CARBONDALE - Two new restaurants from
longtime valley restaurateurs are bringing new tastes to Main Street,
as SIX89 owner Mark Fischer readies to open a Thai restaurant, and
former Chefy's owners Claude and Sue Van Horton bring their cooking to
town.
For both, the new restaurants offer a new direction, not only on
the menu, but on the check. Both SIX89 and Chefy's offered fine dining.
Their new restaurants will serve up more mid-range fare. Both are
angling to open by early December.
"I think the trend for restaurants these days is to get away from
fine dining because of the economy," said Sue Van Horton, whose new
restaurant Russets will be more casual than Chefy's. "People want to go
out and spend less."
In a town that has seen good restaurants come and go, these
restaurant owners hope the two new additions will help put Carbondale
on the diner's map.
"I think if we do this right, it will bring more people to
Carbondale," Fischer said. "The greatest thing for SIX89 would be if
there would be four or five great restaurants on Main Street in
Carbondale."
At phat thai, Fischer promises authentic Thai cuisine, or at least, as authentic as a white guy can produce.
"You know, it's going to be peopled by gringos," he said.
Still, Fischer says this will be no trendy pan-Asian cuisine. It
will be straight-up Thai, with genuine ingredients and genuine recipes,
even if the chef isn't very authentic Thai.
"I'm trying to do Thai cooking without compromise," he said.
"Somebody who doesn't understand fish sauce, maybe they shouldn't eat
here."
Asked how long he's been cooking Thai, Fischer looks at his watch, then grabs a fat tome on Thai cooking from his pickup truck.
"How long have I been eating Thai is a much more appropriate
question," he said. "For me, it's like learning a whole new language.
Before, I used to cook with butter and really rich stocks. This is a
completely different approach to cooking."
For the Van Hortons, the change won't be quite as radical, but
still a departure. After 15 years in Basalt, Chefy's shut down in
January when plans to buy the building fell through, leaving behind a
loyal customer base that loved their fine dining.
They'll find some of the favorite menu items - like wild mushroom
soup and oysters Rockefeller - on the new menu. But there will be lots
of changes, they say, as they plan a more casual neighborhood
restaurant and bar geared toward professionals. It's not Chefy's
anymore. It's Russets, a nod to Carbondale's potato-growing heritage.
When Chefy's closed, the Van Hortons looked at opening in the new
Riverwalk development, but they found lower rates in Carbondale, where
they're setting up in a new building on Main Street.
"We tried to make it work in Basalt because that's what we were
familiar with and we do have a big draw from Aspen and Snowmass," Sue
said. "We realized that so many people had asked us to come to
Carbondale that it wouldn't be a problem."
Walking through in hard hats, they look at framing that will soon
be a bar, an elegant copper-floored wine closet and a semi-exhibition
kitchen where diners can see Claude at work as they enter.
That's part of the neighborhood feeling, said Carbondale restaurant designer Jeff Katz.
"It's the old 'Cheers' thing," he said. "People know your name. You walk in and see them and recognize people."
A block away, Fischer is renovating the former Palomino Grill into what he said will be a simple, Zen-like space.
Fischer opened SIX89 in 1988. Since then, some critics have hailed
it as the best restaurant in Aspen, never mind that it's not in Aspen.
Some have called it the best in Colorado.
A second restaurant had been in the works for a while, said
Fischer, a former chef at the Caribou Club, San Francisco's Fog City
Diner, New York City's Mesa and Le Cirque and Table 29 in Napa, Calif.
That could have meant something like SIX89 somewhere like Glenwood
or Eagle. But the space came available a few blocks away, he said,
allowing him to work in both places, almost simultaneously. And Thai
food is hard to come by around these parts.
"It's the one thing I think is lacking on the Western Slope," he said.
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