Rugby: Looks Aren't Everything

By Eve Zibart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, Nov. 17, 2006

A few weeks ago, when Ralph Lauren passed through his new boutiques in town, he left the staff of Rugby Cafe, which adjoins the Rugby store in Georgetown, all atwitter. "He loved us, but he hated the store," one waiter conferred excitedly upon another. "He said this was really hip, but he wouldn't have been caught dead hanging out there when he was 25."

It's hard to decide which part of that report is stranger.

Had the designer really had no input into the shop? It does, after all, take its tone from his new Rugby label, a high-end take on that peculiar but obviously profitable market: suburban youths who want street cred that cries money. Had the rather more familiar preppy nostalgia of the cafe decor reassured the foremost reinventor of soft-focus Americana? Or did he think that the cafe's one-size-fits-all panino pattern -- tasty and prettily toasted bread filled only about 70 percent with cute but generally pedestrian ingredients -- made for a smart price point?

Okay, Lauren probably didn't spend that much time on the question. But maybe he should have, because the cafe, which is part espresso bar, part smoothie bar, part sandwich shop and (sometime soon) mostly bar bar, is supposed to be the prototype for a chain. And, so far, it's about as mixed a blessing as the boutique.

Here's the "style": The clothes are like Nautica for Orvis, sporting clothes for the SUV driver with wrestler's hair and tattooed calves: quilted parkas and cracked-leather vintage motorcycle jackets, Harris tweed cargo pants and distressed jeans, rep-tie-stripe bustier dresses with sparkly trim, leather jodhpurs, skinny boys'-school blazers to be worn with the collars turned up and so on. (If you want to see this acted out even more elaborately, go to the Collection at Chevy Chase, where the fully luxe Ralph Lauren boutique looks like a Mayerling hunting lodge downstairs and Carole Lombard's boudoir up.)

Actually, all you really need to consider is the logo: the word Rugby and a skull and crossbones. Jack Sparrow, it ain't.

Hence the cafe, which suggests a modern "Dead Poet's Society" great room: a couple of rugby-stripe upholstered couches opposite old round-back library chairs and a few equally vintage leather armchairs; faded college team photos; glossy, midnight-blue tongue-and-groove paneling in the halls and restrooms; an old skull-and-crossbones poison warning; a scull in the ceiling (intentional pun?); and wood and exposed brick -- dotted with posters of the Rolling Stones, Joe Dallesandro in Andy Warhol's "Trash," the Ramones, etc., like tattoos for the wall. (No, the "bones" of the logo aren't oars.)

The crowd is a small but interesting mix of Georgetown University students, postgrads with laptops, high schoolers doing the M Street Saturday night crawl, couples (of all varieties), a few older neighbors, family groups and a few tourists, but until Rugby gets its long-awaited liquor license, it'll be hard to tell whether it's a place where many 25-year-olds will want to hang out.

Here are the good things: The staff, though sometimes short-handed, is unfailingly pleasant and attentive. The coffees are good; the smoothies fresh and generous. (Some have milk; vegans or lactose-intolerants might want to ask.)

It stocks old-fashioned six-ounce Coke and Sprite in bottles, a couple of carbonated orange drinks and bottled water by the liter, and if you want plain water, it's cleverly delivered in recycled wine bottles, which not only looks nice but is easy on the space, and the ice is delivered with slices of lemon and lime. Salt and pepper is just Morton's in cardboard shakers, but someone has taken the time and humor to paste Rugby labels on them. There are coat hooks around the wainscoting and more in the hall, thank you. The sliding doors to the shop are now usually closed, and the niche makes a sweet little two-top nook. The noise level has so far been unusually restrained, which is good, because the cafe seats only about 50, and there's enough light for reading.

The panini bread is quite good, and the burgers pretty tasty, if a few are a little odd: "Iggy's burger" -- a "pop"-ular choice, presumably -- combines the usual lettuce, tomato, cheese and "special sauce" with pineapple and a fried egg, and that's without the avocado. Grilled chicken, which is available as salad topping, pasta chunker or panino filling, is tender and pretty juicy.

But here we come to two basic difficulties: ingredients and condiments, the first being somewhat more puzzling. The kitchen seems inexperienced both in purchasing and preparing dishes. (Actually, it suggests a group house, with nonprofessional but mildly clever residents taking turns cooking.) One day, a roast beef panino was graced, so to speak, with two folded slices of very tinny, commercial meat; another day the roast beef salad was topped in just the same way, like a dismembered deli plate. The shrimp and avocado panino had four small, chewy shrimp parceled out between the two halves.

Roast pumpkin salad was intriguing, and very nearly good, with goat cheese, pine nuts, "baby spinach" (actually, the usual mixed greens) and "caramelized" balsamic that might have missed a few minutes in the simmering but was okay; unfortunately, the pumpkin meat must have missed all but a few minutes of its roasting.

Tomato and mozzarella panino is the most dependable, and the cheese is fine; but when tomatoes are that pale and mushy, house-made oven-roasted or even sun-dried tomatoes would be better, and the availability of fresh basil, basil paste or even pesto in every grocery store makes its being left out inexcusable. The roast veggie version is peculiar, long on asparagus -- a nice thought, but not actually roasted -- and short on anything more flavorful, such as eggplant or zucchini.

Most annoying, however, is how scant the fillings are and how underdressed the sandwiches. It's not a surprise that the burgers don't stretch the full length, but the others? And why go to the trouble of buying nice mesclun to dress up the plate without tossing them with anything or putting oil and vinegar on the table? It's a waste, neither tasty enough to eat dry nor compact enough to add to the panini. A cautious use of salt is fine, but such petty paintings of mustard and mayo are either amateurish or miserly.

The menu has gradually been expanding to include a couple of soups of the day (I missed the pumpkin, and there wasn't a soup the next time) and pastas, one being rigatoni with grilled chicken in a creamy sauce and the other spaghetti with grilled shrimp in a creamy sauce. The shrimp were okay, if a little overdone, and the chicken fine, but despite the promise of chili oil and lime, it required both Tabasco (fortunately tableside) and black pepper to make much headway against the cream sauce. And at $13.95, there are a lot of big chains making better, and healthier, stuff.

In truth, this is one of those places where the sum is happily greater than the parts, and the promised "spirits" will undoubtedly help, but it wouldn't take all that much to make the food more of an asset. Rugby may be Ralph Lauren's (relatively) discount brand, but it still ought to be worth the money.