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Ike's Food and Cocktails
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| In Search of Quality, not Quantity | Happy Days | |
| Think about it … the
best restaurant meal you’ve ever had had very little to do with the
menu! The same gastronomic experience would have been unaffected if the
bill of fare had consisted of nothing but the few dishes you ordered—one
appetizer, one entrée, one dessert, perhaps. This paradox of sorts
suggests that menu length may be a contraindication of restaurant
quality: the likelihood of every dish being exemplary surely decreases
with their number.
My work travel this week took me to Los Angeles where I had two excellent meals at two restaurants that were different in every respect except for a couple, most prominently that they both featured only a handful of choices for what you get to eat. If you’re in or around Venice, check out the trendy, stylish Axe (pronounced "aashay"), 1009 Abbot Kinney Blvd. Or, in Gardena, and provided that you’re not averse to a hole-in-the-wall, cash-register-behind-plexiglass (but clean and friendly) shack, you’ve got to try the Peruvian rotisserie chicken (that’s about all you can get there, in various combinations) at Pollo a la Brasa, 16527 Vermont Ave. Both these places are within 15 mins. of LAX, incidentally, convenient for a bite before or after a flight. The Lunch also did a minimalist menu place this week, continuing its quest to populate the alphabetical index of our archive. We headed to Ike’s in downtown (next letter: Q). On entering the premises you think the name refers to the era that the décor is attempting to evoke, the odd color TV in the bar area aside, but a blurb titled "Blast from the Past" on the paper placemat refers to an Ike Isaacson who would have been proud of the restaurant—one assumes this is the father of the owner. The placemat provides additional reading material too, including dated exhortations to "Be Nice" and "Follow the Crowd." The restaurant space is mostly taken up by a large bar. Booths line walls and there’s a small area with more high tables and chairs crammed together than can permit a pleasant dining experience. The tables in this section, which is where we were seated, are tiny, and much of their space is taken up by the large condiment and sauce basket on each. The fittings and accessories have an antiquated look, albeit in the style of Restoration Hardware. A couple of salads, a ("triple threat") chili, roast beef and roast turkey sandwiches, a burger [served with a "healthy (?) portion" of fries], a tuna sandwich, a few additional items, that’s it for the menu. There wasn’t much scope for sharing an appetizer; we just ordered one dish each, in my case the tuna sandwich. Except it’s a grander version of a tuna sandwich—a seared Ahi Yellowfin tuna loin sandwich, "served rare, I hope that’s okay." There was an Asian thing going on with this item—it included sides of wasabi mayo and gari. This seemed like an innovative and interesting concept … a good cut of tuna, served appropriately rare and packaged as a sandwich, with pungent hits of wasabi and ginger to overcome the risk of blandness. The tuna was in fact excellent; it came as an inch-thick slab, smooth-textured, nary a hint of stringiness. The package itself, however, fell somewhat short of my expectations. The mayo had little more than a trace of the good stuff and only one half of the bun was toasted. The side of coleslaw that also accompanied the sandwich was crunchy but dry and uninteresting.
The typical half-dozen or so red and white wines each are available by the glass; I had a nondescript Cotes de Rhone to wash down the sandwich.
My preamble shouldn’t be taken to imply that restaurants with extensive menus cannot be excellent. I was also in Boston this week and had the best Afghani meal I’ve had in America (or in Afghanistan for that matter) at The Helmand, 143 First St., Cambridge. The restaurant (there’s a sibling place with the same name in San Francisco) is owned by the Karzai family (as in Hamid K, the current president of Afghanistan). Yes, it was a hectic travel week, but good meals on the road redeemed it. A |
So what was so special
about the fifties that the era now has a legendary status in Americana?
I suppose in a way it was our innocence. We’d won a war—in Europe—without
too much hardship to the general population. While Europe, especially
the British, had lived through the blitz under conditions of great
privation, America was still a land flowing with milk and honey. In
Britain the fifties marked the start of an iconoclastic period for the
arts. The painter Francis Bacon wowed art-critics with a new frenzied
energy. John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger was the start of
one of the most important literary movement in the twentieth century,
which the critics—always looking for a catchy title—dubbed The Angry
Young Men. In poetry Georgian traditions were being abandoned for the
direct vernacular of everyday speech where less was thought more.
Meanwhile—back at the ranch—in America we were now ready to enjoy
the fruits of Pax America and to turn our collective backs on the world.
Our women—ignore sexist remark, made in the spirit of the fifties—were
the prettiest in the world, our cars the largest. Whilst Johnny and Suzy
were dancing at the sock hop, their parents out for an evening would
have dined at a place like Ike’s, which is where The Lunch
congregated this past week.
Ike’s seems to have quite deliberately located itself in the most fifties looking part of downtown Minneapolis. Its neighbor is the venerable Murray’s that unlike Ike’s is truly from the fifties! Both restaurants sit in the shadows of the Multifoods Building, arguably another creation that looks like it was at least conceived in the same decade. Ike’s is festooned with plenty of wood and leather and affects a dark-look with heavy drapes and gold framed mirrors. For the fool hardy (it was drizzling and cold for September) there are two tables on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, whether they’re there for patrons or valets wasn’t readily apparent. "Follow the Crowd" seems to be the general motto of Ike’s and it directs you to the parking lot as well as to the establishment’s entrance. The middle of the restaurant is firmly occupied by a large bar that appears to be designed for counter-style eating. Even though the space is fairly large the bar makes for cramped space. There are very few "proper" dining tables, and the few that do exist are reserved for parties larger than two. We were directed to a high table with enough clutter (multiple bottles of sauces) that there wasn’t enough room for one never mind two. There are eight wines by the glass from which I chose a glass of jest red, a sweet, warm wine, served in a decent glass. The menu is exceedingly simple: chopped salad; side salad; seared ahi tuna sandwich; sandwiches from the carvery (beef or turkey); Ike’s burger; soup (daily special); chili; and fries. I ordered the special of the day, a portabello mushroom sandwich, which greatly exceeded my expectation by being quite delicious. The sandwich buns were nicely toasted, lined with onions and tomato slices, the mushrooms were meaty (but not too meaty) with a decent flavor. Wish I had tried something with real meat in it because I suspect that might be the house specialty but didn’t feel up to it. The dessert menu consisted of a cheese and chocolate cake, which we decided to forgo. A didn’t have any coffee on the principle that he wasn’t offered any. The bill came to $39.00. It would be easy, but incorrect, to assume that Ike’s is named after that much "liked" president, when in fact it’s named after an Ike Isaacson. A quick Google search didn’t shed anymore light on this mysterious Ike (perhaps the grandfather of the owner?). I felt like I had entered a time warp because the clientele of Ike’s is well dressed, with men mostly wearing business suits. It also made me realize how much I miss the atmosphere of downtown – sigh! B
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