Pause, for Some Good Food and Americana Memorabilia

The pause that refreshes. Such is the inspiration for the name of a new Pasadena restaurant--make that restaurant/museum--which displays more than $2 million worth of Americana memorabilia. The Pause sign is a giant stopwatch with the name across its face.

The windows are screened so it’s impossible to see inside. Just then two women rush out, crying, “It’s beautiful! And an interesting menu, too!,” and scurry off like the White Rabbit. The entryway looks more like a theater than a restaurant, with the hostess corralled behind a velvet rope.

Spacy techno music plays as we slip into a half moon booth in the informal dining room. Behind us a collection of portly Wurlitzer jukeboxes, restored to the hilt, glows and seems to hum behind a glass wall. They’re all in working condition, our waiter tells us, but very fragile. I don’t know about anybody else, but the reverential atmosphere made me want to whisper. Just like a museum.

A second, larger dining room plays host to an entire wall of colorful plastic radios from the ‘30s and ‘40s. The restaurant’s owners, designers Randy Moore and Dale Chang, have a passion for Americana and so couldn’t pass up the ‘20s-era Illion’s Supreme Carousel, which once turned round and round at Coney Island. Now the hand-carved menagerie is displayed in glass cases and the carousel’s ornate running boards are mounted overhead.

This is Moore and Chang’s first restaurant, and the couple stop in often for a bite and to show off their prized collection. Sometimes they’ll play the 1922 Wurlitzer band organ that once operated on the Santa Monica Pier.

Across the room, I watch a couple pull at a dessert. Oh, it’s cotton candy! Not the traditional pink, but a sort of aqua. It’s fun to taste it again, though the candied violets do seem to gild the lily.

Pause’s menu could easily be a candidate for a year 2000 time capsule: It includes everything that’s fashionable at the moment. With a couple of exceptions, it all tastes better than you can divine from the descriptions.

Lightly battered “popcorn” shrimp come with a cool cucumber dipping sauce. Only problem: It slides right off the shrimp. Tequila-cured salmon, with tiny blini and all the fixings, makes a fine do-it-yourself appetizer. There’s a graceful cilantro and lemon-poached shrimp salad with citrus sections, shaved fennel in a chipotle vinaigrette. Green Goddess chopped salad sounds like a hit, and all the elements are impeccably fresh, but the dressing is virtually undetectable. “The chef has a light hand,” explains the waiter, who promptly heads back to the kitchen for a side of Green Goddess.

Entrees include “dueling ducks,” i.e., duck prepared two ways, pan-fried striped bass on a bed of lentils seasoned with bacon, and a delicious slow-roasted apple pork.

That cotton candy is complimentary, but the white peach cobbler or a frozen Meyer lemon souffle is tempting, too.

Actually, you can take that pause any time of the day, because the restaurant opens at 7 a.m. every day, with homemade granola, bagels and house-baked pastries in the mornings, and at lunch a well-priced menu anchored by an all-American burger.

BE THERE

Pause, 42 S. Delaney Ave., Pasadena; (626) 440-9868. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Dinner appetizers $6 to $13; main courses $10 to $25. Valet parking; free 90-minute parking across the street.