Perhaps in the age of microchips and instant everything, we need a new frisson with every meal. Or maybe in the narcissistic 80s, the age of anxiety, we yearn for the good old days when we sat in high chairs and Mommy beguiled us into opening our mouths for the choo-choo. Something has to account for the latest trend in restaurants. In the past few years, we’ve gone through a spate of dinner theaters in which someone is “murdered” during the first course and the murderer unmasked by the time dessert rolls around. We’ve had restaurants built around eras and personalities–Fedora’s evocation of the 30s, for example, and Sabrina’s homage to Bogart. Certainly nostalgia for the 50s must have helped ensure the phenomenal popularity of Ed Debevic’s.
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Outside, windows are boarded up with weather-beaten doors. As you enter the bar, you pass through a pair of screen doors, one red, one green, both worn. and peeling, under a sign that reads “Hey Don’t Slam the Door.” Two large rooms downstairs and a mezzanine featuring pool tables and pinball machines make up the bar area. There’s also a ladies’ room near one of the exits, just below an enormous bison head, with an unusual feature. As you walk in, you see a life-sized figure of a man with his back to the door, leaning one hand against the wall and arched over a urinal. His fly is open, but the pretense stops just short of letting it all hang out.
But the place is virtually spotless. Floors are sanded, clean, and shiny, the temperature is comfortable throughout, and the service is a lot more accommodating than one gets in a real establishment of this sort.
The menu did have some weak spots, however. The one fish we tried, salmon ($14.95), though it was done rare in the center as requested and was obviously fresh, was grilled and not barbecued as the menu had promised. It needed more than the anemic glaze it had to bring out its flavor, and it was not well served by the soggy red-skinned potatoes that kept it company. And though “Fresh fish guaranteed” is emblazoned on the menu, this does not apply to crab, for all four varieties on our Mess o’ Crabs ($16.95)–snow, Dungeness, blue, and Jonah–had been frozen, as our waitperson reluctantly admitted. Served in a huge metal tray with overboiled corn on the cob and red-skinned potatoes, everything in this dish tasted waterlogged (except the excellent garlicky herb sauce the blue crabs were in). Skip the linguine unless you have a special fondness for ordinary, commercial pasta. We tried it with crab sauce ($5.95 a half-order, $8.95 a full), and the result was dull and overly sweet, with only the barest hint of crustacean.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
