Editor’s note: This is a guest essay. Tucker Shaw’s Food Court will return next week.
Prima Ristorante Boulder 86ed itself Jan. 6, the latest in a string of brilliant or promising Kevin Taylor restaurants to flame out.
Depending on who’s telling the story, Prima Boulder closed because it was too big. Or maybe because there wasn’t enough foot traffic along the stretch of Walnut Street where $1 million condos loom.
But customers know the real story: Sloppy service killed Prima Boulder. Just like it killed Taylor’s Nicois and Dandelion.
It wasn’t the economy, or road construction (excuses Taylor offered in 2002, when Nicois shuttered on 17th Street in Denver). And it wasn’t Boulder’s inability to appreciate fine dining (proffered when Dandelion closed at 1010 Walnut St., a few months earlier).
The truth is, the service at Kevin Taylor restaurants rarely matches the gorgeous plates that come from his kitchens.
When I visited Prima Boulder in October 2006, the food was so sensuous that I was this close to calling my husband and demanding he meet me at the swanky hotel down the street.
Instead, I left Boulder sullen and unsatisfied.
When a friend and I dined in the intimate, but mostly empty, central dining room, our smirky server could barely find the time to break from hanging out with his tragically hip pals a few tables over and standing out on the street smoking to provide basic service. The little things, like having to wait two courses for a second glass of wine to arrive, had begun to add up by the time dessert rolled around. When I ordered espresso macchiato, I was berated by the server. “We don’t serve things like that here.”
“I didn’t order a caramel macchiato, like at Starbucks,” I said calmly, though I was shrieking in my mind. “I ordered espresso marked with foam, which is on your menu.”
“I’ll have to ask,” he sniffed.
The lush package of silky ravioli wrapping a perfectly poached egg notwithstanding, I just never felt like giving Prima a second chance.
And why would I when there are interesting, like-priced restaurants Black Cat, Frasca and Radda just blocks away?
It wasn’t my first bad taste at a Kevin Taylor restaurant. At Nicois, when I asked for knife and fork to eat some gloppy small-plate dish, the server snapped: “It’s tapas, but if you really want a fork. …” “Ahh,” I thought, “and the Spanish never, ever use utensils.”
At the end of a frustrating (food and service) lunch at the new Palettes in the Denver Art Museum, a waiter delivered a plate of apple crisp and warned it was so hot we maybe needed asbestos mitts to handle it. Except it wasn’t. Someone had possibly waved a kitchen blowtorch over the oatmeal topping and burned a few crumbs black, but when we left the table 20 minutes later, the dish was still as nearly frosty as it was when it arrived, a perfectly formed ball of ice cream unmelted at the center.
A friend shelled out for the tony champagne brunch at Prima Denver, and when the server tripped and sprayed an entire bottle of prosecco on her boyfriend, the server behaved as though it was somehow the victim’s fault. Already, disappointed customers have begun to write The Denver Post’s dining critic about the sluggish service at Limelight in the Denver Performing Arts Center.
It leaves me wondering why Taylor and his corps of presumably expert managers won’t take cues from their customers. If the economy takes a turn, people still make room in the budget for restaurants that deliver on their promises. Diners will walk around construction if they feel the extra effort is worth it.
So rather than manage my expectations restaurants on the Kevin Taylor roster, I’ll step over broken sidewalks and spend my savings at places where the servers are skilled and friendly, and the management understands that a meal out is as much about dining as it is about eating.
Dana Coffield: 303-954-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com
