Flawless

The cappuccino machine is broken.

It’s 5:14 p.m. on the first busy night in The Broadmoor’s newly reopened Penrose Room restaurant, the doors are about to open, and the machine doesn’t have a whiff of steam.

“So make sure if your guests order coffee at the end of the meal,” the maitre d’ tells the tuxedo-clad staff, “they know we will not have cappuccino this evening.”

Minutes later, just as the servers finish spot-checking the glasses, the first guest arrives with his date and promptly orders a double cappuccino.

“What should we do? He didn’t even give me a chance to tell him,” a young server named Chris Dubois whispers in the foyer by the kitchen. This is his first job as a waiter.

“I guess we’ll just get it for him,” says the maitre d,’ Duane Thompson.

After years as captain of this formal dining room in the penthouse of the hotel’s south tower, a demand for coffee when there is none doesn’t ruffle a whisker in his perfectly trimmed mustache.

He pulls aside one of his most trusted servers, Rudy Martinez, explains the situation, and without a word, Martinez pushes through the foyer door into the clamor of the kitchen, rides the freight elevator nine stories down and walks to The Broadmoor’s golf club. He whips up an espresso behind the club’s bar, foams the milk, sets the cup on a saucer, shoots back up the elevator, pauses to wipe a dab of foam from the saucer and take a breath, then calmly sets the hot coffee in front of the guest without giving the smallest hint of its journey.

This is five-star service.

Or at least, The Broadmoor hopes it is.

Every year, the Mobil Travel Guide awards the finest hotels and restaurants in the country five stars. It’s one of the most stringent, sought-after honors in the industry. And the Penrose Room is trying to nab it.

The Broadmoor has won five stars as a hotel for 47 years, making it the longest holder of the top rating. But its eateries have never won more than four.

They are not alone. There are only 14 five-star restaurants in the country. None is in Colorado or anywhere near it.

Even a four-star rating is no small feat. Colorado has five. The Springs has one, the Penrose.

Even so, settling for less than flawless has been a stain on the resort’s starched white résumé. So when the building housing the Penrose closed for six months of renovation this fall, the resort’s president decided to mix up a recipe for a five-star restaurant.

The plan: Redo everything. Hunt for a world-class chef. Drop $300,000 on improvements to the kitchen and dining room. And, finally, search for flaws in everything from the fish forks to the foie gras.

On May 10, Colorado Springs’ most formal dining room quietly reopened, set on becoming the state’s top-rated restaurant.

Of course, there’s a risk in making such a bold move. If you tell everyone you’re going for five stars and get four, you’re no longer a four-star restaurant. You’re a restaurant that didn’t get five.

And getting five stars is a reach. Restaurants that have earned the top honor (The French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley, Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago) are the vanguard of haute cuisine and microscopically flawless service.

But not going for fives stars has its own risk. If the finest restaurant in the resort doesn’t strive to be the best in the country, then the name Penrose Room loses its prestige and starts to eat away at the reputation of The Broadmoor.

“Having a five-star restaurant is so important to the whole operation,” said Craig Reed, who oversees all of the hotel’s restaurants. “People will pick a place to travel based on the food.”

PROPERLY SEASONED

It’s 6:15 p.m. The hostess seats an elegant couple celebrating their 22nd anniversary at a table next to the cappuccino guy and gracefully unfolds their napkins.

Dubois, the rookie server, shuffles over stiffly with one arm tucked behind him and one in front, draped with a serviette — a parody of a French waiter.

“Good evening and welcome to the Penrose Room,” he says, and goes into what servers call “the spiel” about the menu.

It’s “prix fixe,” French for set price: a choice of three courses for $55, four for $65, or a sevencourse custom chef’s tasting for $95.

Dubois has spent 14 years working in kitchens, from dishwasher on up, and tended bar at Oscar’s downtown. Someday, he wants to open his own restaurant. So he has to learn the “front of the house.” And what better place?

“Can I start you with something from the bar?” he asks.

They order a cosmopolitan and a Heineken. He scribbles down the order, repeats it, then subtly rearranges the salt and pepper shakers and leaves.

A long-running debate has seasoned the presence of the shakers on the table.

The old Penrose had them — sterling silver, ornate but understated.

In the new Penrose, the chef did not want them. The food, he said, would arrive expertly seasoned. Too often guests douse their plates in salt without even tasting. If they want salt and pepper, fine, he said, bring it, but have them try the food first.

Then the maitre d’ started to wonder: Does this make us seem full of ourselves? Perfect, fivestar service means nothing should have to be asked for.

The shakers stayed — and were given another job. When guests sit, their shakers stand together. When the server greets the table, he slides the shakers slightly apart to let other servers know the crucial first welcome has been accomplished.

FRENCH CONTEMPORARY

It’s 6:23 p.m. The cocktails arrive, and the anniversary couple let their menus drop as they watch the sun melt over the mountains.

In the overlooked folds of the menu wait snapper ceviche with cucumber and coconut milk, braised rabbit on a bed of parpadelle pasta, fiddlehead ferns and baby fennel — so many delectables it’s hard to choose. Each was created by Bertrand Bouquin.

His last name is pronounced “boo-CAAN,” but the staff calls him “Chef.”

Chef cooks in a style he calls “contemporary classic French,” which pretty much sums him up, too.

He grew up in the village of Nevers, in Burgundy, where at a young age his family taught him to love cooking.

In his soft French accent, he says he was “no genius” at school, so his father took him aside at 15 and told him to learn a trade or join the army.

Bouquin, 35, started peeling potatoes in a nearby restaurant that summer and worked his way up doing every job in the kitchen under such culinary superstars as Mobil five-star New York chef Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud, owner of Daniel in Manhattan.

Bouquin is far from the stereotype of a snooty, temperamental French chef. He is usually smiling, quick with a joke and fond of saying “awesome” (emphasis on the second syllable) when he likes something.

In 2001, Bouquin became chef of Maisonette in Cincinnati — a French dining room with the longest continuous Mobil fivestar rating of any restaurant.

Maisonette closed in 2005 after a plan to move out of Cincinnati’s downtown fell through, and The Broadmoor wooed Bouquin to Colorado right away.

What better match for the hotel with the longest five-star rating than the chef from the kitchen with the same honor?

“Chef Bertrand is truly worldclass, just look at where he’s cooked,” said Steve Bartolin, president of the hotel. “I think he helps make our goal reachable.”

The five-star medal Bouquin earned at Maisonette sits on his desk in the back of the Penrose kitchen, next to a French/English dictionary and photos of his two dogs, two young daughters, and his wife, also a chef (they met at Daniel).

It’s a chef’s dream to have five stars, he said. “It is not easy, but I know what it takes.”

He is quick to point out that five-star food can’t rest on past laurels. Every day it means imaginative dishes made from fresh, excellent, and, for some entrees, hard-to-find ingredients (there is only one man from whom he will buy scallops). Everything must be prepared from scratch.

There are almost no cans in his kitchen. The artichoke hearts for the pan-seared Dover sole are made by peeling leathery ’chokes down to their tender centers.

The black-olive oil for the slowcooked halibut is made in the kitchen from cured black olives, dried, hand-ground to a powder and steeped in extra virgin oil.

The jus for the veal sweetbreads and blue prawns simmers more than 12 hours.

“I’m not fancy. I don’t like a lot of flavors,” he said. “I want one flavor, and it has to be exactly the right one.”

Respect for the food comes from respect for the chef, Bouquin said, so he can be hard on his staff.

“I want them to be nervous, maybe a little afraid. It keeps them on their toes. I can be nice guy, but sometimes it is time to bust the chop.”

MEET THE LOVEBIRDS

It’s 6:32 p.m. The menus have been in front of the anniversary couple for 17 minutes, but they have barely given them a glance.

The husband strokes his wife’s hand with his finger. She gazes into his eyes. Their server, Dubois, has begun referring to them as “the Lovebirds.”

Next to them, the hostess seats a table of six celebrating a graduation.

The Penrose is host to fabulously rich regulars and just-asrich visitors. But it also sees plenty of middle-class locals who have a very special occasion that calls for a fitting place to celebrate.

Dubois arrives to introduce the graduation table to the menu. While they oooh and ahhh over the choices, he keeps an eye on the Lovebirds for signs they’re ready to order.

A server doesn’t want to rush his guests, or even interrupt them. Five-star servers should be like commandos: silent, watchful, able to accomplish their mission a second before anyone knows they are there.

Dubois retreats to the shadows of the foyer to punch in the six-top’s drink order (“Champagne,” he says, “but a low-end one.”) and watches for a sign from the Lovebirds.

“What do you see, young Jedi?” his back server, Anthony Smart, asks.

Each group of tables has two servers, front and back, who work together.

Smart, a graduate of Widefield High School, has a cool confidence that comes from working two years at the old Penrose and a round, wise face that makes him look a bit like Buddha.

Most of the servers are new and turn to him for advice.

He describes five-star service as “Zen.” “You can’t expect to be in control. The room will get crazy busy. You just have to see the wave coming and ride it.”

Like many servers, he’s in school to become something else — in his case, a cop or prison guard. Another is training to be a firefighter. Two graduated from college this spring. One is going to med school in the fall.

The average tip (at least $120 a night, sometimes much more) and the evening-only work is ideal for students.

Mrs. Lovebird laughs at something Mr. Lovebird says and momentarily lets her head rest on his shoulder.

“Are they for real?” Smart comments.

Just then, Mr. Lovebird pushes out his chair, sets his napkin on the table and leaves to go to the bathroom.

Dubois grabs a clean, folded napkin from a stack with a pair of silver tongs and quietly slips in to replace the soiled one.

A fresh napkin is one of more than 250 criteria on the “bill of standards” that anonymous inspectors for Mobil Travel Guide must see before they award five stars.

Aside from phenomenal cuisine and service, there must be fresh flowers on the tables and in the bathroom, solid ice cubes in the cocktails (not hollow cubes), and loose-leaf tea in the teapot (never, ever a tea bag). Diners must be greeted within 30 seconds of sitting at their tables. The tablecloth must have a silencing pad underneath so the dishes don’t clank.

“They have it down to the gnat’s eyebrows,” said Reed, the restaurant director. “You’d think you’d spot them with a ruler and a stopwatch for how exact they are.”

In fact, it’s easy to remain anonymous, said Jayne Griswald, who has inspected for Mobil for five years.

“We come in all shapes and sizes,” she said. “They never catch us.”

She, on the other hand, catches them.

During the 250 days a year she spends on the road, she catches the finest restaurants serving dishes that bear faint resemblance to menu descriptions. She catches servers setting down dirty glasses and disappearing with no explanation.

“I’m literally counting the minutes it takes to get a cocktail,” she said.

If a meal is good enough or bad enough to change a rating, other inspectors visit to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

Almost no restaurant is close enough to perfect to earn five stars.

“You can be very good, very good and not get it,” Griswald said. “There’s kind of a magical quality in five stars, a certain something you can’t put your finger on. It’s technically excellent, but also graceful and thoughtful in every way.”

A true sign of greatness is grace in the wine service, she said. “Most places take themselves too seriously. Let’s face it, guests are going to fake their wine knowledge, so the staff should make them feel comfortable, be approachable. Help guide them to what they want without embarrassing them.”

In all its inspections, the Penrose has come up short. There was lobster shell in the bisque, or a drink check not automatically transferred from the bar. Once, a beet garnish on a salad was forgotten.

EVEN A SEEING EYE DOG

It’s 6:37 p.m. Mr. Lovebird comes back and drops the freshly folded napkin in his lap.

When the Penrose Room shut down for renovations, Reed called weekly meetings to make sure all 250 of Mobil’s requirements were covered.

“We’re all set on the coffee service?” Reed asked from behind his desk at a meeting in early March.

Maitre d’ Thompson and Chef Bouquin sat in stuffed leather wing chairs.

“I think so,” Thompson said. “Do we still want to serve chocolate espresso beans on the side? It confuses the guests. They drop them in their coffee.”

“Yeah, I say we stick with it,” Reed said.

“Standards say we need to offer at least three types of fresh bread,” Thompson said.

“We’ll have five,” the chef interjected.

“Do we want to still offer the guests a small flashlight to read the menu?” Thompson asked.

“No, why?” the chef said.

“Well, it’s a little dim in the dining room,” Thompson said.

“Maybe we should give them glasses too?” the chef said.

“We do, if they ask.”

“How ’bout the Seeing Eye Dog?” the chef said, joking.

“That would be me,” Thompson said, not joking.

Finally they came to napkins and tablecloths.

The Mobil standards require “linens of exceptional quality” and, Thompson said, the old white linens were leaving lint on guests’ clothes.

They decided to go with a tastefully muted gold weave on both napkin and table cloth. The replacements were $40,000.

The standards say a folded napkin should fall open when picked up with one hand. Thompson had the staff fold them all into little crowns to sit on guests’ plates.

But, walking through the dining room just before the opening, Reed noticed they looked a bit too much like Burger King hats. “I feel like I should be ordering a Whopper,” he told Thompson.

Soon after, the staff changed the fold to look like an envelope.

IN THE KITCHEN

It’s 7:45 p.m. The Lovebirds have been ignoring their menus for an hour and a half.

Finally, their server, Dubois, notices that they look like they are ready to order.

He sweeps over, pad ready.

For an appetizer, she (ladies ordering first is a Mobil standard) has the lobster salad with slivered green beans and sour apple, and a cauliflower and cumin panna cotta. He has the Peakytoe crab with cherry relish and aged balsamic vinegar.

For the entrée, she has the pan-seared snapper with a foam made of red and white wine, cream and curry, and served with a riceless risotto made from celery and almond slivers. He has the roasted Colorado lamb with purple mustard and a chickpea panisse.

Waiters get a lot of questions about the menu (“What is chickpea panisse?”) and are expected to answer insightfully. (“Chickpea dough cut into a long rectangle, then fried. It’s wonderful.”) To sear the many ingredients into memory, the staff made photo flashcards of the dishes. One quizzes herself while on the StairMaster at the gym.

During a tasting before the Penrose reopened, the servers tried everything on the menu and made notes of their impressions in “tasting journals.”

“I have a new religion,” one server said afterward, “Bertrandism.”

The Lovebirds order a chocolate soufflé to share for dessert and two glasses of trebbiano, an Italian white wine.

Dubois takes their order to the kitchen where the quiet cadence of chopping vegetables that began in the afternoon is now a cacophony of sizzling, searing, stirring and swearing.

“Hot behind!” a cook in a white shirt yells as she navigates a tray of scalding meat down the narrow stainless-steel canyon of the main line where 12 cooks work with all the elbow room of a submarine crew.

Steam billows into the air, where the smell of browning beef waltzes with chocolate and shallots in butter. Waiters circle nearby, waiting for food.

All the orders pour in at once.

Many demand a series of delicate steps. And they all have to hit the table simultaneously, whether a two-top or a 10-top. This can make even well-trained chefs sweat.

Jim Ghory, a tall, blond demi chef in his 20s, is one of three guys who followed Bouquin to The Broadmoor.

“I had worked in other kitchens, but he taught me everything I know about cooking great food. I would rather cook his food than any in the country,” he says as he peels carrots for the roast rabbit.

Still, it’s not all inspiration.

“When it’s Saturday night and you’re deep in the weeds — that’s what we call it when you get real busy — and you just keep getting more and more behind, it’s tense. It’s very tense, and you just have to realize it won’t last forever.”

As the Lovebirds’ order is fired, Chef tacks through the noise to the foyer, where his eyes sweep across the floor, watching the muted dinner, all set to the rhythm of the jazz quartet that performs each night.

The only hint of the back of the house spilling into the front is the chef himself, in his starched whites, and the smell of each dish passing by.

“This a good thing” he says. He is pleased.

The front of the house is what chefs love and fear most. In the kitchen, there is strict discipline. You stay at your station, you bring your own knives. You do what the chef says.

In the front, all the enjoyment happens, but there is also an almost limitless potential for chaos. Servers let food get cold, confuse orders, snap at someone’s grandmother.

Being a chef is like designing the perfect car and hoping the driver doesn’t take it off a cliff.

Dubois sweeps into the foyer with the entrée orders from the graduation table. All six are having the chateaubriand — a sort of supersized beef tenderloin.

Chef almost rolls his eyes. He’s spent months devising a new menu for the Penrose Room (“You can’t cook another chef’s food, it’s like wearing his clothes”), and the guests order the one thing on the old menu he failed to get rid of.

The chateaubriand was the most popular dish on the old menu. Even though the chef thought it was dull, everyone agreed there’d be hell to pay with regulars if it got the hook.

“So I say, OK, I cook chateaubriand, but I change the style to make it the best chateaubriand possible,” he said. “I think that is a mistake of many chefs. They cook what they want and not what the customer wants.”

THE EXPEDITER

It’s 8:18 p.m. The Lovebirds’ entrees are almost ready.

The sous chef carefully spoons sauce around the lamb, arranges the slices of chickpea panisse like a log cabin, and hands the plates over a chin-high counter, called the pass, separating the cooks from the servers.

On the other side, a server called “the expediter” cleans a small tab of sauce off a plate rim.

The expediter, a new position, looks every plate over to make sure nothing is missing. (“Another beet will never be forgotten,” Reed says.) He also makes sure servers don’t reach in and take another server’s dish.

The expediter hands the plates to a runner, who tucks them under silver, bell-shaped covers called cloches, and whisks them out to the table.

Each plate goes on the table hidden by its cloche, then, voilà !, the servers pull the cloches away simultaneously, and with a quiet, “bon appétit,” dinner is served.

Most of the staff agrees that service will be the hardest part of winning a five-star rating.

The cooks have culinary degrees and years of experience. None of the staff went to waiter school. Some have never waited tables before.

“The food is already five-star. The facility is five-star,” said Jessica Neely, a rookie server.

“Now we just need the service to be there. It has to be this silent orchestra all working together that the guest never hears. It’s funny that with all this (the expensive renovation, the all-star chef), it’s up to us peons to bring it together.”

The maitre d’ put the servers through almost two weeks of training before the first night. He tested them on “the spiel.” He tested them on the menu.

He made sure they knew what foie gras was (fattened goose liver) and at least the most obvious wine to pair it with (late-harvest gewürztraminer).

They practiced the rules of setting and clearing the table with the stiff shyness of young debutantes learning where to put their white gloves when their escort offers punch.

Even after the restaurant reopened, Thompson called the staff together every day.

He read them complaint letters (“We found our waiters pretentious. They hovered around so much that we couldn’t enjoy our meal.”). They quizzed each other on which dishes and utensils accompany each menu item.

Foie gras? Demitasse and cocktail fork.

Chilled five-pea soup? Soup spoon.

Osetra caviar? Pear-handled spoon.

“No,” one said. “Pearl spoon. It doesn’t affect the caviar’s flavor.”

Thompson brings them all together just before the guests arrive.

“Remember, we want to use the guests’ names when we greet them. Say, ‘Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson,’” Thompson says.

A server raises her hand. “But what if we say that and it’s not Mrs. Johnson?”

Thompson pauses.

“You’re right. They’re not always here with who they should be. Look for a ring. If you still get it wrong, let the other servers know so they don’t make the same mistake.”

WALTZING THE SOUFFLÉ

It’s 8:31 p.m. The Lovebirds are about halfway through their entree, so Dubois ducks into the back to tell the pastry chef to fire their soufflé.

It takes 20 minutes to bake, and he wants it to arrive at just the right moment.

He goes to fill waters, take other dessert orders and clear plates. (Waiters are never supposed to ask “Are you finished?” or “Are you still working on that?” because, the restaurant’s sommelier says, “This isn’t a race, nor are the guests building a house.” The proper phrase is “May I clear your plates?”)

As the evening and the wine work their magic, couples gravitate to the dance floor.

When the band goes into “It Had to Be You,” the Lovebirds drift over and dip and swirl in a familiar embrace.

Dubois notices this on his way back to the kitchen.

“The two-top just got up to dance, and they have soufflés on the way,” he tells his backserver, Smart, in the foyer.

“No problem. I’ll tell the kitchen to cool it on the soufflé,” Smart says.

At 8:54 p.m., the Lovebirds sit back down at the table.

Word goes back to the kitchen. The soufflés go back in the oven.

Five minutes later, Smart places hot, puffy soufflées on the table, punctures the top with the tap of a spoon, and pours a dab of sweet crème Anglais over the steaming crown.

Perfect.

The woman leans over and kisses her husband before dipping in for a hot spoonful.

On the surface, the formalities of five-star service can seem like artifice.

Do you really need a new napkin each time you get up to dance? Or five kinds of bread on a silver tray?

The small, silly things are part of a larger, more noble goal.

Some moments in life call for flawlessness, and instead the world tends to serve up a procession of petty annoyances — parking tickets, mosquito bites, an unfilled water glass.

A night at the Penrose is designed to give diners an evening free of those trivialities.

It’s a worthy goal that comes at a premium price.

But at Mr. Cappuccino’s table, there’s a problem. He and his date ordered two soufflés and, now at the end of their meal, there is only one.

“I thought they ordered a soufflé to share, but I guess they wanted to share two soufflés,” Dubois tells Smart.

It will take too long to make another. The maitre d’ overhears.

“Get him another dessert, and comp the soufflé,” he says.

“I asked. He said he doesn’t want another,” Dubois says.

“Get him an after-dinner drink — No. Get both of them after dinner-drinks.”

Dubois disappears onto the floor, only to return a few seconds later.

“He says he hasn’t had a drink in 18 years,” he says.

“That would explain the double cappuccino,” the maitre d’ says. “I hope he wasn’t upset. Does his date drink?”

“Yes.”

“What has she had?”

“Two glasses of wine.”

“OK,” the maitre d’ says. “Comp both of the wines. And remember to apologize.”

In a five-star place, this should never happen. The Penrose’s service is still inconsistent.

After eating at his own restaurant recently, the chef gave it a six out of 10.

“It was very good, but it needs work,” he said.

The service was “sometimes not where it should be,” he said, and “there are things I now see I need to change with the menu. The curry foam for the scallop was OK in the kitchen, but by the time it is to the table it is, you know, flat.”

Everyone from the servers to the president of the hotel says getting five stars doesn’t really matter. In the end, they say, guests are the best judges, not outside critics.

This is complete baloney.

Consider how The Broadmoor trumpets its five-star hotel rating, or how a mug shot of the Denver Post food critic is taped on the wall in the back of the hotel’s new Summit restaurant under the words “FIND HIM!”

What the critics say matters.

The sous chef, the hostess, the servers, the maitre d’ all seem to feed on the nervous excitement of the challenge.

Out of courtesy, Mobil doesn’t inspect a restaurant during its first six months. So sometime in the winter, inspectors will anonymously slip into the restaurant.

If the Penrose staff is lucky, the inspectors will enjoy a dinner like the Lovebirds.’

At 9:32 p.m., Smart brings the Lovebirds their check with a basket of warm lemon Madelines. He smiles and says good night.

The service has been flawless. The food, divine.

At 9:38 p.m. they glide out of the ballroom, where Mr. Cappuccino, who forgave the staff for the lost soufflé, now dances in a slow circle with his date.

The hostess presses the button to call the elevator, wishes the couple happy anniversary, and they are gone.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223

or dave.philipps@gazette.com

THE MAKING OF A FIVE-STAR APPETIZER

Ceviche with cucumber and coconut milk

- Hawaiian red snapper is finely chopped and marinated in olive oil, lime and coconut milk and tucked between sweet, crusty brioche made in-house.

- Coconut milk, sweet and spicy piquillo peppers, and micro cilantro make an edible halo around the dish.

- Mobil Travel Guide requires dishes to be gorgeously plated, completely fresh and brimming with different textures and flavors.

- Mobil also requires plates to complement the dish and be different for every course.

WHAT IT TAKES

Mobil Travel Guide inspectors use 250 standards to evaluate restaurants. Most are secret, but here are a few they let slip.

- Food is fresh and presentation is colorful, interesting and includes contrasts of textures and temperatures.

- Fresh juices are used in mixed drinks.

- Wines ordered by the glass are presented in the bottle and poured at the table.

- Petit fours are served at the end of the meal.

- A cheese course is offered.

- Staff does not hold personal discussions in guests’ earshot.

- All staff members are “attired in a manner that is exceptional and commensurate with atmosphere of restaurant.”

- Bottled still and sparkling waters are offered to all guests before pouring.

- All guests at a table are served simultaneously.

- The china has varying patterns.

- Glassware is specifically matched to individual wine or spirit.

- Washrooms feature well-maintained cloth towels and fresh flowers.

- If a table is not ready at the fault of the restaurant, guests are offered an extremely comfortable place to wait and attentively cared for during the delay.

- The guest’s name is used effectively, but discreetly, as a signal of recognition.

- The pace of the meal is never noticed by guests. There are no awkward delays or rushed events.

- Coats are waiting for guests when they depart, as is their car if there is valet service.

- Staff makes a point of thanking guest for visiting.

AAA VERSUS MOBIL

The Mobil Travel Guide’s five-star system isn’t the only top national restaurant rating. AAA has a diamond system almost identical to Mobil’s stars. Both have hundreds of nitpicking standards. Both inspect facilities anonymously, and both award a rating between one and five. Of the two, stars are more coveted than diamonds, largely because Mobil is more exclusive. It named only 14 winners this year, compared with AAA’s 46. Either way, a score of five is hard to get. Neither has given its top honor to a restaurant in Colorado.

At gazettenewsroom.blogspot.com, Gazette reporter Dave Philipps talks about the reporting behind this story.