25 Years of Excellence Roadhouse Cafe
By JENNIFER KAIN DEFOE
As the old adage goes, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute.” Well, if you don’t like a particular Cape Cod restaurant, wait a season. It’s almost a given that, just as the tourists arrive, a new crop of restaurants will hit the dining scene.
Well, if you don’t like a particular Cape Cod restaurant, wait a season. It’s almost a given that, just as the tourists arrive, a new crop of restaurants will hit the dining scene. In a land where restaurants come and go as quickly as, well, the weather, the Roadhouse Café has long proven a standout – so long that Dave Colombo has recently celebrated his 25th anniversary at the South Street dining powerhouse.
The Roadhouse was not always what it is today, a 200-seat behemoth that rambles on through room after antique-filled room. When Dave hung out his sign on Nov. 13, 1985, he had just eight tables – used tables at that.
Dave was not only the manager and owner, but the chef as well, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner and “clocking a whopping hundred plus hours a week,” he says.
It didn’t just feel like he lived there, he did live there, in an upstairs apartment. A typical day in that first cold and financially lean winter started when, he says, he “rolled out of bed, went downstairs and fired up the woodstove (the restaurant’s only source of heat), made coffee and starting cooking eggs.”
Oh, how things have changed.
Part of the formula for the Roadhouse Café’s success lies in Dave’s method of slow change. He did not close down his little one-room restaurant and reemerge after a massive renovation as a whole new place. Rooms were added over the years, first the room that wraps around the original dining room with a wall of windows facing South Street. Next came the lounge with the mahogany bar and high-backed booths, and finally the bistro with its leather banquettes and piano bar where Dave’s father, the renowned trumpet player Lou Colombo, and his sister, singer Lori Colombo, lead a combo every week for Monday Night Jazz.
The style of each addition reflected the style of the existing space. There was no shock and awe over startling changes. Dave found a style he liked and stuck with it. Apparently customers liked it too, because the list of regulars grew right along with the restaurant. The Roadhouse is a study in understated elegance chock-full of antiques, many with a local or nautical origin.
The menu has also remained true to its genesis in many ways – it keeps up with the trends, but isn’t really trendy. And, as with the décor and overall feel of the restaurant, that understatedly elegant feel comes through as well. You can put your elbows on the table while you tuck into a bowl of the fish chowder, unchanged in the restaurant’s history.
Breakfast was dropped fairly quickly. Dave then decided to drop lunch about 13 years ago, one of the smartest decisions he ever made, he says. “Stopping lunch was the best thing I ever did for my business and everybody who works here.” He goes on to say, “We cut the work load by ninety percent and the income by only ten percent, and it gave me more time for a personal life – and the help and the building are not overtaxed.”
Dinner menu items that date back to the Roadhouse’s first year, like Chicken Homard, chicken breast stuffed with fresh lobster meat and Swiss cheese and finished with a Parmesan herb sauce, are still there. In fact, Roadhouse Salad Dressing has proven so popular that it’s the one and only salad dressing they’ve ever used, and it’s now available by the bottle.
The menu had about 10 entrée selections in the beginning and, as the size of the restaurant grew, so did the size of the menu. It now offers more than 30 appetizers and 40 entrées, with additions like Tuna Sashimi, Lobster Quesadilla and Beef Carpaccio for appetizers and dinners such as Black & White Sesame Encrusted Yellow Fin Tuna and Oven Roasted Salmon with a soy ginger glaze.
When asked the secret for his longevity, Dave Colombo is quick to respond. “I made a commitment from day one to make quality a priority…it’s like a snowball, it goes down a hill and just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Maybe that’s why the Roadhouse Café and Dave Colombo have thrived through twenty-five Cape Cod winters…and counting.
It didn’t just feel like he lived there, he did live there, in an upstairs apartment. A typical day in that first cold and financially lean winter started when, he says, he “rolled out of bed, went downstairs and fired up the woodstove (the restaurant’s only source of heat), made coffee and starting cooking eggs.”