Today's Review: Ranchero not worth the trip this time

The Ranchero Supper Club is an institution in Webster, MN; by which I mean that it's been there forever. Webster is a very small town on the border between Rice and Scott counties, southwest of the Twin Cities. There isn't much in Webster except the Ranchero. I'd guess you could easily fit half the population of Webster into the Ranchero. People come, as they say, from miles around.

We've been there a few times and enjoyed it. Tried it again last Friday evening. The place celebrates its German heritage* by serving German beers and a few German dishes like schnitzel and kraut. The dining room is decorated with elaborate Bavarian steins.

My advice: stick with the beer. I had the Paulaner Oktoberfest** and it was excellent. The food, however, was ordinary. Dull. Uninspired. And overpriced.

* How did a German restaurant come to be called The Ranchero?
** Oh, and about that beer: The waitress asked if I wanted the full litre or half. I said full. She said litre, but I thought pint. There is a difference, my friends, between a pint and a litre.
Standard bottle o' beer = 12 oz
Pint = 16 oz
Litre = 33.814 oz

So a litre is 2.82 bottles of beer. Now, I do like beer, but it is exceedingly rare for me to consume three bottles in an evening, much less in the course of one meal. I really only wanted a pint. Really.

But, as it turned out, the meal I had was so bad that I viewed the extra beer*** as my just dessert.

*** I wasn't driving.