Eddie’s Supper Club

** THIS RESTAURANT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED **

Eddie’s is a 1944-vintage supper-club loved by generations of Montanans and visitors as a comfortable place to go for cocktails and campfire steaks. There are two halves to it: a coffee shop, which is lighter-feeling, more casual, and with a varied menu that includes sandwiches; and the more serious restaurant, which is atmospheric and has a big-deal menu of beef and seafood.

We like sitting in the fancier half if only for its décor: large, handsome pictures of horses, all kinds of them: trotters in action, a bucking horse tossing a cowboy, western horses at work tending cattle. The picture at the back of the room, which shows a horse’s head in the foreground and a herd of cows in back, is especially beguiling. “We call him Mr. Ed,” our waitress said. “His eyes follow you all around the room.”

Booths are plush, lights are low, and the staff are able pros. Steaks are grand. “Tastes just like that old Marlboro Cowboy cooked it over the campfire,” advises the menu. Our waitress told us that the secret of the steaks is not the fire over which they are cooked, but the house’s special wine marinade. This seeps into the meat and gives it a special tang, but also coats the surface so the exterior of the steak develops a crunchy caramelized crust as it cooks. The T-bone we ate was spectacularly good. An off-the-menu hamburger, which has the marinade folded into the meat, was wild.