The Rumpus Room
2689 Main St., Vancouver
604 839-5780
$60 for dinner for two with cocktails, tax and tip
Cuisine: Retro comfort food
As a child of the seventies, the Christmas season never fails to evoke a warm, fuzzy nostalgia for shag carpeting, Shaun Cassidy, Dr. Pepper and cheese fondue. In the spirit of sentimentality, I recently da doo ron ronned it over to The Rumpus Room for a smorgasbord of kitsch.
At the heart of Hipsterville, Rachel Zottenberg, former director of the now-closed Grace Gallery, and David Duprey, owner of Narrow Lounge, have recreated a groovy wood-panelled rec room, circa 1977.
Squeezing past an old-school tabletop Donkey Kong video-game console stationed by the front door, I sank into a sagging acid-green couch, admired the dangling canopy of Plexiglas lampshades and macramé plant holders (just like mom used to make!) and perused a retro drinks list. Think gimlets, Harvey Wallbangers and Jim Beam root beer – to the latter you can add a vanilla scoop and a shot of Kahlua for a boozy, adult-style float.
Alas, my dinner date wasn't in the mood for playing any of the board games (Mousetrap, Boggle, Sorry, Clue) stacked beside the TV trays in the lounge area. She wasn't any more impressed by the cluttered bric-a-brac. ("Anybody could do this with a few trips to Value Village.") Or the tropical sunset mural wrapped around the bathroom. (But my cool older cousin had the exact same wallpaper in his bedroom.)
The frisky young man in a plaid, flannel shirt – the uniform of choice in this crowd, along with woolly beards and trucker hats – who asked for her phone number, only managed to confuse.
"He's toying with me," she said.
"No, he's fantasizing about his first babysitter."
So we moved to a tight window-side table set with pink poodle salt-and-pepper shakers and were immediately blasted with bottom-scorching heat emanating from beneath a hard wooden bench. How did these infernally oppressive hot seats ever pass the B.C. fire code?
The menu offers an odd assortment of classic suburban comfort food (grilled cheese, meatloaf, fried chicken) and fattening carnival fare (corn dogs, deep-fried pickles). The recipes have purportedly been updated for modern, healthy tastes by the supplementation of hormone-free meat and elimination of all processed ingredients.
But even though the kitchen's tangy house-made ketchup, creamy roasted garlic tartar and sour mustard dipping sauce do rival similar dips created by some of the better-known artisanal condiment makers around town, Ants on a Log just isn't the same without a sticky slathering of Cheez Whiz. Here, the celery sticks are spread with peanut butter and studded with sweetened cranberries.
We dove into our main courses with high hopes. In the past, I have been pleasantly surprised by the calibre of cooking at Narrow Lounge. In fact, it was there that I tasted the only homemade lasagna – layered with feathery thin sheets of pasta – that ever held a candle to my Aunt Rafaella's.
"There's no reason to have crappy food just because we're a lounge," I recall Mr. Duprey saying.
So why is the Rumpus Room's incredibly bland Mac and Cheese topped with a black crust that tastes like acrid blowtorch fumes and served bracingly cold in the centre? And why do starchy meatloaf slices (also served cold, as were the mashed potatoes) bring back memories of dehydrated onion-soup mix?
We sent both plates back. When they were returned a few minutes later, having been obviously zapped in a microwave, the potatoes were steaming hot, but the meatloaf had turned dark and rubbery – and the formerly tepid peas and corn had been left out to cool.
I went again the following week, this time with a different friend. We had a decent burger that was thick, relatively moist, generously topped with sautéed mushrooms and melted Swiss cheese – and served at an appropriately warm temperature. Poutine, doused in dark veal gravy and scattered with squeaky curds, was actually very good.
But spaghetti was overcooked, its tomato sauce choked by too much dried oregano. And the meatballs were pan-fried to a dry, chewy consistency without being braised in the tiniest lick of sauce.
I had been weirdly intrigued by the idea of deep-fried Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. (The dessert menu also boasts deep-fried Mars bars and Oreo cookies). But after a 45-minute wait for doughy-battered melted chocolate, without so much as a passing glance from our gruff server, my enthusiasm had waned.
Indeed, I felt much like a petulant seven-year-old from Christmas past when being told that I couldn't get up from the kitchen table until I had finished every last carrot. But this time, the sulkiness was quickly transcended by the warm, fuzzy remembrance that I no longer have to eat all the dreck on my plate and am now allowed to talk back.
Alexandra Gill