Village Shopping Centre
Ph. 747-1897
As I walked from the fluorescent bright upper level of the Village Shopping Centre into the dark recesses of Klondike Jake’s Cookhouse, lit only by the incandescent glow from hanging fixtures with galvanized washbasins for shades, I heard them. They were imagined sounds. The bubbling din of rowdy prospectors, three-sheets-to-the-wind, filled my head. I could hear them playing cards and telling tall tales while guzzling moonshine. I saw Robert Service images and remembered lines from verses of The Shooting of Dan McGrew, “When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare, there stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog dirty, and loaded for bear.”
It was magical…magical that is until the moment I literally heard a jeezly great roar and jumped three feet off my seat. Dazed, I looked up and found the source of the noise, which actually was the words, “Well…how-deee!!” By this time a flood of verbiage was spewing from the mouth of the biggest dismembered moose head I have ever seen. The ghoulish head, mounted on the wall, was swinging back and forth, tauntingly, as it spoke. The moose mouth opened and closed on each inane word. It’s huge dead, dark glaring eyes repeatedly opened, then closed. It’s giant moose ears flapped to and fro. I wanted to head for the hills but I’d already ordered and the food smelled good.
Klondike Jake’s is one of the best-decorated “theme” restaurants I’ve seen. A great deal of time has been spent in an effort to create a suggestion, at least, of a cookhouse from the Klondike gold rush era, although I don’t think they had many talking moose back in 1897 when the “rush” began. (1897 also happens to be the last four digits of Klondike Jake’s phone number. Clever, what?) You’ll see lots of timber posts, rough board, and canvas canopies throughout the restaurant. Exits have even been made to look like mine shafts.
To settle our nerves after a second interruption by the bodiless beast on the wall, my guest and I swigged a few mouthfuls of Rickard’s (they have it on tap). It helped. Then I tucked into a nice plateful of garlic shrimp. They were delicious and loaded with lots of garlic flavour. I counted six large shrimp (shell on) with lemon wedges. I could have eaten several more. One of the shrimp was a bit spongy in texture and I didn’t eat it. I mentioned this to the server who replied, “I don’t eat shrimp so I wouldn’t know.” To her credit, she quickly offered replacement shrimps. I declined but only because I needed to save room for the rest of the meal. In future, she might want to ditch the “I wouldn’t know” response. Diners like their servers to be omniscient when it comes to the food they’re selling.
My guest started with Jake’s organic greens salad with sun dried tomato dressing. It was a good selection of greens with julienne carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, and green pepper. The dressing gave it a big boost with its deep sunshine tomato flavours.
We’d no sooner finished when the moose with the big mouth kicked in again. It gave a generic birthday greeting to one of the distaff gender in its loud dopey voice, ending with, “If I weren’t out of line I’d jump off this wall and kiss her! Give her a big hand folks!” I’m sure the poor woman would have loved that. Nobody clapped. As a matter of fact, nobody seemed to be paying a blind bit of attention to the boorish bull moose, except me. There were no children in the restaurant but I’m sure they would love the hirsute rube. I, on the other hand, was beginning to develop a hatred for the thing beyond the realm of reason. It continued to butt in several more times during the course of our meal.
Tex Richard’s French cut double bone pork chop was my entrée choice. I guess Tex must have been a friend of the bewhiskered Jake. (Only Jake’s image appears in the restaurant. Thank God they don’t have Jake’s head on the wall cackling out stories from his prospectin’ days.) The chop was delicious. It was thick, juicy and tender; and it came with red oven roasted potato, as well as a medley of peppers and onions. The peppers and onions were a little al dente.
My guest made an equally good choice, another of “Dawson City’s golden favourites,” the Pantages Portobello mushroom sirloin. The steak came as requested, medium. It was a carnivore’s dream. They know how to grill at Klondike Jake’s. The red potatoes and peppers, in addition to Portobello mushrooms and onions accompanied the sirloin. The mushrooms were meaty and delicious.
I asked for decaffeinated coffee but they had none. I went with regular. In retrospect that was not a good move considering the battering my nerves had taken from the multiloquious robotic moose. I struggled with my dessert decision. Finally, the server kindly suggested some samples of desserts they were trying out from M&M Meats. (She informed us that the owner of Klondike Jake’s, Rob Moore, also owns M&M Meats.) All the desserts came with your standard commercial whip topping. The strawberry shortcake was good, for a frozen product. I really liked the butterscotch cheesecake with its strong butterscotch flavour combined with the creaminess of the cake; but the lemon meringue pie was too much like a processed dessert for me. I did not get a real lemon taste from it.
Our meal at Klondike Jake’s Cookhouse was, without a doubt, tasty and satisfying. I generally admired the design and decoration of the place. However, it will be forever memorable because of the obnoxious Bullwinkle wannabe that interrupted our meal a grand total of (believe it or not) ten times. Yes, I was counting. On the other hand, I did lose track of the number of times I wanted to hurl my crockery at it.
Our meal at Klondike Jake’s, including the calming beers and a tip, cost us $100.78.
Best Points:
Great grilled food and fun décor.
Areas for Improvement:
Get a grip on the moose.
Ratings Category:
Taking into account, as always, the entire dining experience, Klondike Jake’s Cookhouse gets 7 points out of 10.