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Dwaun Sellers
Friday, July 04, 2003
When the Colorado Kitchen opened in July 2001, Gillian Clark viewed it as an
opportunity to establish a quality neighborhood restaurant with her life partner,
Robin Smith.
Now, the couple is making plans there for “ZWEI Nights,” a Monday
night gathering for gay and lesbian couples who want to socialize outside traditional
bar settings. The first gathering, for lesbian couples, took place at the Colorado
Kitchen Monday, June 30; a similar event for gay men is scheduled to take place
there July 21.
“We’re trying out ZWEI Nights in the restaurant to really fine
tune how we’d run [a] club,” says Clark, who began cooking professionally
in1994, after graduating from L’Academie De Cuisine, Inc. in Bethesda,
Md.
“There are so many cookie-cutter clubs out there and we want to do something
different,” adds Clark, 39. “I’m a romantic person and I
like to do romantic things with my partner. We want to start a club — a
club that people can come to and feel at home — for a more sophisticated
crowd that still wants to have fun, but in the scope of a relationship. That’s
what we’re up to.”
Clark and Smith are planning to hold four more ZWEI events this year, the
last of which is slated to take place in October.
A fondness for cooking led Clark, 39, to become a chef.
“Being a chef is always a learning experience and I’m still learning,” she
says, “but I’m light years ahead of where I was in ’97.”
Smith, 43, is the manager and a part-time cook at the Colorado Kitchen. She
also works in the technical support department for NCI Information Systems,
a computer service firm.
Together, they came up with the perfect recipe for their restaurant. Start
with a seasoned chef, add a good location, some vintage accoutrements, layers
of hard work and voilá.
“Colorado Kitchen is very family-oriented, very G-rated,” Clark
says. “It’s patterned after a grandmother-type place. There’s
no alcohol, but there are 25 different choices in sodas.”
Clark says she cooks the food that her father used to make when he was in
a good mood. And at the Colorado Kitchen, there’s nothing on the menu
more than $20.
“There’s something about Colorado Kitchen that’s comforting
to everyone,” she says. “Some people come three to four times a
week.”
The restaurant in Northwest Washington, D.C., attracts people of various racial
and ethnic backgrounds, as well as gay people.
“
We have a very strong gay following,” Clark says, noting that she is
not exactly sure why. “It’s not like it’s a gay place. People
come in and make their own assumptions, but we never opened it thinking it
would be.”
Clark and Smith decided to try ZWEI Nights because they were looking for a
place to go out and couldn’t find what they were seeking.
“The numbers of places for women are dwindling and even the men’s
places get old,” Clark says. “We found that people in the gay community
our age don’t go out to clubs, especially people involved in relationships.
“But we’ve reached the limit with bars, where everybody gets hot
and sweaty,” she adds. “So we decided to do something more for
couples. We’re not barring singles, but we don’t want a pick-up
atmosphere.”
The word ZWEI means “two” in German and though Clark chose the
word to represent their events, it was Smith’s German background that
most heavily influenced the event’s name.
“Robin speaks German all the time in the kitchen,” Clark explains. “One
day she was counting in German and it just hit me. I thought [ZWEI] was perfect.”
It also helps describe their relationship. Clark, who was married and has
two daughters, says that the two met in 1997 but waited until February of 2000
to get together, around the same time they were trying to get Colorado Kitchen
off of the ground.
“We kind of started to do it all at once,” Clarke laughs, remembering
the struggles involved with trying to start a relationship and a business at
the same time. “We’ve had some serious fights before, but if any
relationship can withstand opening a restaurant … we can withstand anything.”
MORE INFO
Colorado Kitchen
5515 Colorado Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20011
202-545-8280
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