Hey, Rube!

A couple of years back, though, he grew antsy for a new challenge, and so took over as chef at Euro, at 231 Milwaukee Street — another doomed restaurant address that didn't even have the Indigo advantage of being smart as well as destined to fail. But Peterson worked hard there, only to be rewarded with a pink slip when the owners decided they didn't want to pay his salary anymore. (It's since closed altogether.)

"I was doubtful after Euro," Peterson told me — doubtful about the restaurant industry in general, about whether he'd ever get back into it. "You know, it was like, what do you mean you don't want me anymore? That's fucked up."

That was more than a year ago, and after that, Peterson started flipping houses while he considered his next move. "I interviewed all over town," he said. "Something always went wrong."

Until now. Last week, Peterson called with the news that, more or less out of the blue, he'd been contacted by Alex Waters, who's opening Bistro One at 1294 South Broadway. Waters was looking for a chef; Peterson was on the verge of giving up on the business entirely. The two just hit it off. "When it comes to restaurant owners, I won the lottery on this one," Peterson said. "He's a good guy. He hasn't been in the industry long enough to learn to screw people over yet."

The new place will be an American bistro, "that classic neighborhood restaurant that I want to go out to and haven't found yet," Peterson says. "I can't even tell you how excited I am about this."

But while Bistro One is being pitched as an American bistro, there are definitely French influences. Peterson and his wife jumped the pond for Paris last fall for inspiration, and he found plenty. "Like this duck thing," he said, unloading a bunch of cook shorthand on me — about how the legs are done confit in the duck's own rendered fat, how the breasts are served in jus made from duck stock and duck pan drippings. "It's using the entire animal, man. This is the coolest project I think I've done yet."

He talked about the joy of being able to assemble his own crew (including sous Travis Lorton, snatched from Alto) and arrange his own menu of steak frites and salmon, duck and escargot. Peterson and Waters are still doing construction on the space and planning a lot of test dinners. They want to make sure they don't screw up a good thing at the last second.

When I pushed Peterson to guess at an opening date beyond the vague "early May," he just told me, "That's gonna depend..."

"On what?"

"Everything."

---

Leftovers: On Monday, I heard from Leigh Jones, owner of the Dish Bistro (400 East 20th Avenue, in the space formerly occupied by the Painted Bench) and Horseshoe Lounge (which is right next door). "I'm closing the Dish," she said, without preamble. "Just thought I should let you know."

When I asked her why, she gave me the usual industry flummery: reconcepting, remodeling, busy but not busy enough. Then, finally, she got down to the nut of it: an urge to simplify her life after a trip to Utah, where she'd sat by a friend who'd just suffered a heart attack. "I had a week away from the restaurant, outside the industry — a whole week to think," she told me. "And God love what Mel Master has done with his life, but I don't think I have it in me to stand in front of a restaurant all day."

Jones plans to shut down the Dish on May 4 and reopen the space by Memorial Day weekend as a kind of neighborhood bar and pool hall — with great food and high-end booze in the existing Dish bar space, and a few billiard tables, dartboards and cocktail seating in the former dining room. Though chef Carl Klein will probably move on, Jones hopes to write a new menu that fits with her current "global comfort food" theme, to keep the wine list and add a few more beers, and to "essentially make [the bar] ten times as comfortable to eat at. My regulars? That's where most of them eat, anyway."

The Horseshoe will continue operating as is; one of the reasons Jones decided not to simply sell the Dish space was so that nothing would "come in and compete with the Horseshoe," she explained. As for a name, that's up in the air — as are other details. "I'm a girl," Jones told me. "That means I get to change my mind if I want to, right?"