Sinfully Good

Hell’s Kitchen Brings Back Homemade

Robert Lillegard

Cats give birth to cats, dogs give birth to dogs, and apple seeds grow into apple trees. Like always begets like. So what can you expect from a restaurant that started “kinda by mistake”—a place where the self-taught chef wears a kilt and dagger to a photo shoot, and where the decoration theme is “hell”? What kind of a restaurant would that be?

A (excuse the language) damn good one, it turns out. Hell’s Kitchen has earned praise from the gold standard of haute cuisine, Gourmet Magazine, to Roadfood.com. The decor is notable, and so is the branding, but according to manager Mark Anderson (also known to many of his regular customers and staff as Pappy) much of that popularity can be traced to one thing.

“It’s food, man,” he says, “Any day of my life is filled with food.”

The recipes are home-grown and heaven-sent. Breakfast foods run from dripping-sweet carmel rolls to fluffy lemon-ricotta pancakes, from chewy bison sausage bread to the softness of wild rice porridge. The lunch and dinner selections are almost as varied, with everything from crab cakes to massive beef ribs. When asked about his inspiration, owner Mitch Omer cites two unlikely sources: thieves and magpies.

“We take from what we see,” he says. “You take something you know and make it your own.”

What Omer knows could fill a book (and it will; his cookbook is coming out soon). He’s spent time as a brewer in San Francisco, a baker in Minneapolis, and a pastry chef in Boulder. But in spite of his travelled career, many of the recipes come directly from home. The rich, buttery carmel rolls and tangy coleslaw are his dad’s recipe, and the mac and cheese comes from his mom. Other ideas have been modified to be more “down-home” though their inspiration comes from far afield.

The Mahnomin porridge is a good example. This dish was based on the journals of Cree trappers, who described eating a concoction of wild rice, berries, nuts, and maple syrup. Omer added some all-American heavy cream, and after a strong period of initial suspicion (he had to force samples on people) the dish became one of the restaurant’s biggest sellers. Even the less-inspired dishes get their dose of Mitch Magic. From juicy bison burgers to spicy huevos rancheros, everything is twisted and tweaked to make it memorable.

“I think our food is excellent, I think it speaks for itself,” Anderson says. “There are a million ways to make huevos rancheros. But there’s only one way to make it for Mitch.”

The ingredients tend to be high quality, and the recipes are clever enough. But the secret is in the sauce. An enormous amount of the toppings are made or modified in-house, from ginger blackberry jam and orange marmelade to peanut butter and mustard. With these kinds of things widely available from distributors, no one expects homemade ketchup anymore. So why go the extra effort?

“I make it better than you can buy it,” Omer says, “We pay attention to the smaller details.”

Customers do, too. The “smaller details” are big business here, and customers can buy anything from rib rub to coffee to sausage bread to take home. The peanut butter, of course, is the heavy hitter. This American emblem has been sent as far away as New Zealand, and lately, American soldiers in Iraq have been snapping it up. It ties in well with the general attitude of the restaurant, which is fun food in a fun atmosphere.

“I want this to be a fun place,” Mark Anderson says, “That’s the goal.”

The atmosphere is a big part of that. Tables and chairs are solid black, as are the massive pillars which loom over diners like sentinels. For a splash of color, the walls are painted a haunting shade of red. The Hell theme echos in the moody chandeliers, in the fragments of stained glass, and in the iron latticework.  Near the bathroom, a large, dead tree hosts a murder of life-sized ravens. Does the irreverent theme offend people?

“It’s my restaurant,” Omer says, “I’ll put up whatever the hell I want.”

Indeed. While the Hell theme speaks to Omer’s personality, the art is even stranger, a kitschy amalgam of Far Side comics, photos , and macabre illustrations by Ralph Steadman. The latter carry an interesting story. Omer is a huge fan of the British illustrator, known for his corroboration with Hunter S. Thompson, and once met him in person.  Both the menu and the walls pay tribute to his brand of haunting, twisted illustration.

So it’s all very strange—but that’s ok. The decor, Mitch’s kilt-and-dagger getup, and the occasionally arbitrary touch are playful, but the food is very serious. And even with the quality meals, the restaurant is welcoming. Anderson says he’s not met a closer staff. The fact that they still visit the restaurant when they’re not working, he says, is proof that the place is as classy as it is laid-back.

“When your employees are bringing their friends and families here, that’s cool, man,” Anderson says. “If they’re willing to spend their days off eating here, that’s pretty cool stuff.”