BATTER UP! Mike’s Cheese Shack boasts some delectable curds and a tasty, crispy chicken sandwich.

The newest restaurant on Water Street serves as a beacon of hope for those bar-hoppers crawling down the avenue in search of the perfect midnight snack.

Mike’s Cheese Shack opens at 11am every day, and stays open until the wee hour of 2:30am on most days. (It closes at midnight on Mondays and Tuesdays, and at 6pm on Sundays.) The shop’s owner, Mike Whiteside, hopes that the sunny interior will attract not just college students and party-animals, but everyone in Eau Claire. Visitors will be greeted by the friendly staff and a statue of Whiteside donning a cheesehead hat he received from a relative on his first day of business.

“The bricks on these walls have been here for a long, long time, and I’m going to put my heart and soul into them for as long as I can.” – Mike Whiteside, owner, Mike’s Cheese Shack

The restaurant opened in late March; since then, it has received mainly positive reviews, many proclaiming the cheese curds to be the best in town. The brief menu features gooey, warm curds covered in Whiteside’s secret recipe batter; these are the perfect companions to dishes such as the walleye and chicken sandwich, which Whiteside proudly compares to Chick-fil-A grub. Their meats are bought locally and the cheese is pure Wisconsin dairy. All the food is hand-dipped in the savory batter in front of the customers’ eyes.

“We cook our food out in the open because we’re clean, we don’t have secrets,” Whiteside said. “My ultimate goal is to have quality food at a fair price.”

Whiteside grew up in Eau Claire, but moved to Indiana and then Ohio for work. It was in Ohio where he decided to buy a trailer and start selling Wisconsin cheese curds. He got the trailer and 400 pounds of Wisconsin cheese curds, which he began selling within four days at county fairs. Ohioans cringed at the idea of deep-fried cheese, but Whiteside “twisted their arms” by giving out as many free samples as he could, which he still does in his new shop. Now, he has five concessions trailers throughout Indiana and Ohio, where he is known as “The Cheese King,” and his only brick-and-mortar restaurant resides right here in the Chippewa Valley.

The Shack’s location, 416 Water St., has dealt with its fair share of businesses in the past. Several restaurants, including Chedd’s and The Dogg Haus, which both sold greasy munchies similar to Whiteside’s, have come and gone after fairly brief stays in the space.

“People come in and tease, ask if I’m going to stick around,” Whiteside said. “And I tell them that the bricks on these walls have been here for a long, long time, and I’m going to put my heart and soul into them for as long as I can.”

Whiteside plans to open a second physical location in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he’ll spend the other half of the year he’s not in Eau Claire, and he has distant dreams of opening several more shops, with drive-through windows, bells, whistles, and more. According to Whiteside, when the restaurant first opened he spent 16 hours a day there, and he continues to put in long hours to make his business flourish. Now his “right-hand man” is running the Wisconsin shop, but he will return soon.

Whiteside says word-of-mouth has been working well for the business. “I wish everybody would come in and try a free sample, and tell a friend,” he said with a chuckle that sold me, as if the cheesy goodness hadn’t already.

Check out Mike’s Cheese Shack on Facebook.