2004 Tabletop Performance Award Winner - Blue Canyon

By Howard Riell, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 10/1/2004

Our judges selected this establishment as the outstanding entry in the Over $30 Check Average category of FE&S’ 2004 Tabletop Awards program. Further winners will be featured every other month in the magazine, as we extend recognition to all of this year’s most extraordinary tabletop designs.

The Blue Canyon Kitchen and Tavern in Twinsburg, Ohio, which opened in June 2004, was conceived to express the ambiance of a mountain lodge and designed to transport diners to the Rocky Mountains.

Blue Canyon’s mood — rustic, lodge-like, comfortable, rich, cozy and relaxed — is apparent in every part of the operation, but especially in its tabletop presentation, which earned this independent restaurant top honors in the Over $30 Check Average category of FE&S’ 2004 Tabletop Awards program.

“The food concept for the restaurant is American cuisine,” owner Bob Voelker explained. “The selections that we serve are, to some degree, comfort foods. Our presentations are very eclectic. We have good contrast in color, flavor and texture, and the food fits well into the American style.”

The 350-seat restaurant’s menu varies depending upon in which area of the facility — Kitchen, Great Room, Lodge, Patio, Tavern — customers choose to dine. The average per-person check at dinner, with liquor, is $45.

According to Marguerite Marini, the DSR with Cleveland-based S.S. Kemp & Co. who submitted this Tabletop Awards entry, Blue Canyon was created “through years of dining and culinary studies completed by the owners, who have traveled across the United States and parts of Europe visiting unique dining establishments, especially those inspired by nature. Blue Canyon is the essence of an upscale mountain lodge that transports patrons from Twinsburg in the Midwest into the Rockies.”

“We submitted this entry,” added Andrea Smith, an interior designer with S.S. Kemp, “because it stands out as one of the most carefully selected and executed theme restaurants that we have ever done.”

For example, every tabletop piece at Blue Canyon was carefully selected in order to enhance its outdoor, woodsy theme. To begin, water glasses are rippled, to evoke a mountain stream. The hammered flatware is rustic yet elegant. The china is embossed with irregular rings that are intended to remind diners of rings on a fallen tree. The steak knife is aptly named “Hunter” and its hand-carved, bone-like handle is designed to capture the feel of eating in a hunter’s cabin.

“We chose a heavy flatware,” explained Voelker, “that’s made from pounded stainless, so it has that real lodge-like, rustic, sturdy presence. Our standard knives all have bone handles that make them more like hunting tools — once again, to reinforce the notion of a lodge environment.”

Blue Canyon’s tabletop is “particularly appealing,” Smith suggested, “because of the attention to detail, the variety of pieces, the large-scale accent pieces and the unique custom items that were included. The accent pieces such as the copper soup cup have a lodge feel, too, as though they were just taken off of a hearth.

“From the moment diners are seated, they know that they are in for a unique dining experience,” added Smith. “Guests are greeted with the presentation of a fresh tapenade and slabs of butter presented on small, square, cobalt-blue glass plates. The rustic salt & pepper shaker and elegant wine glass hint of what is to come.”

Soups at Blue Canyon are presented in individual copper pots and transferred tableside into bowls. Special entrées are served on custom-logoed plates that lend a memorable appearance to these dishes. The teapots used are of rustic iron that evokes the memory of those once heated over campfires.

“A lot of the tabletop items we use are metal,” Voelker pointed out. “The bread baskets are made of metal twigs, which ties into the nature theme. Our french fries are served in a spun-metal cone. Of course, there are a lot of metals visible in the restaurant’s design itself. So, we tried to bring that look into some of our serving equipment, such as our iron teapots. Even the salt & pepper shakers and creamers are pewter, which helps to continue the look you might find on a dining table at a mountain lodge.”

The colors of the china employed at Blue Canyon were also given careful consideration by the tabletop design team. “We use a lot of colored glass and the china ties in with the name ‘Blue,’” explained Voelker. “Every piece we have on our tables is unusual, [such as] the Prima china from Steelite, which has sort of a rustic yellowish tone around the rims of the plates.”

“From oversized cutlery pieces to the texture of the bread baskets,” added Smith, “the concept of Blue Canyon is intentionally expressed by every tabletop element.”