Brown Sugar Shenanigans...

It has been such a fun weekend with two of my sisters, Kris and Ana, visiting from Minnesota and Utah. But the highlight of the weekend, by far, occurred while we were taking Kris out for dessert for her birthday (yesterday). We took her to the d Bar, which is a great little dessert bar restaurant here in Denver. It is owned and operated by, pastry chef Keegan Gerhard. You will probably recognize him as the host of the "Food Network Challenge", where pastry chefs compete to make huge, crazy cakes on the Food channel.

Well, to start off my story, I pretty much took about 11 wrong turns in getting us to the restaurant, but we may not have had this hilarious experience if we had come at an earlier time. So Kris, you can thank me for the wrong turns. The place was packed when we arrived (Valentine's daters), but we were finally greeted and seated by a waiter named Jay Brown. We ordered our desserts (by the way, they have the BEST vanilla shakes in the entire world!) We ate and chatted with the other people at our table and as we were wrapping up, the wait staff started singing Happy Birthday to another girl in the restaurant. Kris leaned over to me and said "Don't tell them it's my birthday, it'll be lame after they already sang to that girl." So I said OK. But my other sister, Ana, wasn't having any of that, she caught our waiter and promptly told him that it was Kris's birthday. Kris piped up and said, "But please don't sing to me, it will be so lame after you already sang to that other girl." Jay's eyes got big and said, "Oh don't worry about that, we've got something extra special ready for you." He turned and walked back tot he kitchen. A few minutes later, the chef himself, Keegan Gerhard, came out to our table. He asked Kris, "Is it true that it's your birthday and you didn't want anyone to know?" Kris:"Yes." Chef Gerhard:"Well, are you familiar with Brown Sugar Shenanigans?" We all shook our heads and said no. Chef Gerhard pointed to Jay Brown and said, "That's our famous Jay Brown, and he has something really special for you." Chef Gerhard left the table and a few moments later the music started to get louder. At that instant, I remembered seeing a video clip on the d Bar website, and this is what happened to my sister Kris (you'll have to imagine this being Kris, I could have kicked myself for not having my camera with me) But I have to admit, Kris got a much better (and longer) show than what you'll see here. (So much so, that an older couple that was walking in the door, turned around and left):

jay brown at d bar with some brown sugar shenanigans from Keegan Gerhard on Vimeo.

It was hilarious, Kris was SO embarrassed! I laughed so hard, my stomach muscles hurt today. Chef Gerhard came back and talked with us a bit, he was such a nice guy, and when we received our bill it had a zero balance. Wahoo! Dessert and a show for FREE!! We left Mr. Brown a pretty good tip though, it was well worth the laughs!