Bringing Up Baby: Silver Moon Supper Club Celebrates Its First Birthday

It’s difficult to attend a first birthday party without looking down at that adorable, clueless baby in her tiny cone-shaped hat and wonder: Who is this celebration for anyway, the baby or the parents? With each birthday after the first, the focus shifts to the child in the foreground while blurring the parents into the deepest corner of the background, but that first one belongs the creators, and why not? After all, it’s their day too. 

Next week, when Monte Jones and Jerry Erbstoesser celebrate the first birthday of their own extravagant conception — The Silver Moon Supper Club — the emphasis should be on them, the proud parents, but they’re not having it. Instead, they prefer to share the next week of festivities with their extended family — namely, their patrons.

If you ask Monte or Jerry about their restaurant, you might expect them to tell you about the water wall, the original pressed tin ceilings, the banquettes (the clam-shell shaped booths) or chef Joshua Smith’s exceptional talent in the kitchen, and they will, but first, last and in between they will talk about their customers. Sure, professional athletes and pop stars are always quick to thank the “fans,” but this isn’t a case of saying the right thing just to say it; these two consider the customer’s satisfaction with every move they make.

Take, for example, the modern chain restaurant’s obsession with turning over tables — get the drinks, get the order, get it out, get more drinks, get their check, get them out and repeat. And customers beware: Lingering afterwards over coffee and that once beloved pastime known as conversation will earn you the cold stares of a staff that has been trained to see you as a dollar sign with a stomach to fill. Monte refuses to apply this financially profitable yet spiritually bankrupt formula.

“There is a difference between going out to eat and going out to dine,” he said. “It’s more than just eating and you can’t put a time limit on that. It’s the social interaction as much as dining.”

While some might feel that fine dining and Fargo are an odd mix, the truth is that the Silver Moon is not a transplant from another place but rather from another time, a time when regular people cooked almost every meal at home, but when they did go out, they went out in style. They went to places like the old Silver Moon, which was located over the river in Moorhead from the 1940s to the ‘60s and then in the Gardner Hotel from 1968-74. Monte’s mother actually worked there, and while he doesn’t remember it, Monte has been told he went there as a small boy. Perhaps something from his youth stuck with him when he and Jerry set out to create a retro supper club.

“I wanted it to be rooted in history but still planted in the 21st century,” Monte said.

So while the Silver Moon brings us back in time it also moves us forward into the future of downtown Fargo. As expansion continues with off-Broadway success stories like this one, the push to revitalize what is already here will continue to slow the rate of suburban sprawl and also give the city unique character that can’t be replicated or mass produced. Monte’s involvement in this process dates back to the early days when he helped create another downtown fixture, Monte’s restaurant on Broadway.

“Back then, when we opened there, we would see a few people walk by the window and say ‘Wow, there’s so many people downtown tonight!,’” Monte said.

To that Jerry added: “Now it’s a stampede.”

After spending nearly 30 years away from Fargo living in New York, people still ask Monte if he misses the 24-hour stampede of America’s fastest moving city.

“Desperately,” he tells them. “But in New York I would have been just another commodity amongst commodities, but working here is like watching a garden grow, a few seeds were planted and now we have a full, flowering garden.”

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Monday, Oct. 5th
8 p.m. Style Show
Downtown Diva (formerly Haute Boutique)

Tuesday, Oct. 6th
6:30-9:30 p.m.
Pianist Carol Ledeboer Johnson

Wednesday, Oct. 7th
6:30-9:30 p.m.
Pianist Aimee Klein

Thursday, Oct. 8th
9 p.m.
Jazz Vocalist Sarah Morrau

Friday & Saturday, Oct. 9th and 10th
8 p.m. Frank Sinatra Tribute

Saturday, Oct. 10th
Unveiling of Memorabilia Wall

Birthday Gifts given away all week.

306 Roberts St. Downtown Fargo
701-356-9097