Award-winning chef Debbie Gold tried to go it alone after splitting with ex-husband/chef Michael Smith but decided to call it quits and closed in March.
“I was working too much, and my kids saw more baby sitters than they did their mom,” Gold says. “It was great — I loved it — but you know, single mom and running a business by myself just got to be too overwhelming. You know, restaurants are a high-maintenance business. I did the best I could, and now I just need to scale back my time and focus on getting back to what I love, being creative with food and feeding people.”
Translation: Gold is rested and ready to go.
“I know people think I’m leaving Kansas City, but I’m not,” she says. “I don’t have anything set right now; I’m doing some consulting, but if the right deal came around I’d be open to it.”
The high point of her six years at 40 Sardines?
“When everything came together as a package and we had a good team. I mean we had a great run there for a long time.”
The low? “Well, obviously the realization that I had to move on. You know, I’m a fighter and I fought to do what I was doing and to keep doing it.”
Funniest: “I remember the time someone left $10,000 in cash in the men’s restroom,” Gold muses. “And we had people out front having sex in their car on a Wednesday night. Then we had a guy come in who was on a date, and his father-in-law came in, so he ran into the kitchen and said, ‘Is there another way out?’ And we had a turtle walk in the back door of the restaurant once. My kids kept it a couple days then set it free.”
One of 40 Sardines’ signature touches were the high-quality nude photographs in the restrooms.
“In the men’s restroom we had women and in the women’s restroom we had men, because, you know, we’re equal opportunity voyeurs,” Gold says. “We used to have to do tours of the restrooms, like take women into the men’s and vice versa. The funniest was when we had a fifth-grade class come in for an etiquette class. Then after one of the boys went to the restroom and came back, all of a sudden all the boys had to go to the bathroom.”
VooDoo love
Count Brooksider and entertainment pro Marti Dolinar among fans of the Saturday DJ shows at Harrah’s VooDoo Lounge.
His take on the scene in the wake of a recent melee between police and clubbers: “I’ve been to probably a couple dozen of them over the past 2 1/2 years, and you get a lot of urban youth that show up when the bands stop playing and the DJs kick in. But I like the vibe. I mean, it really is a showcase club. … I like it because it reminds me of the type of dance clubs you see in New York or L.A.”
Word that security guards are “wanding” patrons for weaponry speaks to management’s concern about violence.
“The times I’ve seen fights there they’ve been broken up pretty quickly,” Dolinar says. “I’ve never seen anything that I felt was life-threatening; I’ve never felt unsafe anytime I’ve been there.”
Dolinar speculates the DJs will continue but says the club will probably, “do one of two things: either raise the cover charge again to weed out the riffraff — but the trouble is those people can afford a cover charge of $25 — or there’s going to be such a high presence of security it’s going to make people feel uncomfortable.”
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.