Hey, Santa

I could quit my job here, go to work for a paper called The 900 Block of Lincoln Weekly and have no lack of things to write about.

Leftovers: Remember Bryan Moscatello? Big guy, used to cook at some little place down in LoDo called Adega? He slipped off the radar pretty fast after he packed up his kit and hightailed it for the East Coast following the surprise closure of Adega this past August (the space at 1700 Wynkoop Street is now home to Venice Ristorante). He called last week to say that while he'd been back in Denver for about a month testing the waters, he's now officially accepted a position with the Star Restaurant Group and will open a new (and as yet unnamed) restaurant on the Potomac in Alexandria, Virginia.

And what had he been doing since the splashy closure of one of Denver's best restaurants? "Not much," he told me. "Consulting, relaxing. Just vacationing, really."

He spent some time with Cornelius Gallagher at Oceana in Manhattan, bounced around awhile, catered a wedding for some Adega regulars down in Cabo, then returned to Colorado. And while he would have liked to have found something here, the gig with Star was just too good to pass up. "It's a whole new restaurant," he said, "and a small restaurant group. It should be very exciting."

Speaking of small, Tables -- which started out this past April as a sandwich shop and little cafe at 2267 Kearney Street -- has gotten its liquor license ahead of a planned expansion into full dinner service come February. The twenty-table Gavi, which just opened at 1109 Lincoln Street (right between the Donkey Den and Grenade) is an Italian/Spanish restaurant and "dessert lounge" (whatever the hell that means) being run by Tosh Berman (of Donkey Den fame), Paul Piciocchi (from Tryst Lounge) and Sebastian Grazzini (formerly general manager of Campo de Fiori). Grazzini is originally from Argentina, and if I've learned anything over the past few weeks, it's that Argentines have a wicked knack for doing the Eye-tie thing. See my review of Buenos Aires Pizzeria ("The World Is Flat," December 8) for details.