A Tuesday-night crowd? Those are the people who keep restaurants in business. Those are the true fans and regulars who know what they like and vote with their wallets. And that's who I want to be eating with.
I'm pretty sure that's who most kitchens like cooking for, too. Black Cat's, in particular.
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French twist: I fell in love with French 250 (250 Steele Street) at first bite. Unabashedly French, completely high-end, with a menu illuminated in gold and cuisine more suited for the elegant dining rooms of Paris than a basement in Cherry Creek, this restaurant spoke to the snooty, highbrow Frog-humper in me — both the chef and the eater.
But these days there aren't many people willing to drop a couple hundies on dinner for two — not even in Cherry Creek. And so the people behind French 250 — owner Ted Reece and newly minted GM Neil Moxon, ex of California's French 75 — are taking the place in a (somewhat) new direction.
Like so many other French joints in town, French 250 is looking at going bistro. Not entirely, mind you, but at least partially. "We were sort of going back and forth over a kind of bistro-style restaurant," Moxon explained. "I think we've lost some of our audience lately, with the way things are with the economy. There seems to be such a limited selection of guests."
Make that a limited selection of potential guests — a slice of the fine-dining pie made up of those who are both willing to pay for extravagance and want that extravagance to be wholly and specifically French. As for actual guests? Moxon told me that the last two months had been just terrible. "Change had to come," he said.
And they wasted no time. Already some changes have been made, to both the wine list (which now has some cheaper California varietals available by the glass) and the menu (which has come down in price and gone up in portions).
Moxon and Reece had a couple of meetings last week to firm up their plans for moving forward — to talk about what, exactly, they could do to stay viable in this market. One of the ideas? Changing the name to French Underground (which I rather like). Another was a more significant overhaul of the menu, to bring it more in line with the bistro idea without sacrificing all of the top-end dishes.
"We don't really want to be Vendôme," Moxon said, referencing Bistro Vendôme in Larimer Square, a very successful bistro concept that's survived the downturn quite nicely. "But we don't want to be the old 250, either."
Leftovers: Our July 31 cover boy, Keegan Gerhard, spends most of his time in the kitchen of D Bar Desserts, the place he opened a few months ago with his wife, Lisa Bailey, at 1475 East 17th Avenue. But on Wednesday, September 23, the Food Network star will get off the line and up on stage for the Westword Menu Affair, where he'll host our Mile High Chef competition, which pits Goose Sorensen (chef/owner of Solera) against James Mazzio (chef at Via and consultant for Neighborhood Flix). I'll be one of the judges, and Gustavo Arellano, author of Ask a Mexican! and a food writer himself, promises to stop by. The fun starts at 7 p.m. at the Fillmore, 1510 Clarkson Street; for tickets, $30 in advance, go to www.westword.com.
