An attractive young couple from Chicago strolls through Summerfest's north gate, grabs an informational brochure and begins leafing through it while walking toward the rock stage.

After a few moments, the couple decides to stop a stranger.

"Can you tell us where we get the fried eggplant?" the woman says.

"We've heard a lot about it," her companion says. "Our friends said we had to try it."

"You're talking about the Venice Club," the stranger replies. "Head down near the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse and look for the sign."

Scenes like this play out nearly every day at Summerfest, but the locals don't have to ask directions. The Venice Club, after all, has been a dining destination for 35 years.

"We are the largest seller of eggplant in the world for 11 days," said Tom Balistreri, one of the operators. "We have the record. We sell a ton of eggplant a day, and that's just for Summerfest. We also sell a lot at Festa Italiana and at Irish Fest, but at Irish Fest people mostly go for our pizza."

Venice Club does also sell pizza, Italian sausage sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, fried mushrooms and cauliflower. A combo platter, added this year, allows diners to add a side of fried vegetables to a sandwich order and has been a popular addition. Other than that, few things have changed.

Why mess with success?

"We've been doing this 35 years," Balistreri said during a recent afternoon. "We started out in a tent. Then, we went to a building over there (the space currently occupied by the Charcoal Grill). That was an old barracks. For people who are not familiar with this area, this land was an airport in the 1950s. During the '60s, in the Cold War, they made it a Nike missile site. These buildings were barracks. In the mid-1970s, they remodeled our building and we were there until about 2002."

Balistreri's parents started in the food industry in the late 1940s, and his sister operates the Venice Club restaurant on Calhoun Road in Brookfield. The restaurant is known for its fish fry, pizza and Italian dishes. At Summerfest, however, the eggplant dominates.

"We progressively put out product that was unknown," Balistreri said. "A lot of people will see an eggplant and not know what it is. The eggplant is a vegetable. The history of it, I think, came from Spain.

"We're basically frying a vegetable. We came up with an new way -- instead of the old style of cooking it, like our parents used to make it. Our parents used to slice it the long way and pan fry it and serve it with a marinara sauce.

"The first year we started with the eggplant here at Summerfest, we were cutting by hand. Trying to do that was almost impossible. I saw a friend of mine was going out of business and he had a bread slicer. I said, "If that thing can slice the bread, it could probably slice an eggplant. We put it through the bread slicer and were able to get more of a French fry-style product."

With customers streaming to the window and a band playing at the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse and one of his sons, Andrew, working nearby, Balistreri points to the eight fryers behind a prep counter.

"We constantly clean them, so you know you're getting a fresh product," he said. "It's not something people think about; when was the last time you changed the fryer? We change fryers twice a day, so we go through a lot of oil. We did a lot a trial and error over the years to find the right oil. Certain oils work for the eggplant and other ones don't."

What makes the eggplant so popular? Balistreri has a theory.

"Eggplant is a product you don't make at home," he said. "People just don't know how to cut it, how to season it and how to flour it.

"What we recommend, because most people don't have deep fryers at home, is that they go to a restaurant that does fry it. Once you've made it, you want to serve it. It's not a product that you like to say, 'Eat it tomorrow.' It'll get soggy. You want to get it out hot and crispy. That's the key. We top it with lemon and cheese. People really love it."

Like all Summerfest vendors, Balistreri finds that business is impacted by the weather.

"We keep records of the weather every year," he said. "It's a key. If you don't have good weather, you don't get the people. We've had years, at the end of the year we scratch our heads and say 'Well, we tried.' That's this business. You can't say 'Well, we had some bad weather; we're going to stay open two extra days.' It doesn't work that way. You just have to try to have a good product and hope for the best."