Do the cousins cook at the Victoria House?  "Not unless we have to," stated John, "but we can all cook.  We all started out as cooks and dishwashers, but we try to stay away from it."
"Bobby is in the kitchen more than anyone," said Dan.
The Victoria House boasts two fine full time cooks.  Nick Lefller is the lead kitchen manager at night, and Kris Siverhus is the lead kitchen manager during the day and is in charge of overall kitchen operations.
"Our specials are created in the kitchen," said Bobby.  "Our cooks have free rein to create.  This week our dinner special is coconut walleye with a blue-berry/raspberry sauce."
"Last week our seared ahi tuna salad was a really popular dinner special," said Danny.  "Our dinner specials are weekly from Tuesday through Sunday, and our lunch specials are daily.  Our various luncheon wraps are popular.  It's on Monday that our dinner cook gets to be creative coming up with a special for the week."
"We keep the main menu pretty standard," said Bobby, "like a supper club.  We use the specials as the new age food, but everyone wants the standards available."
"Our menu hasn't changed a lot," said Danny, but he pointed out that specials can become regular menu items.  "In the last year or two we added coconut crusted chicken or shrimp salad, parmesan encrusted scallops, and garlic steak to our regular menu," he said.  "They had been specials and people asked for them to be available more often.  We want to listen to our customers."
There is also good communication between the wait staff and the customers.  Danny said that the average turnover rate in wait staff at restaurants in general is 80%, but at the Victoria House it is only 10%.  "Hopefully it's because they like what they do," he said, "and hopefully they like us.  We're here all the time, but we're not looking over their shoulders."
"A lot of people like to micro-manage," said John.  "Not us."
"We like that our staff runs it like it's their own place," said Bobby.  "Our hostesses seem to take ownership and I think that helps give us our good staff retention.  Of course we lose some hostesses every fall when it's time to go back to school."

This fall the cousins will have owned the Victoria House six years.  They purchased it in October, 2000, from Jerry Noreen.  The sign hanging outside the place says, "Established in 1989."  That's when it became known as the Victoria House and was under the ownership of six guys, none of them cousins.  Those six men hired Jerry Noreen to manage the place and Jerry soon became the sole owner.
Said Bobby, "We are carrying a heavy torch with Jerry Noreen and those guys.  Anyone who makes it seven years in the restaurant business is down the stretch.  If you can make it seven years, you're over the hump."
In these past six years, the Victoria House cousins have made some major changes.  The first thing they did is clean out a storage room in the bar area and turn it into a private dining room they called the "Shabby Sheik Room."
Then they tore down a wall that got rid of the Sheik Room altogether, and tore out the chute from the basement to the third level office floor.  This added over 20 dining seats to the bar side of the Victoria House and gave them extra space for their computers and files upstairs on the top level.
They completely reconstructed the dining room side of the restaurant, tore out the floor, the ceiling, the risers, and put in new floor, new carpet, new ceiling, new lights, new speakers, new tables, new chairs, new booths.  It's really quite elegant.  That project was completed in May of 2005.
Today the dining room seats 78, the bar seats 80, and the patio outside seats 40.  "At capacity we have seating for 200," said Danny.
If downtown redevelopment occurs, and the Victoria House would have to be relocated, the owners would like to increase their inside seating capacity to 200 plus add a banquet facility, said John.  "We'd definitely want to upsize."
Said Danny, "If there were ever a move, we'd not want to get smaller.  There have been some good ideas floated around.  Progress is good.  We're interest-ed to see how we'd fit into schedule of things."
"Any business interruption would be crucial," said John.  "We would not want to be closed."  Said Dan, "Not even for a day."

There have been only a few times throughout its ancient Victoria history, that the building has been closed or stood vacant.   Interesting, it is, that the place has always been a "feed house" - first for animals and then for people.
The Victoria House is located in a building that was constructed in the old days by Ted Nordberg who used it as a feed house.  According to 82-year old area farmer Clarence Kelzer, Ted Norberg sold feed to area farmers - feed that included shells, grit, and salt for chickens, for example, and corn, oats, and even ready made feed.  It was the late Bud Larson who turned the feed house into a feed mill.  "That I know!" stated Clarence.  According to the November 1988 Victoria Gazette, which featured Bud and his wife Bernie Larson, Bud purchased the feed business from Ted Nordberg in 1946 and the building in 1949.
"Bud put a cornsheller in the base-ment," said Clarence, "and he put a rotary hammer mill in the basement.  The mill took up quite a bit of space, like the size of a bathroom.  It had steel hammers and a screen.  You could ask for ¼" screen for chicken feed or ½" screen for cows."

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