Photo by: Ellen Descsiciolo

Grabbing the Three Rings
By B.A. Nilsson

The Circus Café
392 Broadway, Saratoga Springs. Serving daily 11:30 AM-10 PM, Fri-Sat til midnight . AE, D, DC, MC, V.
Cuisine: varied and accessible
Entrée price range: $10 (Caesar salad) to $20 (New York strip steak)
Ambiance: festive, of course
Clientele: in August? Anybody’s guess!

Theme restaurants typically are the province of chains, causing someone else’s market-researched and predigested sense of gaiety to drop, Athena-like, fully formed into your community. The Wal-Mart- and Starbucks-loving crowd moves, with robotic reliability, into their embrace, but those with more discrimination (which category naturally includes you) prefer to perform their own intellectual peristalsis.

Visiting the Circus Café in early July, I found a restaurant in flux. Open for but a few weeks at that point, it delivered in wildly various ways. The food, for example, included a quesadilla appetizer (then $7, now $8) that was an entrée-sized portion delivering nothing less than you’d expect, except for the warning not to order anything else substantial. Crab cakes ($9) were also a very good example of what crab cakes should be, but with the exceptional addition of a ginger aioli.

The “3 Ring Circus Shepherd’s Pie” ($14), on the other hand, was dreadful: a soggy dish of flavorless ground beef served over the mashed potatoes that are supposed to be on top. But, without any urging from me, that item has disappeared from the menu.

Similarly, service was a jumble. We were quickly seated and then annoyingly overlooked. We explained that we had a concert to see, and asked that the entrées be paced somewhat more quickly. They arrived seconds after the appetizers were served. We got out, for the first time in my experience in this situation, too early.

And so I revisited in August, mindful that track season can take its toll on any Saratoga restaurant, old and new. It turns out that those four interim weeks made all the difference. The Circus Café was up and running, with splendid service and fine, consistent food. It was like going from an early rehearsal to a polished performance.

We were greeted on the street, as is true of most Broadway restaurants, but our hostess was more than mere shill: She exuded a seductive warmth that would have lured me inside had this not been my destination. My threesome was escorted past the bar area, a lively concourse, to a back room occupied by only one other diner. But that hardly mattered. The ambiance is festive enough to make any space in the restaurant seem like the proper one to inhabit.

My daughter, who is 7, was fascinated by every aspect of the decor. She studied the chandeliers, the wallpaper, even the sugar holders on the tables. The circus theme, which to my eyes flirts with the far end of being overdone, was wholly appropriate to her. She also liked the fact that the kids’ menu carried forth this design, and, despite my entreaties to order off the grown-up list, she latched onto an entrée of pizza bagels ($6.50) for herself.

She did throw me a bone, so to speak, by ordering chicken wings off the regular menu ($8 for a dozen), and then agreeing to share them only after the most persistent parental persuasion. Chicken wings remain chicken wings, no surprise here, but it’s a meal-in-itself portion served on an attractive plate that makes room for the requisite celery and blue cheese dressing.

Entrées include a few salads, of which the cobb ($13) features grilled chicken, hard-boiled eggs and an avocado purée to make it more interesting, and it’s a goodly sized dish, too. One of the winners both visits was the pan-roasted salmon ($16), set off by a pungent red onion jam and served over a cooked-right portion of jasmine rice—although a companion on the early visit requested and served mashed potatoes as a substitute.

There’s no better comfort food than meat loaf, and it’s available here ($15) in a large portion with just enough breading to keep it moist and flavorful—and to resist a gravy that adds little to the dish. Not surprisingly, there are potatoes, mashed, of course, served alongside, as well as veggies sautéed to still-crunchy doneness.

Also look for pasta dishes, a chicken pot pie ($14), barbecued short ribs ($16) and even fried oysters ($15) among the entrées, and there’s a list of sandwiches (leading off with the $8 Circus burger) for the less ambitious appetite.

Although the staff is almost embarrassingly young, they’re enthusiastic and even seem downright happy to be there. And they look out for one another, which also speaks well for morale.

You’ll know owner Christel McLean from her tenure heading Hattie’s, which she bought from Hattie Austin and expanded “until Colin and I saw that it had reached its expansion limit.” She and her husband wanted to duck out of the business for a while, and even went so far as to return to Manhattan. “But during that time we kept talking about the kind of restaurant we wanted to have, and the Circus Café came into view more and more.”

Their goal was to bring something unique to downtown Saratoga, and at that they’ve succeeded. The theme is borderline goofy, but they pull it off because there’s no lack of sincerity. And the ever-inventive McLeans promise even more surprises as Saratoga eases into its postseason doldrums, so let’s keep an eye on the place.

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