An uproarious restaurant review

Here, in its entirety, is an uproarious restaurant review by Jane Snow, Beacon Journal resdtaurant critic, who pushes that title to its highest level. It was published on page B2 on Thursday, March 12, 1987.

DINING OUT
Red Pepper Steak House
2661 Barber Road Norton 745-0202
Hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday, through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to midnight Saturday, and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday
Entree price range: $5.25 to $17.50
Wheelchair access: dining room, yes; restrooms, no
Drinks: martini, $1.65 / Reservations: accepted for groups of 15 or more
Credit cards: not accepted.

Headline: RED PEPPER: EATS ON THE CHEAP

We knew we were in for an unusual evening when we spotted the produce stand between two tables. Cauliflower was going for 80 cents a head. Not a bad price, but hey, was this a restaurant or a roadside market?

The produce stand turned out to be small potatoes compared to the other oddities we encountered at the Red Pepper Steak House. Was it our imagination, or did most of the customers resemble sumo wrestlers? All evening they squeezed (with difficulty) in and out of the vinyl booths, on trip after trip to the salad bar. The crazy salad bar is a story in itself, but more on that later.

Suffice it to say that the Red Pepper Steak House is not your average restaurant. Basically, it's a homey, truck-stop kind of place with low, low prices and a kitchen that specializes in bulk, not nuances of flavor. The food is pretty bad, but there's a lot of it. There's also a lot of atmosphere, of the down-home variety. We're not talking fancy. Margarine, for example, is served in big plastic tubs plunked down on the salad bar.

The decor is funky-utilitarian. Petitions and newspaper clippings are taped to the front door. Children's crayon drawings are taped to the cash register. Trophies -- owner Louis `Bony' Juhasz was a bantamweight football star in the ' 30s -- are everywhere.

Walls are covered with sheet paneling and white bricks, the expanse relieved here and there with panels of velvet-flocked wallpaper.Silverware is wrapped in paper napkins, and there's A-1 sauce on every table.

The attraction here, judging from our fellow diners, is the salad bar. The Red Pepper uses the term loosely; salad is just a sideline. The all-you-can-eat bar is an extravaganza of salad fixings and Crock Pots and steam tables filled with an astounding array of lukewarm food.

We can't begin to remember everything, but here's a sampling: Baked beans, caramelized onions, corn, potato chips, cauliflower, deep-fried yellow squash, Spanish rice, mashed potatoes, gravy, broasted potatoes, spaghetti, corned beef and cabbage, sauerkraut, vegetable rice, toasted hot dog and hamburger buns, red Jell-O, fresh grapefruit and orange wedges, and a bowlful of apples.

The `hot' food ranged in temperature from tepid to cool, and with\ one or two exceptions it was viciously overcooked. The cauliflower was a mushy gray; the corn was parched and wrinkled. You've heard of mystery meat? This was mystery food, on a grand scale.

Most of the stuff was unseasoned, and some of it was just awful. The spaghetti a la Franco American and the Spanish rice come to mind. Our favorites were the thick potato chips, the caramelized onions and the mashed potatoes, which were the real thing. Our least favorite was what looked like breaded chicken strips, but turned out to be strips of deep-fried breading.
They did smell faintly of chicken, though.

The salad bar is $3.75 a la carte, or free with meals. We recommend ordering a meal. The cooked-to-order food is much better than the steam-table stuff.

An entree of deep-fried catfish ($6.50), in fact, was more than acceptable. The breading was light, crunchy, and practically grease-free. The fish was served whole (minus the head), and the flesh was flaky and sweet. The round fries -- deep-fried potato slices -- that accompanied it were good,
too.

Red Pepper, which bills itself as a steakhouse, offers just three steaks. The prices are ridiculously low ($6.75-$7.75), so we can't complain too much about our fatty T-bone ($7.75), the top-of-the-line model. It certainly looked gorgeous sizzling on our plate. It was at least an inch thick, and must have weighed three-quarters of a pound. It could have been juicier, though, and it wasn't the most flavorful piece of meat we've ever eaten. Fully a third of it was gristle and fat.

When we inquired about dessert, the waitress steered us toward the Jell-O on the salad bar. Dinner for two was just $19.67, plus tip.