A TOWNIE TRADITION. One Chippewa Falls bar, the Tomahawk Room (306 N Bridge St.) has turned Monday nights into an evening of culinary exploration and local love. Chef Nathan Berg – known in previous roles at The Lakely in Eau Claire and Native Bay in Chippewa Falls - reflects on three years of the "Monday Munchies" community and what his themed dinners have brought to the area.

Monday, Dec. 8 marked the celebration of three consecutive years of “Monday Munchies” at the Tomahawk Room (306 N Bridge St., Chippewa Falls) – whose concept has been called “bonkers” by chef Nathan Berg himself and its weekly meals are always full of surprises.

There's no marketing. No social media announcements ahead of time. Each menu is kept secret and the event relies entirely on word-of-mouth; hungry and thirsty patrons simply show up to secure their limited spot to Berg’s curious culinary creation of the week. More often than not, he typically serves approximately 120 to 140 plates on your average Monday Munchies night.

Volume One chatted with Berg to learn what visiting foodies and Chippewa Falls locals have most enjoyed about this ever-changing, intimate and townie offering.

V1: Which of the Monday Munchies menus from the past three years was the most demanding or inspiring to create?

NB: There have been almost 150 of these menus thus far so it's pretty difficult to pick just one, but there are a couple that immediately jump to my mind as being uniquely challenging and exciting. The first was “If Cocktails Were Foods,” in which I tried to create dishes that mirrored the flavor profiles of popular cocktails. So the “Martini” dish was an arugula salad with green olives, toasted pine nuts and lemon juniper vinaigrette. The “Pina Colada” dish was a pineapple, coconut and lobster bisque.

A more recent, somewhat meta, example is “Robot Writes A Menu,” in which I plugged a bunch of prior Monday Munchies menus into ChapGPT and had AI come up with its own version of one of my menus, which I then had to figure out how to prepare.Both of these menus were well-received and folks seemed to really appreciate the creativity involved in coming up with such bizarre concepts.

"In a way, it's like I create my own giant puzzle each Monday and then only get a really short amount of time to solve it," Berg said. "For all the effort that goes into these little productions, it does occasionally make me laugh that I will be completely out of food and finished in just 2-3 short hours."

V1: What value have you observed in maintaining a smaller community's “underground” food scene, like the one here at the Tomahawk Room? What value do you see in preserving it?

Kimbap (pictured above) was a menu item featured at one of the more recent Monday Munchies events. The dish includes pickled daikon, cucumber, carrot, egg and rice, wrapped in seaweed with soy mustard sauce.

NB: In our modern times, it seems like everything is over-hyped. Nearly all experiences are shared on social media, staged for the most eyeballs, or advertised to the point of removing all the surprise and spontaneity. I came up in the underground punk rock scene, so I've always had a fondness for experiences that are quite intentionally NOT for everyone, but for a small community of folks that share some common ground. I feel like this spirit is a big part of the charm of Monday Munchies. I don't share the menus with anyone until we hand them out at 6pm and I'm almost annoyingly tight-lipped about the themes up to that point.

(Monday Munchies) specifically caters to the adventurous folks that are willing to be surprised and open to the possibility that they can enjoy something without knowing every tiny detail about it ahead of time. Whether it's art or music or food, I feel like it's important to have these little corners of the community that aren't meant to be center stage and, to me, the bonds formed in these corners are some of the strongest.

V1: What stories could you share – from over the past three years – that speak to the interconnectedness this group possesses?

NB: Boy, there's almost too much to say here because the interconnectedness of a shared experience around a bizarre menu of food, served in a regular ol' Sconnie bar on the most boring night of the week is kind of the point. On my end, I've woven some of this into the menus over the past three years. I've done menus based on a single person when their birthday happens to fall on a Monday. I once did a "Mad Libs" menu where I secretly asked some of our more regular regulars to fill in food-related nouns, verbs and adjectives for a couple of weeks until they collectively (and unknowingly) designed the menu for everyone. I had my older brothers once help me develop a menu of some of our favorite dishes that our mom used to make when we were kids. But it goes far beyond me. Because we do this in a small little bar, people often sit next to folks that they don't know and they end up sharing stories and developing friendships over the course of a meal. Folks will bring in treats of their own for me and my wonderful trio of helpers to enjoy.

But perhaps my favorite example is from earlier this year when I did a two-part menu based on dishes prepared by a (then) 10-year old Palestinian girl named Renad. She had gone viral on Instagram by releasing adorable cooking videos from a cheap gas stove outside of the refugee camp tent that she and her family were living in. So we did two menus featuring dishes made by her and then sent all the profits from those two evenings to her charity. It was really nice to feel like our little group of people could, even in the tiniest possible way, do something to help out a horrific situation happening all the way across the globe, while also familiarizing ourselves with the cuisine of another culture that isn't very prevalent in our neck of the woods.

V1: How does the behind-the-scenes prep for Monday Munchies unfold? How have your past experiences as a head chef integrated themselves into the group's operations?

Dishes from the last Monday Munchies dinner revolved around one core theme: HOF. "HOF" can often refer to a Korean-style pub, as seen through the six menu items chef Berg shared with Tomahawk Room guests.

NB: One of the things that I love about Mondays is that it requires me to do quite a bit of research because I'm often doing themes and dishes from cuisines that I don't have much experience with. So it's often quite a learning experience that entails plenty of studying. Planning the menu takes a ton of time and thought because I have to find the right things to fit the themes while making sure that there's not too much overlap. And then I have to make sure that there's something for folks with alternative diets and then, of course, ensure that all the dishes are something that I can pull off in a tiny corner of a bar with only a mini-convection oven, an induction burner and a soup well. Then I have to shop for all the ingredients which often involves farmers markets and multiple grocery stores. But of course, depending on the menu, it can also involve driving to a market in the Twin Cities, foraging spruce tips in my own yard, smuggling cheeses in from a trip to Norway or ordering spices from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. (These are all things that I've actually done for a Monday menu.)

My experience as a head chef is probably the only way that I'm able to pull off these Monday meals. You need to be creative and meticulous with the planning but then, during service, you have to work fast and efficiently while keeping many things in your head at the same time. In a way, it's like I create my own giant puzzle each Monday and then only get a really short amount of time to solve it. For all the effort that goes into these little productions, it does occasionally make me laugh that I will be completely out of food and finished in just 2-3 short hours.

V1: Looking ahead, what are your interests regarding how Monday Munchies might innovate by exploring new cuisines, whilst keeping its core structure the same?

NB: I don't see any changes for Monday Munchies in the near future, but only because changing every single week is already built into the concept. I'm currently inspired by pretty much all cuisine from around the world. In my career up to now, I've been known for utilizing ingredients from local farmers to make cuisine that best represents this region. But with Monday Munchies, I'm able to explore and experiment with so much that is unfamiliar to me. Someday I will probably get back to exclusively developing and cooking food that represents the Upper Midwest but, when I do, I expect that I'll have a ton of new ideas and experiences that will help me in that cause.

A snapshot of just a few menu ideations Berg has brought to the Monday Munchies group for three years and onward. Menus range in cuisine and theme, as shown through the "Titanic's Final Menu" (which was served on the exact date the ship sank, 113 years prior).

The Tomahawk Room (306 N Bridge St., Chippewa Falls) hosts the Monday Munchies events weekly from 6-9pm. You’ll just have to stop by for yourself to see what cuisines are on the menu next!