Dinner at the Bar: A New Love Letter to Downtown Racine Dining

John Dickards here, former mayor and former water commissioner, whatever you were, with that water thing. What was that water thing? Water commissioner is here. But he's here with a different project. Also his wife, Teresa, is here as well. But she's on the phone. Yes, she is. Hello. Okay. Just make sure you're still there. I'm still here. Good. And the reason Teresa and John Dickard are here is because you have a brand new project. And this is kind of unique. I never heard of this before in Racine. And what you talk about, it's called Dinner at the Bar.

Yeah. Well, the concept came up when we were sitting at one of the restaurants in the bar in Racine, and we were watching the food shows that they were showing up on the TV screen, and we started talking about whether we could do something like that locally. So, you know, it started a banter between the two of us while we liked to eat at the bar, and it kind of moved down from there.

I'll let my wife describe a little more of it because she's got a little bit of experience in it too. Okay, so how many dinner places do you hit already with the videos? Just the one. Just what the night was. Put your barrel. Put your barrel. And now what happens to the video? Well, it's in final production now and we just did a premiere the other night to show some of the people that had helped us out with this.

and the cast and everybody else. And now it'll finish final production and probably be out in about a week. And whose idea was it? You or Teresa? I think we'll argue with that one, but I think it was Teresa's idea. Teresa, are you taking credit for this idea? A little bit. If it's successful, right? Yeah. I think John is the one who really put it into play. I mean, you're the one who really got it going. Well, this has never been done before. I've never seen this before.

No. The whole thing, once we started just talking about it, I went to a production company in Northern Illinois that I know they've helped us out with some things that we've seen in the past. I just asked the producer director there. I said, my wife and I have come up with this crazy idea, and we wanted to throw it by you and see what you think about it. She looked into it and did quite a bit of research on people who have done something like this.

around the country, and also somebody who had been doing something a little bit like this, but with a lot of different stores, not just restaurants, down in the metro northern Chicago area, they called the county of Lake Coney. So, as she looked at it, she said, well, there's one thing that is consistent, which is when you do something about a local place, mostly restaurants and bars and things like that, the numbers of people

that sea that tend to come into it. So it drives numbers into the, into the restaurant. And what we were hoping is that that's what it would accomplish. Now, do you, I've seen enough TV shows to know, like on The Bachelor, when they used to sit down to dinner, they never touch the food because it's not pleasant watching people eat and chew. Do you actually eat the food on camera? We do.

Oh, look at that. All right, breaking all the rules. That's good. All right. Yeah, they always say because on the bachelor, they used to sit down and they never ate. They never touched the food. And then I read later on the food is usually given to the crew because they don't eat because it's not pleasant watching somebody chew and get stuck in their teeth. I mean, it's not. Yeah, but this is a food show. You have to eat it.

Now, do you get to pick out what you want to eat, or does the restaurant say, this is what we want to prepare for you? Theresa, you're right. No, we definitely choose what we want. But everything at the restaurant is good. So they could have said, here, eat this. And I would have been fine with it. But no, they wanted us to. But we did have to choose ahead of time.

Oh, okay. Yeah, we had to tell them ahead of time what we were going to be choosing. I could never take the chance of getting something put in front of me, because I didn't know what it was. I can't take that risk. It happened once. The company I worked for, Radio Company in New York, they were moving me to their Atlanta radio station. They just bought it. And they said, we want you to meet the general manager. So I flew down there. And he said, let me take you out to a Southern dinner. This guy was from Pittsburgh, by the way.

Let me take you out to a real Southern lunch. And we went out there and you ordered me everything fried. Okra fried everything. It was the most disgusting dinner lunch I've ever seen in my life. The oil was like in a pool of oil on the plate. And it was this these vegetables just with breaded in oil oozing all over them. And I don't eat vegetables as a rule. I'm just not a big vegetable fan. So we had all this okra cauliflower, everything I hate.

And he's I'm staring at it. I'm not hearing a word this guy's saying because I'm staring at the food saying if I eat this stuff, it's going to come up. There's no way I'm going to hold this down. And he says, come on, I noticed you need to go ahead. I said, I ate a big meal earlier today on the plane. He said, take a few bites. And I swallowed it at whole so I didn't have to chew it. And I couldn't wait to get out of there. So this is why I cannot take a chance of the risk of somebody putting food in front of and you guys are filming it. And the chances of.

That happening, I can't take that risk. But you guys... Well, we have, I think we've eaten almost everything that they have on their menu, at least I put your emerald. No, they put vegetables on there and I would have a problem. Unless it's carrots or something like that. But when they start with the green stuff, forget it, I'd have to walk out. Cut! Go on to the next risk. You guys are brave doing that though. What do you like to eat?

That's exactly right. It doesn't look like it. It'll look at you too. The thing that we talk about in the very intro of the whole show is that we are not professional food tasters. We don't have history or teachings in the culinary arts. We're just two regular people who love to eat good food. And that's what we talk about as the intro starts. Because we don't want people to get the expectations that we're going to

dissect the food and talk about what's in it and figure out, we do talk about it and we do try to describe it to the public that's watching. Because the concept is if we can talk about all this great food in downtown, people will realize first of all that it's there. And then second of all, if they're intrigued by what we're eating and showing them and talking about as we're eating it, that they will say, you know what, I really need to try that.

That was the data that Denise showed us when we started looking at this, and that's what we're hoping for. I mean, we've got a downtown that, I mean, I grew up here, our family's been here since 1880. This is our community, right? Downtown is kind of the heartbeat of whatever happens in the city of Racine. And so when we heard that some of the restaurants had been telling us, and we primarily eat in the downtown area, that they were struggling,

We thought, well, what can we do about that to help them? Because we want the restaurants to stay here. We love the food that they're serving, and most of them are local families. So how do we help them out through this? And this was the concept that we came up with. We're talking to John and Teresa Dickert. They are hosts of a new movie. It's like a short movie. Yeah. And it's called Dinner at the Bar. And they go to different restaurants around Racine, and they

Film themselves eating at the bar? You talk to patrons at all? Talk to the owners? Well, so the show starts out with us talking about cocktails with the server at the bar, the bartender. And he describes different drinks that they make there that are seasonal. So we try to get into the feel of the actual restaurant itself and then do an appetizer. Then we do our meals, talk about those.

And then after that, we do what they call, we call a dessert with the owners. And we, we listen and we sit down to the owners, we hear their story, why they're there, what they're doing, what, what made them start a restaurant in the first place. And it, you know, that's the run of it. It's about 15 minutes or so. And that's perfect for the YouTube, TikTok, you know, Facebook. Is that what people can see it? Right. Is it up there now? No, not yet. When can we see it? Probably by the end of the week.

Okay, yeah, you gave me a little preview. It looks good. Yeah, you two address of the nines coming in at least your wife is well and It looks good. She she looks good. Yeah Now who chose the restaurant? Well, honey, I think that was you Yeah, I think because that was where we got the idea in the first place was sitting we were

This has been a while in the making. This is when Butcher & Barrel was in its old location, but it's on Main Street now. And we got the idea at the old location. So I think this is, you know, we thought, well, let's make our first one be Butcher & Barrel. Now, do you have the others lined up yet? We, the next one will be Old Madrid. Oh, I love Old Madrid. So do we. Oh, Paella, yeah. Manny and Natalie.

Now, here's the thing, when you go in there, is it during prime time for the restaurant in the evening? Or, I mean, there are other patrons in there. Do they know they're going to be filmed? Do you let them know ahead of time? Yeah, so we did the first shoot at Butcher & Merrill, and we just did a regular night. And what we... 3 a.m. I think we started at, what was it, about 7 o'clock, do you say? I think we started... That's prime time. No, I thought we were early. I thought it was around 5. Oh, you're right, because we had to set up.

Yeah, yeah, so let me talk to your wife. She seems to know all the information here. I'm getting misinformation from you and misleading information. She always does. Let me tell you, she always has the right answer. Now, do you have to get permission from the other people in the restaurant? I know they're in public. I know you don't have to ask, you know, when the people are in public, they don't need the need permission. But do you get it anyway? We have to get them to sign off that they're going to be on. And one of the things that we found in the first shoot was that we couldn't control what the public was doing. So that was.

somewhat odd in some people that may or may not have wanted to be on camera. And plus it was, we rushed through it a little bit, but then we had an accident where the producer actually her laptop blew up and we lost all the sound. So we had to go through and shoot it again. And what we decided was we asked some friends if they would take the spot where the constituents are behind us or the people are behind us. And they were nice enough to do that.

So we knew who the crowd was behind us. And they knew, you know, what the do's and don'ts are while you're trying to film this thing. But we did talk to them and they're in the shots, their food and their desserts are in the shots. And it worked out really, really well. You always run the risk. If you don't tell them ahead of time, they had somebody's there and the person they with is not their spouse. You always run that risk.

And there it is on YouTube. And there it is on YouTube. And you can't get rid of it. Yeah, I think that having our friends behind us and supporters behind us was... You didn't think about that? Took away. I never thought about that. But no, so... I watch an update line where I know this stuff. Yeah. Well, and the other thing is that if they don't sign, you have to completely cut them out. And now that's a whole new editing piece, right?

because there's a lot of shots, it's fast moving, and there's a lot going on there. Who's the production house that puts us together? Denise Cooper and her husband Tim do it. They've got a production house down in Northern Illinois, and they're the ones that are doing all the work. Expensive to do this? Yeah, we paid for the first two. We were hoping initially when we started to get some sponsors to help us, you know, because we're pushing specifically downtown.

that didn't work out so well. And we wanted to do it because we had heard about the issues that the local downtown restaurants were dealing with. So we paid for the first two. It's not cheap. And we're hoping that some sponsors are going to see it, like it, and want to support us. At the premiere, actually, one of the groups that was there actually said, I really want to sponsor this show. So we looked at possibly have one sponsor already. It's not, we're not doing it to make money.

We're just doing it, our hope and desire is that it makes enough money that we can keep going. Because we got about 12 to 14 restaurants downtown that we think are legitimate, that can be done, and we'd like to do that. We just need that support to keep the production going. You have the next restaurants lined up already? We've got quite a few of them that have agreed that they would do it. Oh, good, good, good.

We haven't approached the others because we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here. So how long between restaurants? Well, that's going to be the determining factor in how well the show goes and how much people share it and things like that. So the first it's going to premiere. You had the premiere low, you know, amongst friends. But did you get a date yet when you're going to YouTube it for the rest of the world? Well, that we're hoping by the end of the week. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, good. I want to know the address and everything. Is it called dinner at the bar on YouTube? Oh, I want to bring it up. I want to see this. Yeah.

I don't want to say I wouldn't I know a star. Well, Teresa. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know a couple of stars. Is this is this the way to get you into like a reality show on TV? Is this going to be an ABC, you know, Hulu type set up? Yeah, I don't know. That's right. I mean, that would be that would be great production or the great commercial for Racine.

We don't. We don't know how this is going to go. Yeah. We have no idea. But this is how these things start. They start little and then they grow and you get more. You know, these YouTube influencers I see on there, sometimes they say, who watches these people? Then you find out they got 500,000 viewers every day watching them. Yeah. Because people love this kind of stuff. They get to sit at home, lay in bed, bring up their phones and watch this stuff. Yeah.

I just saw a YouTube influencer that we might be meeting with down in Chicago, who's a developer of old buildings. He has eight million viewers right now. I know. It's amazing how many viewers they have. And I got to tell you, I watch all these First Amendment auditors on YouTube. I watch them. You know, I got to admit, it's one of my guilty pleasures. My wife said, you watch too much TV. Well, now I moved over to the my phone, watching you watch too much of that. I mean, it entertains me watching that stuff.

And that's the hope is that people in short bursts. Yeah. And that's why it's it's 15 minutes right now. We're hoping that people watch it. They see it. Our biggest desire is that first we get local people because a lot of local people that aren't familiar with the downtown scene that much. We get local people coming in. And then the second thing is that we attract people from around the region who say, I really want to try that food.

You know, I saw it. I never realized there was that kind of food in deep fried Oprah deep fried cauliflower with oil swimming on the plate. Yeah, I want to try that. You have to have Theresa tell us about one of our favorite things that put your brother we talk about. What's your favorite food there, Theresa? Well, John is the urban cowboy. You're kidding.

I really like the chicken, but they have this mashed cauliflower. So instead of mashed potatoes, it's this mashed cauliflower. And I think even you would like it. No, no. Yeah. I have had experts try to get me to eat vegetables. You guys are amateurs. I had an expert. I had threats of violence against me. My father.

My mother put peas on my plate one time. I told the story before. That was a little kid. He put peas, she put peas in my plate and tried to take it away quickly because she made a mistake. My father said, leave it. He's going to eat those peas. So I sat there. I wouldn't eat him. And not because I was defiant. I knew I couldn't keep them down. And so they went down to the rec room to watch TV. My brother, my mother and father for two hours, I had to sit at the table. He came back. The peas were sitting there. I sat there for two hours and stared at the wall.

It's not that I was, my will was, I just, I knew I couldn't swallow this stuff. And you think you're gonna get me to eat mashed cauliflower so my father maybe sit there for two hours at the table ain't gonna happen to me. So what we're gonna do is we're not even gonna tell him what it is, we're just gonna have me. Maybe if you didn't tell me, that would be it. I mean, people who know me know what not to put on my plate. I don't know why, that's just who I am. I can't explain it. It doesn't matter, but it sounds delicious though. Sounds good. Oh, it's so good.

Did they put butter on it when they don't know what it is? There's there's there's something in it. But I mean, it's like mashed potatoes, but you'll eat mashed potatoes, right? Because I know it's not mass cauliflower. So how was the chicken made? How was it served? The chicken is chicken breast. It's breaded in their proprietary sauce. And.

and with the vegetables that I guess you won't eat. No, no, I do eat vegetables, just certain ones I don't eat. Okay. Yeah, so you'll just have to take a look at the video. And then this time, John got the urban cowboy, but they also have this, they have a risotto, they have a pork chop. We've tried pretty much everything on the menu, I think.

What does it sound to you? I can't know. You're going to tell me when the YouTube video is up. Can you let me know? Sure. Sure. And the thing about it is the one thing that we really love about Butcher & Barrel is they're seasonal. So their menu changes constantly. And so they cycle through a menu spring, summer, winter, and fall. And so there's different flavors that come up when they're doing that. And I will tell you, it's worth going back because of the fact that you'll find different desserts, different drinks, different food.

Uh, but they have, they have really, they have a fabulous chef there. You, you let me know when the YouTube videos up and we'll mention it. Okay. We'll get some views. I'm going to put it on my big screen TV in the living room. It's not that big, but at least it won't be on my phone. And I'll get to see it. I can't wait to see this. It's exciting. Well, we have a lot of fun with it. I will tell you that we are amateurs.

So, you know, if people think that this is going to be a Guy Ferry or whatever his name is, low, that's good. Absolutely. And then all of a sudden people see and say, this is great. Well, you hope so. Where is where's the restaurant located, by the way? Right on Main Street across from the Ivanhoe. Oh, yeah. Okay. Passed it twice a day. I'm going to go into work. Yep. It's it's worth it. It's, you know, it's not a cheap restaurant to eat at, but I will tell you it is worth every single penny. Thanks for coming in and telling me about it. I like it.

Teresa, thanks for coming on the air with us this morning. You're welcome. I was hoping you'd be here. But a lot of fun. The whole reason was to get you in here. And then I find that he showed up. I said, get out of the car. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where's the other half? He was pretty disappointed. Let me tell you. He was pretty disappointed in seeing me just meet him up. I think this is exciting for Racine. I really do. I hope so. Yeah. Let me know as soon as this up. We're trying to rest. You want me to give you a review? Heck yeah. OK.

I'll give you the review. Now, I'm sure I'm going to love it. Thank you. John Dickard, Teresa Dickard, Dickard and their new venture is called Dinner at the Bar. They're going to different restaurants in downtown Racine for 15 minutes at a time and you get to see the restaurants, you get to examine them and you might like the restaurants. You might say, gee, I want to live like that couple and you might go. I want to be just like the Dickards. Well, I just hope they love the food. I have a picture of you and your daughter.

And you said it was how many years ago? Yeah, it was probably about 2010 or 2011. Yeah, it was an old picture. You guys were running in the rain for the set walk. The lighthouse run, right past my house. And there you are soaking wet in the rain. But it was a cute picture. She loved to do that. Daddy and daughter were running in the rain together. It was fantastic. I'll give you that picture. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you very much for joining us. I do appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to seeing you two on the video.

Well thank you very much.