Guilty Pleasures: Colby Garrelts
BY OWEN MORRIS
Colby Garrets has worked at such fine-dining institutions as the American Restaurant in Kansas City, the Paris Casino in Las Vegas and TRU in Chicago. Along with his wife, Megan, he owns and is chef at Bluestem, the progressive restaurant located in Westport. I asked Colby what he eats when no one is watching.
The thing that my wife and I eat the most is spaghetti and meat sauce like Prego and frozen garlic bread -- the cheap frozen garlic breads. Texas Toast. It's GBD -- golden, brown and delicious. I'll do nice dinners when people come over, but when it's just her and me and we'll have to cook ourselves, we just go get spaghetti and Prego and pasta and GBD it.
We only eat Prego. The Ragu is thin and nasty. I get the chunky style, original or the roasted garlic one. I think they all taste the same, but I won't buy the ones with meat in them -- that's gross.
Sometimes I'm nervous about running into somebody at the store.
Being a chef, everyone always looks into your basket. I never look in anyone else’s basket but they always want to look into my basket. So I hide. I get in and get out or I'll go into a grocery store where I don't think I'll see anybody.
I was talking to my doctor and he said, "You have to be able to eat a meal and take the emotion out of it." I've got to be able to eat something sometimes for fuel's sake. If I cook my own sauce, I'll strive until it's perfect. Until the acidity is completely out of the tomatoes and it becomes this two-hour ordeal. That's why I like something like Prego, it's not a two-hour process. It's a buffer, just something that we don't have to worry about and I know it's going to be good.
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