Barolo Grill
DENVER BY DINA BERTA
Lingering over a meal at the Barolo Grill, local restaurant reviewer Pat Miller started to feel guilty as she looked
around the crowded dining room and bar
packed with people waiting to be seated.
“I thought maybe we should give up this
table,” says Miller, the host of the weekly,
Denver-area restaurant radio show, “The
Gabby Gourmet.” “It was a Wednesday
night, and it was a mob scene.”
Miller ranks the Barolo Grill highly in
her annual Gabby Gourmet Restaurant
Guide for its Northern Italian cuisine, wine
and atmosphere. The 14-year-old establishment also has consistently been named
among the best restaurants in Denver by
local media and Zagat.
Critics such as Miller point to owner
Blair Taylor as the key to the restaurant’s
success, and Taylor gives the credit to chef
ADDRESS: 3030 E. 6th Avenue
CUISINE: Piedmontese
CHEF: Brian Laird
OWNER: Blair Taylor
de cuisine Brian Laird and the entire staff
who go with him to Italy every year to learn
more about the food and the region. The
trips continue to improve their knowledge,
expertise and level of service, Taylor says.
Taylor closes the restaurant for a week
every year to give the staff a vacation.
Most, though, go with him to Italy’s Piedmont region near the French and Swiss
borders. Employees buy their own plane
tickets, and the restaurant pays for lodging
and meals. Often many of the wineries and
restaurants they visit host them.
In Italy waiters visit vineyards and meet
the winemakers, and Barolo’s chefs have the
opportunity to learn from Italian chefs. After
the first trip a year after Barolo opened, Taylor noticed guest checks increased and the
restaurant improved exponentially.
“Trying to recreate an Italian experience
without anyone other than me having been
there was sort of faking it,” Taylor says.
He opened Barolo Grill on the edge of
Denver’s Cherry Creek North neighborhood in December 1992 after his first trip
to Piedmont. It was the third restaurant
venture for this Chicago native who had
majored in hospitality
at the University of
Denver. He worked for
a wine importer and
then opened Chives, a
high-end French
restaurant that he converted to a California
wine bar after the oil
bust in the 1980s. He
sold the Denver restaurant two years after
starting Barolo Grill.
Owner Blair Taylor strives to keep Barolo Grill’s Northern Italian
cuisine authentic by taking his staff to visit the Piedmont region.
DINA BERTA
Barolo’s menu, designed by Laird, focuses on the regions of Piedmont, Tuscany
and the Veneto. Laird, who started as a
sous chef, has been Barolo’s head chef for
the past eight years.
“I can’t say enough about how spectacular
a job he has done,” Taylor says. “Italian food is
elegant, yet simple. You have to blend those
two elements together, and not everyone gets
it. A lot of chefs just want to overdo stuff and
make the dishes heavier and too many layers. Italian cuisine is beautifully simple, clean
without being fussy, and he gets that.”
attract regulars and special-occasion diners, it has not gone unscathed from the
recession. Business entertaining is down.
Employees began worrying this winter
about being able to afford airfare to Europe, so for the first time in the restaurant’s history, Taylor planned a staff trip
to California’s Sonoma and Napa valleys
in July.
While Barolo Grill has continued to
“We have people who have been to Italy
five to seven times and had never been to
Napa,” Taylor says. “There are actually a lot
of great Italian-related wineries and great
Italian chefs there, too.” ■
Blue Ginger
WELLESLEY, MASS. BY MIKE DEMPSEY
ANTHONY TIEULI FOR WGBH EMILY STERNE
Blue Ginger’s chef and co-owner, Ming Tsai, aims to blend Eastern flavors with Western techniques.
Blue Ginger’s celebrity chef-owner Ming Tsai is quick to share the credit for his restaurant’s long-lasting success.
“The key to the success is that I hired
well and continue to hire well,” Tsai says,
noting that his trusted staffers “ultimately
are the success of the restaurant.”
Blue Ginger, which blends Eastern flavors and ingredients with Western techniques, has been humming along for more
than 11 years. It is the first and only
restaurant that the 1989 Cornell University graduate has owned.
Blue Ginger, which is located in the town
of Wellesley, Mass., 10 miles outside of Boston,
recently added 60 seats and a bar area that
Tsai says allows him to offer lower-priced fare
like Ming’s Bings, which are Asian-style
steamed buns. The extension, which opened
in May 2008, has helped the high-end operation weather the economic downturn.
Timing has always been one of Tsai’s
strengths, he says. Just a few months after
Blue Ginger opened in 1998, his inaugural
television show, “East Meets West,” debuted
on the Food Network.
“[That] was a good year for me,” he says.
Tsai calls “East Meets West” the most
valuable marketing he could have imagined. Mat Schafer, restaurant critic for the
Boston Herald, agrees that the exposure
has been a boon to Blue Ginger.
“You can’t negate the influence of the
TV show,” Schafer says. “Back when Blue
Ginger opened, it was right at the time
when people were getting interested in
watching TV food shows.”
More recently, Ming has hosted another
cooking show called “Simply Ming” on PBS.
Tsai says the location of Wellesley was a
bit of a lucky break as well. He wanted to
open in Boston proper, but in the heyday of
Internet startup money, real estate was at a
premium. He wanted at least 100 seats and
couldn’t find an affordable space in the city.
“You can’t really make money on a 50-
or 60-seater,” he says. “I wanted the magic
formula that Cornell teaches you: 100 seats
or 100 rooms for a hotel to make money.
Obviously, I am not just in it for my health;
I am in it to get my kid through college.”
The demographics of Wellesley also
worked for Tsai.
“I don’t care if you are rich or not, but I
do care if you are well-traveled,” Tsai says.
“Because if you are well-traveled, you tend
to appreciate your food more and you tend
to appreciate life more. Wellesley was a
gem of a community. It had tons of people
that love food.”
Even as he lauds the people that make
Blue Ginger successful, Tsai continues to
keep a close eye on the restaurant.
“I [taste] everything I can possibly try,”
he says, “including the boiling water, to
make sure there is enough salt in it.”
Tsai’s motivation for that type of hands-on management is simple. He feels the
pressure to perform every night.
“Half the time it is someone’s first time
at Blue Ginger,” he says. “They just drove
in from New York or Nebraska. If it
is not a spot-on perfect meal, they are
disappointed.” ■
ADDRESS: 583 Washington Street
CUISINE: East-West
CHEF/CO-OWNER: Ming Tsai
CO-OWNER: Polly Tsai
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