Babbling spirits at the Brook Room
Written: Sep 08 '06 (Updated Oct 13 '08)
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Pros: Haunted, a natural brook runs through center of dining room, service usually attentive, strawberry vinaigrette
Cons: Limited hours, food has room for improvement, service poor on "big" restaurant days
The Bottom Line: This dining room has such a unique atmosphere it is worth visiting at least once.
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| adriennefoster's Full Review: The Brookroom |
Having a meal at the Brook Room, which is the formal restaurant located on the premises of the Brookdale Lodge in Brookdale, California, is a kewl dining experience even without knowing the history and folklore that permeates it. The food is good and service usually attentive, but being in a formal dining room built around a living natural creek is an excursion not to be missed. I became even more fascinated by it when I learned that it is steeped in ghost stories. It even touches on my own family heritage. I was really anxious to see it firsthand a few years ago and have since paid several visits there. Because of its unique setting, folklore, and good food, the Brook Room has been one of the most exhilarating and romantic restaurants I ever dined at. My most exciting visit is the one I paid with my friend, Janice, who is a medium, and learned that most of the ghosts at the Lodge spend their time in the Brook Room.
Dr. F. K. Camp, a physician, owned the Brookdale Lodge when a nearby river changed course, thrusting a small branch of it through his property. Indulging a creative idea, he hired Architect and Landscaper Horace Cotton to design a dining room that straddled the creek. The restaurant opened in 1922 to a positive reception. It even became a subject in the daily strip of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Dining there had its drawbacks. As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Camp was a strict prohibitionist. He would sniff guests' drinks and if he detected the demon alcohol, it was poured into the brook. It was a practice he continued even after the Prohibition ended. People came anyway. It attracted world famous celebrities and President Herbert Hoover was even permitted to fish there. Camp sold the Lodge just before his death in 1945 and legend has it that it succumbed to not only alcohol, but organized crime as well. The Brook Room in itself saw its share of problems and catastrophe. Today the brook is relatively shallow, but in its early days it had a higher water level and a stronger current. The dining room did flood once or twice. Back in the 40s, a little girl, Sarah, said to be the niece of the Lodge's owner, fell in the creek, hit her head, and drowned, with her mother desperately trying to save her. When Barney Morrow purchased the Brookdale Lodge in 1951, he refurbished the property, which had deteriorated after Camp's departure. The central structure was ruined by a fire in 1956, but Morrow had it reconstructed, salvaging what fixtures he could. My parents joined my paternal grandparents there for a meal during the late 50s. My grandfather was so impressed by the Brook Room he immediately invested $500 in the business. Knowing my grandfather's background, the only surprise about that spontaneous action was that he never took the time to study such a large expenditure beforehand as he normally did. He was a retired civil engineer who had specialized in hydrology. The Brookdale Lodge is currently owned and operated by the Gilbert family, who bought it in 1989 and shares are no longer sold.
Although it has yet to reach the status of the Winchester Mystery House, Queen Mary, or the Whaley House, the Brookdale Lodge is one of the more heavily documented haunted sites in California. Several books on ghost folklore cover it and it was also a subject in segments of a couple of documentaries aired on the Travel Channel from time to time. Repeated occurrences in the Brook Room are how staff will set tables before closing for the night, then return to the locked room the following day to find cutlery or pepper shakers rearranged, missing, or on the floor. The sound of a child weeping can be heard in the Fireside Room and Sarah has allegedly been seen twirling around there as well.
My Brook Room experience
Once upon a time, the structure that enclosed the Brook Room looked like a large redwood cabin. Today, the central building of the Lodge is painted a pale green with an emerald shade trim, suggesting a Swiss chalet. Diners must go through the main entrance and take a little walk through the connecting lobby to reach the double doors of the Brook Room. As of this writing, I never had any problems being seated, even that evening when Janice and I came without a reservation. Considering the public areas of the Lodge were being closed that evening for a private party for the Hell's Angels, I was relieved we were welcome in the dining room. Fortunately, we arrived early and were certainly no potential disruption to the bikers' festivities. It was too long a drive to be booted out.
The room continues the Swiss chalet-gingerbread style, dominated by the colors green and white and accented with lots of foliage. The brook acts as a natural air conditioner, so it is advisable to at least bring a sweater or light jacket. Although the current décor is pretty, pictures of what the dining room looked like before the fire are extant and I wish I could have seen the forest-like environment it had before. It used to have chandelier lamps made with real horseshoes that looked like pieces of art worth seeing firsthand. A large overhead lamp covered by an art nouveau dome was bolted to the center of the ceiling. These days a safety fence and wide planters surround both sides of the brook, so people would have to go out of their way to fall in. At the top end of the room, a bridge was built over a short waterfall. On the bottom, there is sort of a dual-level terrace that is alternately used for dining tables, live music, or the head tables for banquets, depending on what is required. Its lower floor is lined with a checkerboard pattern of mauve & white linoleum tiles. A few vintage kitchen appliances are on exhibit in the dining room. Tables can be found on both sides of the brook. Booths are on the east side and raised a little higher than the regular tables on the carpeted floor. The room does show some wear and tear, but the look and sound of the flowing water makes it easy to overlook. Despite how awesome the previous forest décor was, it is still a very pretty room.
The dinner menu breaks down to about six categories, appetizers, soups & salads, pasta, land fare, seafood, and desserts, with a few items in each one. That makes things a little easier for me, since I can be so indecisive sometimes. Better to have fewer items that Chef does well than lose quality by offering too many. Entrées are accompanied by a starch and veggie side dish, except for pasta and meal-size salad dishes. Soup and salad starters are an additional fee. The wine & beer list is decent, I suppose; I'm not a big drinker. Drinks can also be ordered from the full-service bar in the lounge area.
Off the dinner menu, I have tried the coconut shrimp, salad with strawberry vinaigrette, steak teriyaki, and salmon. The shrimp was tasty in its browned battered coating and I liked the sweet dipping sauce that came with it. The strawberry vinaigrette they use on their salads is one of the most delightful flavors I've had poured over lettuce and shows some creativity on the part of the chef. I'm used to seeing raspberry, but have never been a big fan of that berry. The strawberry vinaigrette was an interesting mix with the lettuce. The steak was okay. The teriyaki sauce looked and tasted like the glaze Kikkoman sells, but it was decent cut of meat that was cooked just as I ordered. The salmon was flaked as it should be and the salsa was an okay topping. I'm not the biggest fan of salsa, but I'll eat it. Even though I liked the food, I would not say it is exceptional. The kitchen does take a few obvious short cuts and presentation was a bit lax. During one visit, another friend found the produce sticker still adhered to the tomato wedge in her salad.
The Sunday brunch buffet is set in the Fireside Room, which has a connecting door with the dining room. It has several hot plates, containing American traditional breakfast items such as eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, eggs benedict, waffles, and biscuits with gravy. Also offered are a few hot lunch items such as chicken, pork, rice pilaf, and mixed veggies. The carvery has ham. A half dozen assorted salads can be found, along with devilled eggs. There is also a choice of bread and pastries. The dessert table always seems to have an excellent selection of cakes, pies, cheesecakes, mousses, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. Champagne, orange juice, coffee, and tea come with the price of the brunch. On special days, such as Easter, Mother's Day, and Father's Day, the hours are expanded, more special items are put out, and the price is higher. The quality of the food falls short of the standards of other fine brunch buffets, such as those at the Doubletree. When I took some of the cheesy scrambled eggs, it had a chunk of egg shell in it.
Although I have never had any complaints about the service at the Brook Room in the past, on Easter Sunday staff was too busy to monitor tables efficiently. They are usually friendly and willing to chat. They have always been willing to snap pictures for guests. I was even having problems with my camera one time and it turned out our server was a bit of photographer and took a look at it.
After several visits, there have never been any problems with the bill. It's always nice to pay without having to argue about something. Staying as an overnight guest at the Lodge one weekend, I learned that they do not bill meals to rooms. All guests are required to take care of their bills on the spot.
The ghost stuff
I was a bit discouraged after four or five visits to the Brook Room and asking staff if they themselves have witnessed anything uncanny themselves. Most of them had nothing to add to the stories that have already been widely reported. However, I was rather taken back when Janice expressed an interested in visiting the Brookdale Lodge. She sees and talks with dead people, but it is not an activity that she aggressively pursues after one encounter nearly killed her when she was forced to reenact the death of one ghost. When I warned her the Lodge claims it has 49 ghosts, she scoffed. Her "circle" did a quick check of the place and said there were actually only 27.
The night we were there, on the other hand, she said there were a lot more and many of them had been Hell's Angels. Most of them died elsewhere and had no strong association with the Lodge, but considering so many of the living contingent were there that evening, it seems reasonable to believe these wandering shades simply wanted to be with their own. There are two types of ghosts, grounded and visiting. The grounded ones are bound to the site they are at and never leave until they find their way to the light. Visitation ghosts come and go as they please and may frequent more than one building. In addition to the Hell's Angels, she picked up that a few of the spirits had deaths connected to the creek, but not necessarily within the Brook Room. They just loitered there because it was the happening place to be.
We were seated at a table over the brook on the lower level of the terrace. Janice was jazzed as soon as she arrived. "These ghosts want to party!" She was infused with the urge to rock herself. When they realized she was a medium, there were so many of them surrounding her that she couldn't distinguish anything from their din of overlapping voices. We had to wait several minutes for them to settle down. Our table hadn't been set yet, but someone did bring us a bread basket. As we waited for our plates and cutlery, she started laughing. "Someone said, 'Put the butter on the bread and take a bite.'" She quickly complied after unwrapping a pat and rubbing it on a slice of bread. They could taste the food with her. While I was ordering, one of them tossed over the little table tent promoting some of the lounge's cocktails. I missed it because my attention was diverted. It never fails.
She thought the room was beautiful and loved the ceiling lamp. The server who seated us said it was salvaged from a church in San Francisco, which confused Janice. She was an art major and the art nouveau design was inconsistent with the typical decorating of a Catholic church. The "alpha ghost" who managed to settle his colleagues down treated her to lecture on the lamp, which had survived the 1956 fire. It was made of tortoise shell and the colors were faded. She said at least two of the spirits were grounded to the lamp and not the Lodge. Alpha ghost claimed to be an Irish priest who worked at St. Lucius Church before it was lost in San Francisco's '06 earthquake. He claimed to be a teetotaler, who also perished in that earthquake. I raised my eyebrows at that one. An Irishman who doesn't drink? Janice soon added he actually died because he was too drunk to save himself from earthquake-related damage. He said the church took the art nouveau lamp second-hand. It was originally used in a hotel.
Alpha ghost dominated Janice's attention throughout most of the meal, but the others managed to slip in their input. When I asked what they thought of Pete Best's appearance, alpha ghost loathed him, but most liked "the drummer." One of them said alpha ghost was never a priest.
Janice could also see another death in the brook. Shortly before the war, an adult Sarah, who was in her thirties or forties, slipped on the stones right in front of us and also died in the water. She was too drunk to save herself. Her younger brother was with her at the time and lived with the guilt of not being able to save her for the rest of his life, which ended just a few years later during the war.
Janice emphasizes that she rarely takes anything ghosts tell her too seriously. After death, a spirit's perception is often muddied or sometimes they will even lie. If serious research is being done, investigators need to verify details before declaring them as absolute fact. With that aside, she probably could have told me more stories if we had spent more time there. Folklore has no need to be absolute.
The bottom line
The Brook Room is open for dinner five days a week, 5–9 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Entrée prices range $10–$22. It also serves an all-you-can-eat buffet brunch on Sundays 9 a.m.–2 p.m. for $18.95, $10.50 children 12 and under. Prices and schedules may be adjusted on "big" restaurant days such as Valentine's Day, Easter, and Mother's Day. When driving from out of town, it is highly advisable to call ahead to ensure availability.
Overall, I've never had a bad time dining at the Brook Room. There are places where I've been more impressed by the food, but never by the atmosphere. And I've certainly never been to a restaurant that's had more ghosts. Unless someone really hates the outdoors, I recommend trying this restaurant at least once. (Personally, I think the food off the dinner menu is better than what's put out for brunch.) There are few out there with such a unique atmosphere to make them an experience no one is likely to forget. Who knows? Little Sarah may even make another appearance.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: Yes
Vegetarian Friendly: Yes
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations This restaurant is more about ambiance, but I found the food quality off the dinner menu a little better than Sunday brunch.
Best Suited For: Romantic Evening
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