For 60 years, the Redwood Inn has served up Friday fish, Sunday chicken and Old-Fashioneds the Smits family way

LEDGEVIEW - Two days before their wedding on Nov. 28, 1963, Bob Smits surprised his bride-to-be with the news that he had put money down to buy Van Boxel’s Redwood Inn from his uncle Buck.

The mom-and-pop country tavern that advertised itself as “midway between Green Bay and Denmark on U.S. Highway 141” was going to be theirs.

“Huh?” a dumbfounded Pat responded.

She was a beautician. He played polkas and Elvis Presley music in a band called Bob and the Bobcats. What could they possibly know about running a place that served a fish fry on Fridays and a roast chicken plate on Saturdays?

“We’re only going to do it for a couple of years,” Bob told her.

Sixty years later, the Redwood Inn they took over in 1964 remains one of Green Bay’s most popular fish and chicken traditions, still serving some of the same customers who have been coming for decades, still mixing a mean Old-Fashioned and, you better know it, still serving up their perch with two baked potatoes on the plate.

Bob and Pat are both gone now — Bob in 2015 and Pat in 2021 — but all the love and sweat they poured into the Redwood to make it the definition of a Green Bay classic lives on. Now it’s their children, owner John Smits and Jenny Sipes, who are the caretakers of all the dear details of the family business, the heirs of their work ethic and the keepers of the stories from years ago.

They grew up working alongside their parents at the original Redwood just down the road from the current 3230 Main St. address in Ledgeview. There is not a day they don’t think about them — or miss them.

“I think about my mom every time I walk through the door in morning, because we walked in together and we walked out together,” John said. “It’s hard. It’s so hard.”

Bob was the people person and known for his jokes. He worked an almost unimaginable 7 a.m. to bar close in those early years. That’s his table in the corner near the kitchen; easy access when it became difficult for him to get around in his last years. It's where he was sitting one day with Pat and John when he looked around the place and said to them, “I’m proud of you guys. You really did this.”

Pat was the “spitfire,” John said, and a force in and out of the kitchen. Jenny remembers her working in the cramped kitchen of the old building with a bandanna around her brow because it was so hot in the summers. A photo of her on the hostess station by the entrance greets customers, who still love to share Pat stories.

“People miss her, my gosh. She would sit down and talk to them while they were eating, and people loved it,” Jenny said. “I think about my mom all the time and how proud she would be when it’s packed and three deep at the bar, knowing that we’re doing a good job.”

Redwood's roots date back to grandma Emma Smits and the booyah shack

John was 10 years old when he started broasting chicken. He was 12 when his dad first put him behind the bar one Friday night when the regular bartender didn’t show up. On the days he wasn’t in school, he was in the bar at 7 a.m. getting ready for the day.

“It’s your life. You don’t know any better. It’s like being brought up on a farm,” said John, who has made the Redwood his life’s work.

In those early years, the Redwood only served food on Fridays (fish) and Saturdays (chicken). On Sundays in the summer, the whole extended Smits family would pitch in to sell booyah — 120 gallons every week — from an outdoor shack. There were picnic tables and a couple of carnival rides, and John and his cousins would fry burgers and make hot dogs. It was like a mini church picnic every Sunday.

At the center of it all was their grandmother, Emma Smits, who got the fish fry going when Bob and Pat bought the place and cooked there for 13 years. She was “a bullworker,” John said.

Emma would milk 35 cows and then come fry fish from 4 to 11 p.m. on Fridays. It was nothing for her to peel 200 or 300 pounds of potatoes by hand.

On Sundays, she would get the booyah kettles going by 5 a.m., go home to milk and then return by 11 a.m. to be ladling bowls of booyah for 30 cents. When they started serving broasted chicken on Sundays in 1973, she would come inside after the booyah shed was done for the day and do dishes from the chicken until they stopped serving at 8 p.m.

The Redwood Inn’s booyah ended in 1977 when Emma died, but her legacy of hard work remains a source of family pride.

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The old Redwood Inn, which included the family's living quarters, was hardly fancy, but people sure were attached to it. As the building began to diminish, John persuaded his parents, who were not always easily sold on the idea that bigger was better, to take a look at the former Bel-Aire Bar & Banquet building.

They opened it in 2008, but it was a gradual process over 1½ years so as not to upset longtime patrons. The did fish on Fridays at the new location but still served at the old place the other three days of the week. Every Friday John would haul a big marquee sign with a flashing arrow out of the garage and plug it in to remind the fish fry crowd where to find them. They would even lug the ice cream machine back and forth between locations.

“I think it took 10 years off my life in one year,” John said.

People had such a fondness for the original Redwood that their taste buds played tricks on them when the business moved. They would say, “The chicken is good, but it’s not the same as the old place, because it’s not that broaster.”

But it was indeed that broaster. John knew, because it had hauled it over himself.

You need only to look at the Redwood's stack of Best of the Bay awards over the years to know people adjusted just fine to the next chapter in its history, complete with a showcase of Green Bay Packers memorabilia on the walls and a supper club-inspired menu that added steaks, surf and turf, pork chops and burgers.

Homemade Old-Fashioned mix and two baked potatoes are Redwood staples

It’s nearly impossible to separate the food from the family from the atmosphere when it comes to the Redwood’s enduring appeal. Would the perch plate on a busy Friday taste as good if you didn’t see somebody you know at the bar and probably behind it while you wait to get your table number?

“You have to bundle it all together,” John said.

Rebranding, refreshing and reimagining are all the buzz seemingly everywhere in today's world, but the Redwood experience remains mostly unchanged. Yes, you can get "a mean, mean ribeye" that John cuts and ages himself, but at its heart, it's still about fish on Friday, chicken on Sunday and Old-Fashioneds any night.

It’s familiar and consistent, just the way customers like it. Some are so loyal they come three out of the five days the Redwood is open each week (Wednesday through Sunday). There’s still about 10 couples who date back to the Redwood’s original location — and a couple of employees, too.

Sandy Kaster was the neighbor across the road when she started working at the original Redwood Inn at age 9 back. She’s still a server today. Matt Van Lanen and Lee Wendorf are longtime pillars of the kitchen crew.

Jenny’s husband, Don Sipes, and John are on the board of directors for the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, so many of the old-time players get their Redwood fix whenever they’re back in town, Dave Robinson and Marv Fleming among them. Former head coach Mike McCarthy was a regular during his time in Green Bay.

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When Wisconsin’s fish fry tradition kicks into high gear during Lent, it can be a full house already by 4:30 or 5 p.m. On Sundays, when families come out for chicken and all the fixings, the Redwood often serves 500 or more people during the four hours it’s open from 4 to 8 p.m.

“One nice thing when people come out here on a Friday or a Sunday is they know what to expect,” Jenny said. “They know it’s going to be a little bit of a wait, but they’ll belly up and have a couple of Old-Fashioneds and just have fun with the bartenders and their group or family.”

Eighty percent of the business at the bar is mixed drinks, and the majority of them are Old-Fashioneds. The Redwood prides itself on making not just one of the best ones around but also one of the cheapest, Jenny said. John makes his own mix and has plans to begin selling it in bottles.

The perch is still prepared just like it was from the beginning. It once accounted for 95 percent of all the Friday fish served, but customers have broadened their horizons to include walleye and cod, John said. With more gluten-free and other dietary restrictions, the Redwood also does more boiled, broiled, steamed and baked fish options.

One thing that has not changed: If you order a baked potato with your meal, you’re getting two of them. Regulars know to expect it, but first-timers are often surprised.

“People always say, ‘Why two potatoes?’” Jenny said. “Because we’ve always done it that way. That’s a Redwood staple.”

Thank Grandma Smits. She started it. The restaurant goes through 1,500 pounds of baked potatoes a week.

From the days of $1.25 chicken to the next generation of Smitses

When restaurants were closed to dining during the pandemic, the comfort of being able to get a Redwood Inn take-out meal had the parking lot as full as on a normal night.

“I never worked so hard in my life. I had every broaster going from the beginning to the end, all five of them, and it was nonstop,” John said. “I was blowing chicken out of the door for 15 bucks a bucket. Now you couldn’t even think about doing it, because it doubled in price.”

The days of 55-cent perch plates, $1.25 for a quarter-chicken and the trimmings and 10-cent tap beers are long gone. When Bob bumped mixed drinks to a $1, John remembers thinking, “I don’t know, Dad, that’s a lot of money.”

Keeping prices as reasonable as possible remains a hallmark of the Redwood Inn, despite soaring inflation. A half-chicken with all the fixings is $10.95.

“I still want people to be able to go out and have a good time and not empty their wallet out,” John said. “It’s bad out there the way it is.”

John’s two sons, Robby and Johnny, have been working at the Redwood since they were about the same age as he was when he started. They’ve been a big help in allowing the business to maintain the standard of quality established by Bob and Pat all those years ago, Jenny said. Johnny often cooks alongside his dad and stepped up when John had shoulder and back surgeries.

“I need a well-oiled body to keep up with the well-oiled machine,” John said. “The business is ... hard on your body.”

The Redwood Inn was built on his parents' motto that “business always comes first.” Their dedication meant they never went to a wedding on a Saturday. John got married on a Monday for that reason. Jenny recalls her parents freaking out a little when her wedding was on a Saturday, so they just invited most of the regular customers.

It’s hard for John and Jenny, who run the place together, to believe that sometimes the Redwood Inn takes in in one week what their parents paid for Van Boxel’s Redwood Inn when they bought it (factoring in inflation, of course). Sometimes John would say that to Pat.

“Mom, we almost took in enough to buy the Redwood over again.”

Her reply was always a no-nonsense “Isn’t that dumb?”

That was Pat's favorite saying. For anyone who knew her, it still brings a smile.

Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Redwood Inn serves up Friday fish, Sunday chicken for 60 years