There is a place in Chicago’s northern playground that beats your typical resort bar. In fact, there is nothing typical about this bar down to the license plate covered interior featuring a favorite vanity plate: NOT OJ.
Foley’s in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is good enough of a place that it can survive year round, not just when the vacation crowd comes into town to jam up traffic and clog the lake. This is a bar that measures up in any locale.
The outside is nothing special. Plenty of parking and bright beer neons in the windows make the place more inviting.
Inside, an outstanding juke box chock full of Rock and Roll is supported by an excellent sound system. Televisions surround the rectangular bar and a big screen in the side room shows the day’s sports. A four quarter-a-play pool table is in the center of the side room.
A grill behind the bar makes bar munchies, burgers and other sandwiches including a salmon sandwich for under six bucks. The owner Mike Foley is bound to greet you at the door, and when provoked will play Red Peters luwd standard “Bl*w Me.” No one seems to mind.
Daytime could be filled with the chopper crowd. Nighttime is younger and more collegiate, although the joke is that Foley’s is frequented more by students of Whitewater than by U of W Madison. I think I get it.
Watch out for the cops: this place beckons for a designated driver (as I was on my last visit) or extreme moderation. As with most resort town cops, Lake Geneva’s finest look for speeders by day and weavers by night.
It is refreshing when in a summer resort town to find a place that locals embrace and where visitors are welcome. On Highway 50 but off the beaten path of ice cream shops and breakfast places – does everyone have a big breakfast when on vacation? – one could miss Foley’s if hell bent on seeing the lake. You’ll find no nautical references here; in fact Foley’s may be the only place that thrives in Lake Geneva that is about a mile from the lake’s view. But dive on in, the temperature at Foley’s is fine. D.M.