We push our way through the suburban mob and put our name on the waiting list. The grinning hostess hands me a pager that will glow orange and vibrate when our table is ready, which will be in about an hour and a half. My companions kill time discussing their childhood tendencies to pull the wings off moths and send pillbugs aloft in bottle rockets.
Finally, we are led through the enormous, stadium-like room to our booth. The decor is a Disneyfied vision of the Gold Rush days -- plastic rusticity. At every table except for ours, someone is having a birthday; again and again, the chipper waitstaff form a semi-circle, clap their hands, and do their alarming birthday chant. Perhaps it's meant to cheer us on as we struggle to finish our meals.
Foolishly, we order the appetizer combo plate, which could feed an entire rugby team on onion rings, deep-fried cheese, fried zucchini, and other greasy tidbits. My friends wallow in all of this excess. In the dim, hazy lighting, their faces distort and turn into grotesques out of a Goya painting. They laugh like fiends as our salads arrive, served on plates the size of hubcaps. Do I lack fortitude and irony, or are my friends utterly corrupt, seduced into a false paradise of opulent waste? Finally, the moment I dread most: Our entrées. I break into a nervous sweat just looking at my plate. One friend's steak is literally an inch and a half thick, with a rough diameter of 10 inches; the other friend has a platter of barbecued pork ribs that seem to have come from some beast with an unnaturally long ribcage. The baked potatoes must have been grown downstream from Hanford; they're as big as ostrich eggs. My blackened salmon, by comparison, is downright modest, being only twice the serving size any sane cook would offer. Every meal is accompanied by a small apple, clearly meant to be stuffed into our mouths after we're immobilized by bloat.
Of course, what makes it truly insidious is that the food is pretty good. It's best to order dishes that fit into the vague category of "American cuisine" -- avoid anything even remotely ethnic like pizza, pasta, fajitas, or eggrolls, as there will be something off about them. Stick with the steaks, the ribs, the roast chicken, and the broiled or blackened seafood, which are decidedly tasty. Don't try anything vegetarian -- that would be like ordering pad thai in an Irish pub.
This is the America that the world's poor eye with envy. This is the culinary version of Baywatch, a lurid excess of breasts, rumps, thighs, and loins, presented in garish and tacky costumes -- or in the case of the Claim Jumper, a Klondike decor. I find myself obsessing about the restaurant's name: "Claim jumpers" were thieves who plundered defenseless miners who accrued their wealth through hand-blistering labor. Who would name their restaurant after murderous profiteers? Who could have such arrogance? The Claim Jumper preys on your weakness, your deeply bred consumer belief that more is better -- not merely better, but your divine right, because you can afford to pay for it. While not outrageously expensive, it isn't cheap -- entrées are just under $20, appetizers $7 to $9 -- though by the pound, it's probably the same price as Dick's.
Our sly waiter constantly pushes the next course, and I watch in appalled horror as my friends order a slice of six-layer chocolate monstrosity ("The Mother Lode," $7.95). Like rapacious birds, they tear into the moist devil's food, cackling and joking about it being a "roast of cake." One of them tells me that Beelzebub also means "lord of the flies."
A metaphysical swarm buzzes over our heads in a black halo, smelling our fattened flesh, waiting for us to gasp and die.
The Claim Jumper
7210 164th Ave NE, Redmond, 425-885-1273. Sun-Thurs 11 am-10 pm, Fri-Sat 11 am-11 pm. Full bar. $$.
Price Scale (per entrée) $ = $10 and under; $$ = $10-$20; $$$ = $20 and up
