Bars make a community in ways that restaurants cannot. Slaking your thirst is hardly the principal good they serve. They are a place to hang out, to meet new people with whom you can cultivate long-term (or short-term) friendships, to find out what’s happening in the neighborhood. They’re a more communal, more urban version of talking with your neighbor over the backyard fence.

If there’s a kitchen attached to a bar, it’s usually secondary to the latter’s purpose. The menu is likely to be predictable: sandwiches, burgers, deep-fried appetizers, perhaps an entrée or two such as meatloaf. The food’s there so that you can grab a quick lunch or to facilitate consumption of one more pint, but what’s the point of reviewing it?

This question took on some urgency this week. B’s luxury British automobile, which has generally bucked the brand’s reputation for unreliability, was finally in the shop with a litany of symptoms. I met him at the dealership downtown and, seeing Runyon’s across the street, we wandered unthinkingly into it.

Runyon’s has been a fixture of the warehouse district for some time, although I had never been in it. The most prominent indication of the bar’s vintage is the beat-up mosaic tile floor, laid out in white with green-and-red snowflake designs evoking Christmas year-round. The evocation was singularly inappropriate on this early summer afternoon, but then daytime isn’t the ideal time to get the feel of a bar. I would guess that in this case especially the place is transformed dramatically in the evening—with Sex World a couple of doors down it’s doubtless a lot more interesting then.

The garish neon elsewhere on the block can make it easy to miss Runyon’s, but there’s more to the place than meets the eye. The narrow storefront belies an interior space that more than makes up in depth what it lacks in width. Limited sidewalk seating is available and there are booths, high and low tables, and bar seating inside.

The walls and ceiling are painted black, and the former are covered with framed photographs, posters, and quotations. Many of the photographs are of "Runyon Traveling All Stars," customers who have had their pictures taken in odd spots around the globe while sporting the bar’s T-shirts. The quotations suggest a libertarian, free-market ethos on the part of the proprietor, although my favorite one is from an impeccable liberal: "You should never trust air you can’t see"—Woody Allen. Quite appropriate for a bar.

Unfortunately, we weren’t in a drinking mood so I can’t even tell you what’s on tap. I first ordered water to drink but then followed B in getting an Amstel (bottle). As for the food, I’d suggest avoiding the meatloaf.

A

We lunched at Runyon’s and why this perfidy you ask? My car (not the SUV that A cuttingly referred to in his review last week) was (and still bloody well is) at a dealership next door. A promised loaner car was not immediately forthcoming and since this was the only day we could do The Lunch, A drove to the dealership and we simply walked across Washington to Runyon’s.

Now if you’re not into chicken wings, washed down with copious quantities of beer, then Runyon’s is probably not the place for you. It’s certainly not a place for an amateur gourmand, recently on a diet—attempting to loose an extra ten pounds—, trying to write a column on food! Now don’t get me wrong, Runyon’s makes no pretense to culinary excellence. It presents itself, truly, as a noisy bar with food that tastes no different even after the consumption of several pints of beer. The bar (I can’t bring myself to call it a restaurant) is under new ownership but the motif (now greatly aged) of celebrity pictures interlaced with pictures of bar patrons—wearing Runyon’s t-shirts—taken in far-flung places continues. The pictures are postcards that seem to say, having fun, missing Runyon’s and wish you were here. The wait staff wears black t-shirts, which I thought clever twelve years ago are now decidedly not, with pithy slogans like "we cheat drunks and tourists". The walls have framed quotations from the famous and the fictitious that have been in place unchanged for over a decade.

We took a corner table in the back and were immediately offered a drink. From the fairly broad list of beers I chose an Amstel Light. The menu lists foods conducive to easy preparation and for the consumption by people eating at odd bar hours. The piece de resistance surely must be the wings, since they get there own category on the menu and which claim to be an "award winning 20 year recipe". I considered sampling them for you, dear readers, but the flesh proved weaker than the spirit. Appetizers, soup and salads are grouped together on the menu under an unlabelled category; this includes items like shrimp, tomato soup (which I nearly ordered), chili, fries and a couple of desultory salads. Hamburgers get their own section on the menu and lists seven hamburgers but basically the numbers are made up by varying the cheese and toppings (oliveburger seemed interesting: sliced green olives with cheddar cheese). Meatloaf and sliced baked ham, both served with "real" mashed potatoes and skillet gravy find their way under a section titled: Runyon’s "COMMERCIAL". A—brave soul—ordered the meatloaf from this, which turned out to be a large (could this be the reason why it’s called "COMMERCIAL"?) entrée and to my taste it fell somewhere between plastic through the first stage of extrusion and cardboard that had been softened by having sat in grease overnight. Of course I exaggerate, but for the skillet gravy it was a totally forgettable dish. The flip side of the menu is given over to sandwiches entirely: roast beef, corned beef, turkey, Rueben and grilled cheese. Surprisingly the sandwiches also include a veggie burger (surprising because it doesn’t find a place under the separate hamburger category) and this—to my mind at least—was the safest bet on the menu and I ordered it. It’s served with a small green salad but you’re out of luck if you want a salad dressing other than thousand island or blue cheese. What can one say about a veggie burger? I will say this much that it wasn’t dry or wafer-like like some veggie burgers, I can’t absolutely swear to this but it didn’t seem to be out of a box.

The bill for the fare ($28.00) was more than what one should expect to pay for a veggie burger, meatloaf and two beers.

Runyon’s is a sad place with the fading pictures of past "Runyon’s traveling all stars" on its Wall of Fame. The pictures harken back to a more innocent time when the twenty-something of the late eighties (yours truly included) made this a popular watering hole for people working downtown. Indeed the popularity was such once that the then owner, ruinously, started another Runyon’s at a different downtown location. Now it all seems so pointless.