Holly and Tom Reay, owners of Funistrada since the spring of 2000, were Glen Lake “summer kids” growing up. She is a native of Chicago, and he hails from St. Louis. (More on that later.) “Our families had been coming up here for generations, and this is where we met,” Holly explained. Later, as adults, they each decided that they wanted to live there year-round.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the building that Funistrada now occupies was a German restaurant called the Glen Lake Inn, and it was a favorite haunt of Tom and Holly’s grandparents, both of whom had summer homes in the area. Before that, it had hosted another restaurant and a bar, but originally, nearly a century ago, it was a dining hall for nearby cabins that didn’t have kitchens.