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Going Nowhere

No tropical hot spot, Rhumba leaves you cold.

A A A Comments By Jason Sheehan Thursday, Apr 17 2003

Mark Manger

Isle be seeing you: Rhumba attracts the crowds, but it's no culinary hot spot.

Details

950 Pearl Street, Boulder
303-442-7771
Ho urs: Lunch 11:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Friday
1-4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
Dinner starting at 4 p.m. daily

Conch chowder: $4.50
Crab cakes: $9.95
Pork dumplings: $6.95
Conch fritters: $7.95
Salsa sampler: $4.95
Rhumba curry: $14.95
Cuban sandwich: $9.95
Fish tacos: $12.95
Filet: $23.95

Closed Location

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Shoemakers -- that's what Sean likes to call chefs who are simply going through the motions of cooking without displaying any of the blood, sweat and passion that make great food. And that's exactly what Rhumba's kitchen is doing: making shoes. The cooks here are more assembly-line workers than artists, more bookkeepers than poets. They've got the basic trick of kitchen work down -- they can move tables and they can cook the numbers -- but there's no love in what they do. It shows in the dining room, it shows in the disaffected service, and, most important, it shows on the plate.

By the time Sean and I waddled out after our meal -- feeling bloated, which is no way to feel after eating Caribbean food -- the snow had picked up dramatically. He took off in one direction to hitch a ride up the canyon; I walked off in the other to find a drink. And in the snow, I realized what bothered me most about Rhumba. While some places have the magic to transport you to strange latitudes -- be it the Lower Keys, the Left Bank in Paris or the banks of the Mekong River -- not once during either of my meals there did I forget for a second where I was: at the foot of the high country, with a storm blowing in.

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