Listen here, folks, because I’m about to drop some seriously profound philosophizing on you. Like, these go to 11-level philosophizing. Ready? Food is the new rock ‘n’ roll. Food shows like Iron Chef and Top Chef get far more viewers than any weekly televised concert would, and personalities from these shows – Anthony Bourdain and Tom Colicchio – are selling out live performance venues like the Paramount, and bigger, all across the country. Women fawn over them as they sign autographs and wave to the flashing bulbs. Rising chefs, often heavily inked and smoking cigarettes, wield their finely tuned instruments in places like “kitchen stadium” to create works of art that could and should rival the creativity and industriousness of stand-outs from other artistic media.
Personally, this comparison has never been as obvious to me as when we went recently to a pop-up restaurant – all the rage these days! – at the Jefferson Theater, where the food was on the stage, and the band played up to it from the stands. It was as if music itself was bowing to the new king, bathing all that flank steak and mahi-mahi in melodic applause.
And worthy of applause it was. Budding rock star chefs and sous chefs from Mas, Tavola, and Palladio put together an appealing three-course menu that managed to be both familiar and adventurous. My lamb skewer could have used a little more seasoning (though the salad/garnish it came with comprised a few of my favorite bites of the evening – always a good sign), and the olive oil rosemary cake was only good, but everything else was top notch. The potato poppers and spice-rubbed flank steak with blue cheese mayo and wickedly good fried smashed potatoes was not the boldest of dishes but hit all the right comfort notes, while the unusual Boer Bok – a kind of African goat – mingled with pork belly and cabbage in a zesty tomato-bell pepper sauce to evoke BBQ as fine dining. Vegetarians were in luck, too, with a crispy tofu and honey-chipotle glaze that melted in your mouth after a satisfying crunch. Add a rich grappa brownie to the end of the meal and you have a stunning performance.
The servers were attentive and the band – The New Best Recipe – offered up a tight, mellow performance at just the right volume. You could easily talk over dinner or go down and sit on the hay bales to enjoy the music more deliberately. Overall, it was a charming experience and a very unusual Sunday night. Red Light and The Jefferson Theater are planning four pop-up restaurants a year, and we’re extremely curious to see what they do next. Rock & Rolls, maybe?
When I heard that Escafé was moving over to the old OXO space, ushering in a wagon wheel saloon specializing in affordable spins on rustic Southern fare, I was skeptical. Known less (to me) as a restaurant and more as a place to drink Red-Bull-vodka-laden Orange Crushes while dancing on the bar to Lady Gaga, Escafé featured a kind of grinding that had little in common with that now being employed by Whiskey Jar chefs to produce their delicious boiled peanut hummus. Unfortunately, my skepticism was confirmed after my first two visits. Fortunately, it was unconfirmed after my last two. 
On our most recent visit to the reliable 
Those of you who have been out and about for Sunday brunch recently have seen what we’ve seen. Lines everywhere. I don’t know if it’s the Tavern closing down or media circus performers here for the Huguely trial or what. Bluegrass? One hour. Blue Moon? One hour. The Nook? Thirty minutes. The Nook! What all of these line-waiters don’t realize is that the best brunch in town is just a staircase and an open table away. 
For those of you who have been here awhile, you may remember Monsoon Café’s origins as an artsy second-story Thai restaurant above the current Downtown Grille.* There were funkily painted chairs and wall-hangings, a couple of intimately capacious seating areas, and an appealing and unusual menu. I don’t know exactly when it moved from that privileged evening-on-the-town location to the decidedly less savory house on the corner of 2nd and Market (
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