Review of Schmit Haus - Gilman, MN

Originally posted July 14, 2009

The Schmit Haus

10361 115th St NE

Gilman, MN 56333

While at an event near Foley, MN my interest was piqued  by a dining establishment that had been made out of a former auto shop in Gilman.  I had eaten a few years ago in a garage restaurant down in the cities that, for the life of me, I cannot remember the name of. (Bad Chad!) Anyway, what kind of a theme or dining gem would I be able to pull out of this experience? There really was only one way to find out.

Food:2

Here was a great opportunity for some very creative dining options, even within the scope of americana, that could have really made the food special. There could have been a German influenced infusion of options with sour kraut or schnitzel but there was not. There could be a classic burger joint feel with ice cream floats or classic americana but again there was not. In fact, the menu was limited, greasy and bland and that made me very disappointed. There is a lot of opportunity here for improvement or elaboration.

Can I use the terms limp and lifeless to describe the frozen meat patty I received that passed as a burger? Not cool. Normally I have something good to share here. Not today. Not here. The people of Gilman are the only people who are likely to come here because it is the only place to go in this little town. If you are the only place in town who do you have to compete with anyway. Maybe driving to Foley for dinner is not all that bad an idea.

Service: 4

Ok, our server tried. She really tried. She tried to do what she could with what she had.  She had patience with our children as they were beyond  nap time. She managed the floor well and the glut of people who came in when we got there, gliding amongst the tables making sure everyone CAN of  pop still had enough in it.  In the end, she was hampered by an exceptionally slow kitchen and that counted against her. So, the end resulting score has more to do with the kitchen side of the service than the server. It still added up to an hour wait for a few cheeseburgers and fries. There was no apologies for this time lapse from our server so I had to assume that this was par for the course here. More reason to question giving them a higher score in the service area.

Atmosphere: 2

Again this is an area of squandered opportunity. If you want to go someplace that remarkably looks like your crazy Uncle’s 70’s wood paneled basement rec room, then this place is for you. With a bar at one wall, booths opposite, and tables and chairs in between, this is pretty basic. The most interesting thing in the room is the wooden door with class windows that opens into a small quick access cooler for the server to store milk and other common restaurant perishables.

Tie a good food theme with decor and you have a winning combination for a point of destination dining experience. That is what people want.  I speculate whether the Schmit Haus is a very thinly capitalized restaurant because there was almost no attempt to spruce it up. I even speculate on whether it would have been more interesting if they had left it looking like a garage on the inside. Now, that would have been interesting. Add to it some automotive hardware from the scrap yard(but lovingly cleaned up). To any gearhead that would be a place to stop, a place to see, and a place to tell your friends about.

Take note, the bathroom needs a serious remodel and that is all I will say on that subject.

Overall: 3

A lot of room for improvement here. There is no definable direction in the menu, food, or the atmosphere. Food on the go at a snail’s pace was not appealing to anyone at our table or tables near us. I really don’t think that the people of Gilman are all that different from anyone in St Cloud or points throughout the state of Minnesota. This being the case, I think the people of Gilman probably would feel the same as I do about the Schmit Haus. It needs more…a lot more.

Would I eat there again? Unless it goes through a major remodel of operations, definitely not.

This entry was posted on October 12, 2009 at 13:53 and is filed under Grub Reviews - OLD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print