Hidden Gem - McHenry: Pizza recipe foments Foxhole fans
By CRYSTAL LINDELL – clindell@nwherald.com
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| Rockford resident Jim Sieg (right) entertains a local crowd at the Fox Hole Tap and Pizzeria in McHenry. Sieg has been playing live music every Wednesday night at the establishment for 11 years. (Justin Edmonds – jedmonds@nwherald.com ) |
McHENRY – Walk down the steep steps into the basement of the building at the corner of Riverside Drive and Elm Street and it’s like you’ve traveled back in time a few decades.
Above the dark-wood tables hang 1970s-era gold Old Style lamps. Look toward the bar, and you’ll see a hand-painted Budweiser mobile.
Sit down to order, and you’ll get the same thin-crust pizza that’s been served there for nearly four decades.
“It’s old-time McHenry,” said Duke Ciske, a McHenry resident. “It’s kind of like underground McHenry.”
That’s exactly the thought that Patty Musielak, owner of Foxhole Tap and Pizzeria, wants customers to have about the restaurant.
“People have been coming here for years, from Wonder Lake to Algonquin,” Musielak said. “It’s not a chain, so nothing’s changed.”
The restaurant, at 3308 W. Elm St., was built in 1864 as part of what was then called The Riverside Hotel. The three-story brick building featured covered porches and umbrella-adorned tables along the Fox River.
Those rooms since have been converted to apartments, and the porches torn down, but the restaurant lived on. It was renamed the Fox Hole as a tribute to returning war veterans from World War II.
“It was a pretty popular spot,” Musielak said. “It used to have a stage.”
After changing hands throughout the years, Inez and Red Tourville bought it in the 1970s. With them came the restaurant’s now locally famous thin-crust pizza recipe.
“That’s the only thing I’ve ever made,” Red Tourville said. “I don’t like thick crust. I think it tastes like gum.”
In 1994, the couple sold Fox Hole to Musielak.
“They tended bar two nights a week for years, because they didn’t want to leave it, but they didn’t want to work as hard as they did,” she said.
Red Tourville said he enjoyed his time at the Fox Hole.
“I just loved the place,” he said. “And then I got old and I couldn’t keep it.”
Musielak made a point not to change anything in the restaurant. She even left a mural across the back wall, which depicts the restaurant as it was in the early 1900s.
The painting was done in 1960 by Marilyn Bacon, who actually used to be one of Musielak’s clients when she was a hair stylist before going into the restaurant business.
Susan Danko said she and her husband, Jerry, have been going to the Fox Hole for decades, and they hope it doesn’t change.
“It’s the best pizza in town,” she said.
Her husband agreed.
“It’s a good old local place,” he said.
Musielak said she doesn’t plan on selling any time soon, but if someone came in with an offer and wanted to keep everything the same, she’d be interested.
“I’d want them to keep it alive for generations,” she said. “The kids and the grandkids, they come in as families. ... It’s just fun seeing all the people.”
