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Back on Wednesday, June 13, I went out and cooked at Justin Cucci’s and Daniel Asher’s Linger Restaurant in Denver as part of the James Beard Celebrity Chef Tour. It’s taken me forever to write about it because I’ve spent most of my time since then lying on the floor in New York, melting. But Denver was gorgeous, one mile above sea level, and cool and crisp despite the wildfires that were just starting.

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See! It’s all clean!

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I’d met Daniel Asher and Justin Cucci at Dirt Candy when they were in New York. They’d made a reservation and just appeared in my dining room one day and were super-nice. I was surprised, but happily so, that Dirt Candy was a chef dining destination in New York, so it was just sheer bonus coolness to be invited out to cook in their restaurants.

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Daniel and I at Linger.

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The night before the dinner I ate at Justin’s other restaurant, Root Down, and what is wrong with Denver? Why are their restaurants so huge and spacious? Why are they all open to the outdoors? Why do they have such amazing views? Root Down is built in the shell of an old service station on top of a hill and one entire wall is a garage door that opens to look out over Denver, which is full of healthy, athletic, seemingly well-adjusted people. It’s like the Australia of America. Dinner was great, and Sian (the drinks lady who also runs the beverage program at Linger) did wine pairings for my husband and I, which meant that we were pretty tanked by the time we rolled out of there late in the evening.

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Root Down’s deck.

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So the next day I show up at Linger, another enormous, beautiful restaurant that would cost $12 billion if it was in New York City, a bit hung over but ready to work. 130 people were coming to dinner and I was doing a snack (Portobello Mousse) and then an appetizer-sized portion of the Cauliflower & Waffles.

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This involved me overnight Fedexing a cooler full
of sauces, mousse, and smoked cauliflower.

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As per usual it was very confusing being in someone else’s kitchen – I never know where anything is, and I’m constantly bugging people and asking them basic questions. I’m the boss of Dirt Candy so when I’m there I know where everything is, but suddenly I’m at another restaurant wandering around like an intern, poking busy people and saying, “Where’s the dishwashing station?” “Where’re the knives?” It’s a cross between humbling and annoying.

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Mushrooms ready to be turned into mousse.

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A whole lot of tomatoes, and a helpful leprechaun.

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Not only am I bothering people, I have to meet new people and remember their names. I’m terrible at this. Another thing I’m terrible at, apparently? Making Portobello Mousse. It’s been ages since I’ve had to make it myself from scratch and halfway through I realized I was doing it wrong. Fortunately, I was able to salvage it and no one noticed. Home cooks don’t realize that half of cooking is fixing your mistakes. I actually wanted to use part of the Dirt Candy Cookbook talking about how to fix mistakes with each dish, but there just wasn’t enough space.

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The kitchen leprechaun was so nice and friendly.
He made me feel like less of an idiot!

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I had figured that since I was only making two things this would be a cakewalk. Thank god Linger had a big staff, because I’d forgotten how hard it is to make my food. Normally my prep team does this and I oversee what they’re doing, but now I understand better why they hate me: it takes a ton of prep to make my food. It’s way too complicated!

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The line at Linger.

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Smoked cauliflower getting battered.

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The dinner was for 130 people, and so after the mousse went out I needed to plate 130 dishes at once for the Cauliflower & Waffles. At Dirt Candy, we only ever plate 18 dishes at once and that’s when we’re doing a private party. Plating 130 at once took 10 people who did nothing but plate for 15 minutes. It’s really cool to watch and for me it’s so alien that I feel like I’m seeing a solar eclipse or some other rare astronomical event.

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Plating begins.

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More chefs recruited to plate!

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Portobello plating madness!

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One of the fun things about cooking in someone else’s restaurant is that we all may not know each other that well, we may not remember each other’s names perfectly, we all may have worked in different restaurants, but we’ve all been trained. Every cook I’ve ever met knows what to do in any given situation. If plating’s happening you can jump on it and help out, if you’re firing tickets you know what happens next, if you’re on the grill or the fryer, you know how to deal. It’s not any of our first time at the rodeo. It’s kind of cool to have a set of skills that, no matter how far away you are, you always feel at home.

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It’s been a long time since I did dinner service in a big kitchen, and I’ve gotten used to Dirt Candy’s submarine/sardine-sized kitchen where the only thing you have to say as you zip around the kitchen is “Behind you!” to let people know that you’re coming behind them with a burning hot pan. Suddenly, at Linger, we went into service and everyone’s saying, “Corners! Corners!” I was so confused. Why are these people obsessed with corners? Is it some kind of hip Denver slang? It took me a while to realize that this is a kitchen with actual corners and you need to warn people when you’re tooling around one with your arms full of soup. No one’s ever coming around a corner at Dirt Candy. Corners are a luxury we can’t afford.

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Another view of the line at Linger.

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The dinner went off without a hitch (or at least no hitches that I noticed) and from being super nervous, I wound up having fun. And I didn’t get altitude sickness, which is an added bonus. Ultimately, going to cook in Denver was a nice break, and it made me really envious of other cities with their huge restaurants and enormous kitchens.

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(A huge thank you to Justin, Daniel, and Jeff Black who organized this event for the James Beard House!)

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