Jungle Fever

I had heard from a friend that the Elephant Bar, a jungle-themed restaurant-and-bar chain based in California, was a hot and steamy place for singles. “I went to one outside of Los Angeles, and it was an obnoxious, party kind of place,” Tony said. “A lot of under-30-year-olds making a scene.”

I was eager to see if the same sort of meat market was going on inside the Elephant Bar Restaurant, the company’s five-month-old local outpost — though I suspected Overland Park might be an unlikely setting for it. So I phoned ahead to find out the best time to arrive for both eating and gawking. When, to paraphrase Pink, was the party getting started?

A perky young woman told me that the Elephant Bar didn’t take reservations and said that if I wanted to avoid an annoying wait, my group should arrive no later than 6 p.m. “Because after that, we get into our rush period here, like, really busy,” she said with authority. “There could be a 20-minute wait.”

Because I had planned to take friends who detest restaurants that don’t offer reservations but prefer instead to make patrons sit around waiting for a table (I’m not fond of the practice myself), I had to coordinate everyone to arrive as close to 6 p.m. as possible. Fortunately, we were seated at a decent table right away.

But as our quartet of voyeurs eagerly looked around, we realized that we had been deceived. Perhaps in Southern California, the land of tanned and lithe young bodies, a contrived venue like the Elephant Bar — with its coyly titled cocktails and faux-exotic décor — might be an “obnoxious, party place.” In Overland Park, the scene was strictly squaresville: chubby, balding men in polyester slacks accompanied by their dour spouses; flabby foursomes in jeans and pullovers; and tired-looking young couples already saddled with two or three wriggling kids. Hot and steamy it was not.

“I heard this was kind of a singles scene,” I asked our snappy server, Heather, who looked at me as if I were insane. “This is the suburbs,” she said. “We’re kind of family-oriented out here.”

From the sound system, Britney Spears’ “Toxic” echoed over all the hard surfaces — uncloaked tables, amber-colored light fixtures, bamboo paneling, the shiny walls of the exhibition kitchen. But most of the patrons wouldn’t have known Britney Spears from Dusty Springfield, which could be one reason the menu hyped a promotion for the restaurant’s “Senior Explorers Discount Card.” That’s right: If you’re over 60, there’s a discount for you — just not on liquor. Sorry, Grandma!

“It’s the Rainforest Café for boring adults,” said my friend Bob, who had to comfort himself with a Ciroc Martini when he realized that this plebian Elephant Bar had nothing in common with the really famous one, the elegant lounge in the swanky Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Cambodia, playground of celebrities like Jackie Onassis and novelist Somerset Maugham.

That’s not to say Overland Park’s Elephant Bar doesn’t have a playground quality. It does. Unfortunately, it’s more Disneyland than any exotic locale. But sex and décor aren’t the selling points here anyway. As the company’s Web site brags, the pachyderm in the restaurant’s name refers as much to the amount of food it serves as to mysterious, far-off lands: “We’ll take you on a taste safari through exotic destinations to find ‘elephant-size’ portions of fresh culinary delights.”

The portions are large, though not specifically elephant-sized. As for it being a “taste safari,” the restaurant doesn’t come close to delivering on that big promise. The menu is a cross-cultural conglomeration — Mexican fajitas, Santa Barbara burgers, Hawaiian Chicken Luau — with a vaguely Pan-Asian motif. It speaks volumes that, like Denny’s, the Elephant Bar boasts a menu full of color photographs of many of the dishes. There’s nothing wrong with the color-catalog technique of presenting food, as long as the dishes on the page actually resemble the stuff that comes out of the kitchen. At the Elephant Bar, that’s a tall order.

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Take, for example, the Steamer Trunk Super Sampler of appetizers. We ordered one to share on the night I dined with Bob, Mike, Roger and Marilyn (who is over 60 but flatly refused to apply for a “Senior Explorers Card”; it wouldn’t have covered her Ivory Coast Margarita). When the jumble of nachos, chicken tenders, buffalo wings and chunks of garlic toast arrived, Mike noted that it was “all-American baseball-park snacks tossed on a plate.” It bore a remote resemblance to the photo on the menu, unlike the Wok-Fired Crispy Teriyaki Chicken and Vegetables that Roger ordered for dinner. On the menu, it had looked enticingly succulent; in reality it appeared to be well-lacquered chunks of petrified wood. I’ve never knowingly eaten petrified and lacquered wood, but I nabbed a cube from Roger’s plate. I promptly spat it out.

Happily, Mike’s Kona BBQ Ribs turned out to be meaty and juicy, though the barbecue sauce tasted like brown sugar and tomato paste. Bob’s E-Bar Safari Steak was tender but had been marinated in God knows what to cause such a sour aftertaste. After two or three bites, he pushed the plate away.

I loved my Baja Bite Fish Tacos, fried fish tucked inside soft tortillas dripping with a tasty tomatillo-cilantro cream. And Marilyn’s Tiger Prawns with Lobster Sauce at least had a little oomph to it.

Heather told us that the Overland Park location is the only Elephant Bar that doesn’t serve wood-fired pizzas. “That’s because we gutted an existing restaurant called Chevy’s, and they didn’t have a pizza oven already,” she explained.

I suppose there’s a logic in that, though it escapes me. And I had a similarly befuddling experience a few nights later, when Bob and I supped at the circular bar, bathing in a blue glow from the recessed lighting above giant metal elephant heads. Our server was a ditsy blonde as clueless as any I’ve encountered. She “forgot” to tell us about the half-price appetizer specials offered between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m., and after Bob couldn’t decide what he wanted for dinner, she turned in my order and never returned to the table until she brought it out. While I quietly nibbled on the dullest version of pad Thai I’ve ever tasted, Bob perused the menu and waffled between Coconut Tiger Prawns and chicken tenders, finally ordering them both. His instructions were apparently too confusing for the waitress. She wound up bringing the chicken tenders, but she also delivered ordinary fried shrimp instead of the more expensive prawns.

Equally inexplicable was the dessert menu, which listed traditional American sweets — such as fruit cobblers and root beer floats — as “Wild Desserts.” A giant slab of coffee ice cream slathered with fudge sauce was called a Mud Pie. Pie? Hunk was more like it. If the ice cream had been more chocolatey and the restaurant more courageous, it might have been called an Elephant Dropping. Seriously. (That substance is reported to have aphrodisiac qualities. Not that I’ve ever tasted it.)

By that point, the bar had started filling up with singles, though none was under 35 and all were surprisingly well-behaved. It was noisy but not raucous, convivial but not alluring. It might be a jungle out there, but in the Elephant Bar, the animals, like the cuisine, couldn’t have been more tame.

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