Back Bay Rowing & Running Club Restaurant Still Leads SCP Pack
This is the issue in which the Business Journal’s restaurant list appears. The OCBJ ranks the top 25 restaurants according to their number of meals served in 1999. (See list on page 24 and related story on page 3.)
Seems reasonable to me.
However, in talking with brother and sister team Willie and Jenny Rosoff, who own Back Bay Rowing & Running Club Restaurant in South Coast Plaza, a very interesting premise came up regarding the restaurant rankings. It was fascinating enough to me to command a half-hour discussion, and it might be of interest to my readers as well.
Willie’s theory does hit the nail on the head. He surmises that in the restaurant business, bigger doesn’t necessarily equate to more popular. Sometimes it just means bigger. He says, “The real question is how to figure out which places are popular and not just big? The way I level the playing field is by re-sorting the information on the chart. I divide the number of meals served by the number of seats that each restaurant has. The result tells me how busy each restaurant is, and therefore, how popular it is. And popularity is critical in this business.”
In re-sorting, using this “popularity” equation, we find that some of the bigger restaurants are indeed quite popular. And, Willie says, “You’ll also see some of the smaller places right up there in popularity. The Cottage, Back Bay Rowing & Running Club and Watson Drug are just a few of the smaller places that achieve high ranking in the popular category.”
The Cottage,near the bottom of the OCBJ list with only 152,200 meals served, but also with only 72 seats,would be ranked much higher on Willie’s list. That’s because last year The Cottage served 2,114 meals per seat, whereas some of the behemoths had a much lower per-seat average. Then, there’s Watson Drugs. By averaging 1,500 meals for each of its 110 seats, it pushes its way from almost the bottom of the list to the higher echelons. ( I get the last laugh here because as I’ve pointed out in this space before, the century-old Watson Drugs & Soda Fountain in Orange, with its terrific, freshly cooked diner food, courts a crowd sometimes as illustrious as the fancy restaurants, and it’s my favorite casual hangout.)
Hopefully, sharing this with you will result in a more appreciative nod to the restaurant industry, the only industry where so much comes into play in keeping a customer, usually without a lot of bottom-line comfort for the owner.
South Coast Plaza’s Gem
Now, it’s time to talk about the eclectic menu and philosophy of cooking that keeps Back Bay Rowing & Running Club so busy and me a regular customer. For years, this place near the Jewel Court has been at the top of my list for South Coast Plaza dining. Quality of food alone will get me in the door again. Every soup, sauce and dressing is made fresh daily. Foods,all served in very generous portions,are cooked to order. It’s a revelation that such a small kitchen can put out so much good food.
I have always enjoyed the diversity of the menu. It’s not always easy for me to choose what I want to eat because there are several house specialties that suit me, and the sandwiches alone are a very interesting melange.
The salad bar has long been the most acclaimed in OC. Dozens of fresh food items are replaced at a constant clip. However, in this category, it is hard to ignore the a la carte Shanghai ginger chicken salad tossed with crispy noodles and light dressing.
There are at least four soups per day. The French onion is packed with flavor and sustenance and draped in a generous cloak of cheese. The thick, long-simmered chili is famous in its own right.
The restaurant is well known for its potato side dishes, all made with skin-on rosebud potatoes. It’s nearly impossible to pass up the original version, with onions and special seasonings, or when feeling a little more decadent, the same ones covered with bacon and two kinds of melted cheese. Awesome.
There are 27 sandwiches and burgers on the menu. The Cobb club is fascinating: everything you’d get in the salad is piled high on toasted sourdough bread. The BLT with avocado on grilled sourdough is one of my favorites. The “Telephone Meatloaf” sandwich is wildly popular. It got its name from the people who called in wanting to know if it was on the day’s menu when it was run as a sometime special. Two others I often order are the tuna with melted Tillamook cheese and the hot ham with honey-mustard dressing on grilled Squaw bread. Burgers come in about every fashion you can imagine.
Then, there are the legendary classics. That good meatloaf with lumpy mashed potatoes, the pot roast reminiscent of mom’s cooking, the pasta with grilled chicken. Fresh turkey is like having a good holiday dinner any time. There’s a great curry dish: a choice of chicken or beef is served with grilled seasonal vegetables and brown rice and a seductive curry sauce. The ginger chicken stir-fried in a wok could have been lifted from a Chinese kitchen. The meat is quickly seared with seasonal vegetables and a bit of sesame- and ginger-flavored sauce. It comes with brown rice. The roasted chicken is juicy, yet crisp on the outside, and sports extra flavor from the sprinkling of fresh herbs while cooking. It comes with a side of lumpy mashed potatoes and green beans with a touch of garlic. For a Mexican mood, I’d recommend the tacos stuffed with grilled chicken.
For dessert, the classic cobbler is marvelous, or take along one of the huge, house-baked cookies (five varieties).
It says a lot that the restaurant opened in 1979 and has never slowed down. Heading the tenacious crew is long-time general manager Don Bruyn. It makes a difference that this is a fresh-every-day operation with owner involvement and loyal employees.
AT A GLANCE
BACK BAY ROWING & RUNNING CLUB RESTAURANT
Location: South Coast Plaza, lower level, near Jewel Court
Phone: (714) 641-0118
Prices: Salad bar $7.95 for all you can eat ($5.95 with entr & #233;e), soups and chili $2.95 to $4.75, sandwiches $6.25 to $8.95, house specialties $5.75 to $12.95, desserts $1.95 to $5.25
