LORAN — Drive a few miles northwest of the Carroll-Stephenson county line and travelers will find themselves slipping into one of those stretches of remote farm country where folks forget they’re in a hurry.

Blink and you might glide right past it, but keep your eyes peeled and an old white schoolhouse, complete with its original bell tower, comes into view. You might not know it at first glance, but inside is a place that’s passed the test of time, remaining part of the community for more than 100 years, first as a school, and in recent years a bar and grill.

That old school building is Sandy’s Slurp ’n Burp in Loran, a small-town bar and grill with a big personality tucked into the Driftless Area hills in the southwestern corner of Stephenson County — or as a sign inside reads: in “greater downtown Loran,” a village where there are times when there are more cows than people.

Though a familiar part of the local landscape for years, the bar recently welcomed some new faces behind the bar: siblings Sandy Blair and Jeff Moore. Blair is the face of place, as manager, and Moore owns it. Before they took over, the brother-sister duo from the Orangeville area spent four years running the Ol’ Grizzly bar in Browntown, Wisconsin, before selling it last year.

The siblings’ latest stop behind a bar has brought them back to a place where they feel right at home — which is what they want their customers to feel like, too.

“We were raised on a dairy farm,” Blair said. “The opportunity opened up with this place being for sale, and it’s out in the country like we like it. We like farm life. We like farmers. We wanted to make it a local hangout for the community and farmers and everyone else.”

Blair has been in the bar business or 40 years, many of those at Dave’s Place in Lanark, and brings a lifetime of experience flipping burgers, slinging suds, and listening to the countless stories that come with a job being everyone’s best friend.

Moore and Blair have kept much of the building’s unique architecture as an old school intact, and its history is still on display, including a bar bell. The school’s original bell from 1906, which weighs about 230 pounds, has been restored and hangs above the bar. The original 3/8-inch-thick blackboards also have been repurposed, listing the daily food and drink specials. Elsewhere, a photo on the wall shows what the building looked like during its school days.

That sense of history is part of the charm for the regulars who drop in several times a week, and for the travelers who find the place for the first time.

“We have a lot of regulars who come in, and we get a lot of people who are from out of town that stop as they’re driving through,” Blair said. “We try to cater to everyone in the community and outside of the community. We have a variety of people, and the locals have been really good with us.”

There’s no shortage of tales from the building’s school days. A drum from the old school hangs inside, and black-and-white photos line the walls. Blair said she’s working with former owner John Knoup to bring in more mementos, and the historical society in Pearl City has pieces as well. She’s hoping to slowly assemble the pieces so that the place becomes more than just a bar — not just a connection to the past, but to the way small communities such as Loran continue to play a role today.

“We like hearing about it,” she said. “Especially the elderly; they really inform you about a lot of stuff in here, and it’s been very interesting to learn about it. They like that they can sit here and talk with us about it.”

And talk they do. Chatting is a kind of currency at Sandy’s Slurp ’n Burp: locals catching up, farmhands comparing notes on weather and yields, hunters drifting in from the woods, travelers announcing where they’re from before they’ve even ordered.

Blair’s son Jordan, who also works behind the bar, says that’s his favorite part.

“I like the people here,” he said. “I like hearing the stories about when this was an old school.”

As for the irreverent rhyming in the bar’s name, that was Knoup’s idea. He owned the bar for nearly 15 years, and was also one of the students who went there when it was a school, a place where teachers would frown on slurping or burping. Knoup sold the bar in 2023 to Paul and Marilyn Loar, who sold it to Moore last year.

Blair has brought much of the menu from the Ol’ Grizzly to the Slurp and Burp, but made sure to keep some local favorites, like the Loran Burger, a Slurp ’n Burp tradition — a cheeseburger with barbecue sauce — which is a nod to the old owners and the tavern’s roots. Another item that stuck around, with a slight tweak, are the Farmer Fries, an appetizer that had been made with fries, bacon, queso cheese and jalapenos. Blair opted for tater tots instead, a change she said that fits the place.

“We changed it up some, but kept it basic,” she said. “I like to make food that I know country people like.”

One of the things that people like are her pizzas, another menu item she brought from the Ol’ Grizzly menu.

“They’re homemade, and everyone seems to love them,” Blair said. “We sell a lot of them. It’s very filling pizza, and we don’t skimp on them. For two people, it takes all they have to eat one.”

Daily specials lean toward traditional bar and grill fare: tacos on Tuesdays, pizza specials on Thursdays, fish on Fridays (made with thin, beer-battered, deep-fried cod), and a little of anything on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The bar’s laid-back, friendly feel extends to everything the Slurp ’n Burp does: bands once or twice a month, a banquet room that seats 40 and hosts everything from snowmobile club meetings to family gatherings, and a deck that looks out to the surrounding countryside. The Loran Fest each August still fills the burg with vendors, bands and a tractor parade, which became this year the event’s largest, with nearly 60 tractors. Trunk-or-Treat brings out the kids in October.

Feeling lucky? You can try your hand at one of the five gambling machines at the bar.

While the food and drink keeps people in their seats, the atmosphere is what keeps them coming back.

“We want them to be able to come in, feel relaxed and make them feel like they’re part of the bar,” Blair said. “I want them to enjoy our food and the conversations in here, and leave not as a visitor but as a friend and come back.”

Out in Loran, entertainment has always been more about ingenuity than amenities. Blair laughs when she tells a story about some recent visitors.

“I had a group of motorcyclists come in from the Woodstock area, and they asked me, ‘What do you do here for entertainment?’ I said, ‘You’re looking at it — we sit around and talk.’” She told them about the kids who make their own fun in the fields, even as the riders watched some climb haystacks outside. “That’s what we did when we were kids,” she said. “We didn’t have all this technology.”

As long as a road sign along state Route 73 north of Lake Carroll keeps pointing the way toward Loran, travelers will continue to find the Slurp N’ Burp — some by chance and others by choice. It’s the kind of place the Blair wants people to remember — just like the name.

“We’re just a local pub with cold beer, hot food and warm hearts,” Blair said, “and if you come in as a stranger, odds are you won’t leave that way.

Sandy’s Slurp ‘n Burp, 4319 S. Loran Road in Loran, is open from 11 a.m. to midnight Tuesday through Sunday (kitchen is open until 9 p.m. each night). Find it on Facebook or call 815-205-4744 for carryout orders or more information.