weeks ago. Definitely a staple on pewaukee lake, but I was not super impressed. Immediately, when we walked in, I noticed the awesome amount of dust in the one stream of light coming through a small window in the dark bar. Then took about 15 minutes to get a drink at the bar. It wasn’t even crowded.
Food was ok, they give you a ton for the money, but steak was just ok. Had some shrimp that were ok, everything was just ok
Probably won’t go back

This is an excellent place for steak. The food is really great and the service was very good too. It is a place that is a bit outdated décor wise, but is old school in service, quality and value. We have been here recently for a wonderful brunch at Easter, and this month for a great anniversary dinner with guests. We had a fabulous filet mignon with scallops, shrimp appetizer and more. A wonderful experience.