The Hardened Artery Is Sinfully Satisfying

----------------------------------------------------------------- Restaurant review

XX The Hardened Artery at the Romper Room, 112 First Ave. N. ($) Lunch and dinner ($2.95-$7.45) 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday; from 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Sunday. Lounge, beer, wine. Major credit cards. Smoking allowed. Reservations and takeout: 284-5003. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Generally, I am wary of dining rooms with a pool-table centerpiece.

And when a restaurant prints a graphic of a breaking heart on the front page of its menu, a certain degree of nervous speculation is called for.

When the same restaurant's name is the Hardened Artery, implications are not all favorable.

And when that restaurant's operative motto (printed in dark, block letters) is "EAT MEAT," even the calorically reckless may take pause.

On the other hand, when the Hardened Artery is serving what many acclaim as the best tavern burgers and barbecue sandwiches in the city, why pause overly long?

Keith Robbins opened the Romper Room on lower Queen Anne (south of KeyArena, almost at Denny Way) five years ago with live music and a livelier crowd. Last summer, he decided to add a kitchen and a limited-menu food service.

He brought in Peter Levy and Jeremy Hardy from the Beeliner Diner (and 5-Spot and Coastal Kitchen) to design the kitchen. Michael Anderson, formerly of Cafe Flora (a vegetarian bastion!), Testa Rossa and Cafe Sport, was hired to create the menu and take over the small Wolf range, grill and smoker. Two months ago, they opened.

Among the first to discover their Mondo Burgers ($5.95; with lettuce, tomato and red onion) and the Big-Ass Monster Chili Cheeseburgers ($7.45; with their own beef chili and Tillamook cheddar) were some of the producers and announcers at nearby KIRO radio, along with the drop-in sporting crowd from Seattle Center.

Salads are well-made

The place is plain, but not drab. Sparkle-silver vinyl booths rim the perimeter. A temporary exhibition of neon art glows from the walls.

The menu leads off with a couple of well-crafted salads: Michael's Heavenly Salad ($3 or $5.25 depending upon portion size) combines mixed baby greens with thin-sliced red onions, mandarin orange sections, blue-cheese crumbles, toasted, spiced pecans and a knockout dressing of shallots and blackberry vinaigrette. The old 318 in Fremont never saw its like.

The Sassy Caesar ($3.25/$5.95) is quite traditional, including a raw-egg yolk dressing, with homemade croutons and copious slivers of fresh Parmesan. You may add a grilled chicken breast to either salad for $3.

What is billed as Seattle's Best Chili ($2.95 a cup/$5.25 a bowl) follows. It's good but not great, served under a coverlet of shredded cheddar and diced red onions.

The present consensus as to the best of the burgers is the Roasted Jalapeno-Cheddar Burger ($6.95 with a prodigious pile of freshly seared french fries). The beef is custom-ground for Robbins by Cascioppo Brothers of Ballard.

"The Cascioppo's and I go a long way back," he said. "I started in the restaurant business at the Turbulant Turtle (a hamburger stand that used to be across the street from Ray's Boathouse) back in the '60s when I was 16. Sam Cascioppo prepared the beef. On some nights you had to wait 45 minutes for a burger."

At present, the wait is no more than 10 minutes. But expect that to change. The 6-ounce, hand-shaped patties are rubbed with the house's creole seasonings before grilling.

"And because they are custom-ground for us, you can order them rare and not be afraid of them," Robbins said. "We're not dealing with industrial-standards beef."

A barbecue feast

The BBQ Pig Sandwich ($5.95) is crammed between inch-thick slices of "Southern-style American white bread" that the Hardened Artery gets daily, unsliced from Gai's; they're cut just before use. The pork is six-hour smoked, then shredded and slathered with a very formidable barbecue sauce made from the above-mentioned blackberry vinegar.

It's served with a potent, tangy slaw and the impossible "Pile-O-Fries." Altogether, a deeply self-indulgent lunch or dinner, which I have not seen duplicated since I last ate at Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City in '76.

Yes, you can have chicken breast filet instead of red meat. It's marinated in lemon juice, garlic, white wine and olive oil, served with sliced tomato and red-leaf lettuce; $5.95. For those who refuse to get the point, they will serve a veggie burger with a "special sauce." Michael Anderson didn't labor at Cafe Flora for nothing.

Loved the joint. (Copyright, 1995, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.) John Hinterberger, who writes the weekly restaurant review in Tempo and a Sunday food column in Pacific, visits restaurants anonymously and unannounced. He pays in full for all food, wines and services. Interviews of the restaurants' management and staff are done only after meals and services have been appraised. He does not accept invitations to evaluate restaurants.