RESTAURANTS: Only the flavors dance at corner Rumba
By Eric E. Harrison (Contact)
LITTLE ROCK — “Do you rumba?”
“Why, yes!”
“Well, take a rumba from one to 10.”
- Groucho Marx to an unidentified female foil in A Night at the Opera
You don’t dance at Rumba - that would be next door at Revolution, the other half of the restaurant-club combination that is the second establishment for Sticky Fingerz entrepreneurs Chris King and Suzon Awbrey.
At Rumba, the menu is “Mexi-Cuban,” and the hours and offerings are expanding, including a Saturday-Sunday brunch and, by the end of the month, all-week lunch.
At the far western end of the River Market District, where La-Harpe Boulevard, East Markham Street, Cumberland Street and President Clinton Avenue all come together, Rumba’s space has previously housed a couple of unsuccessful bar-centered establishments (remember the Pour House?).
The bar still dominates the decor, but the atmosphere is pleasantly down-at-heel, with seating at tables in the middle of the floor but mostly in semi-secluded and well-padded booths, plus tables on the fair-weather patio on the other side of a couple of garage doors. A very few gaudy Latin American touches perk up the basic brown of the color scheme.
Rumba’s regular menu offers a spread of sandwiches, salads, entrees and desserts with accents that span the Gulf of Mexico, and that extends to the new brunch menu as well.
The main selling point for brunch, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday and noon-3 p.m. Sunday, is the Build-Your-Own-Bloody-Mary-Bar.
Unlike similar attractions you may have encountered elsewhere, state law prohibits such extravagances as dip-your-own Bloody Mary from a punchbowl.
Here, $5 gets you a generous shot of vodka on the rocks in a tall glass, which you take to a bar station where sits Bloody Mary mix on ice (on our first visit there were two types, just one on the second) and a host of other potential ingredients, ranging from the traditional (two brands of Worcestershire sauce, lime quarters, seasoned salts, two kinds of hot sauce) to the unusual (three kinds of olives, including one stuffed with garlic, and even pickled brussels sprouts, which,we discovered, don’t taste very much different than unpickled brussels sprouts).
It seems ungrateful to gripe about what’s not on the bar, but we missed fresh celery (purists might riot) and celery salt.
We had to make a second trip to add Bloody Mary mix after we’d lowered the liquid level a bit - even with mix, Worcestershire, olives, lime, sprouts and salts, what we mostly tasted was vodka. Less ice, or letting us add ice gradually, might have helped.
The only one of the notquite-a-dozen brunch items that captured us was the tasty and filling Fritata ($8.99), a sort of open-faced omelet with Jack cheese, fresh tomatoes and not quite enough diced portobello mushrooms, with some slightly oily pan-fried potatoes on the side and a really nice “mini lemon blueberry muffin” ($1.79 a la carte for three) that was roughly the same size and color as the surrounding potato chunks andwhich we therefore almost overlooked.
We veered off the main menu to try a couple of Rumba’s tapas offerings, and were reasonably pleased, though not overly thrilled, with the mango citrus pork and Fuji apple skewers ($8), three good-size chunks of grilled pork skewered with some wimpy apple slivers, and the drunken mussels in cilantro, chile and white wine broth ($10).
The pork could have used some more marinating time, or longer contact with the apples, but was surprisingly moist nonetheless.
Although the broth packeda bit of a kick, the mussels just weren’t as “kicky” as we were expecting. And if there was any actual cilantro involved in the manufacture, it didn’t register. The mussels came with two slightly stale pita triangles, which were inadequate even if we had wanted to dip the remainder broth, which we didn’t.
From the regular lunch/dinner menu we can recommend the Fish Tacos ($8.49 for two),soft flour tortillas wrapping blackened, grilled or breaded tilapia topped with a corn-bearing salsa. Our grilled fish was fine but not lively; we probably would have been better off taste-wise with blackened. Underneath: Some innocuous Mexi-Cuban rice; on the side, some respectable black beans.
Our Paella Mojo ($16.99) was pleasant but a little less than the sum of its many and impressive parts - shredded chicken,shrimp, chorizo sausage, scallops and mussels in a tomato broth over rice. The mussels were actually spicier than their tapas cousins and also spicier than the tomato broth.
Service, from the same waitress, was good on both visits, even on the second when she was somewhat preoccupied with a large party on the patio. Brunch prices on the Web site are up to date, but lunch/dinner and tapas prices aren’t.
Rumba Address: 300 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock Hours: 4-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday;
noon-9 p.m. Sunday; opening for lunch daily Sept. 22 Cuisine: “Mexi-Cuban” Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D Alcoholic beverages: Full bar Reservations: Really big parties Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes (501) 823-0090 www.rumbarevolution.com
This article was published Friday, September 12, 2008.
Weekend, Pages 65 on 09/12/2008
