Brianna Hicks, server at Camp Pennant, delivers drinks to a booth in the dining room, where the decor goes full tilt on its summer camp theme. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer My dinner guests and I are halfway through tearing apart our second toasty, homemade soft pretzel ($8) of the evening, dunking salt-sprinkled segments into ramekins of beer cheese and hops-infused mustard, when I realize that we’ve been laughing non-stop since we took our seats at Camp Pennant. All before our drinks have arrived.
I point this out to a friend across from me at our cabin-like, canvas-draped booth. She suggests our cheeriness might be contagious, possibly spread through the effusive, bubbly tone of our server, who in her branded t-shirt and shorts, resembles a camp counselor. Another of my guests thinks it’s a side effect of the whimsical, retro ambiance of the former Liquid Riot space – staged to look like a cross between a scene from Wes Anderson’s “Moonlight Kingdom” and one from “Wet Hot American Summer.
” Me? I think it’s both of those things, plus the fact that our double-trunk, live-edge tabletop is shaped like a rather pert posterior, and we’ve all noticed. Over the next half-hour, that surface will be obscured by a progression of pizzas, sandwiches and vegetables roasted in the wood-fired Le Panyol oven. The menu’s theme is casual, mostly comfort-food dishes that go along with what co-owner Mike Fraser (Bramhall, Café Roma) describes as Pennant’s “inland w.