Restaurants

Sky's the Limit

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Overall, though, Big Sky has been, and remains, like all of Mallett's restaurants, a space that gives your eyes almost as much to do as your mouth. A mural of brightly colored broken tiles forms giant eating utensils on one wall; the other walls are lined with painted diagonal checks below the chair rails. Giant grapes hang here, harvest-themed sconces there, and even the outside of the front door is decorated with graffiti on columns noting various attributes (for example, no lunch, but dinner seven nights) of the restaurant.

And, again, everyone from the host's station to the table seemed to be genuinely happy to be working there. We did experience the dreaded can't-get-the-check syndrome on one visit, but it was apparent that this was because our waiter was working at least four, if not five, tables, including one large one, and up until that point he'd managed to balance us all without arousing any notice.

Next time you're looking to expand your culinary horizons, remember that Big Sky is certainly comfortable, but there's a lot more to it than that. And within the next several weeks, watch for a fourth Mallett restaurant, Ellie Forcella's, with a casual-Italian motif, to open almost right across the street from Big Sky, in the space that was most recently J.P. Field's. Lisa, the renowned Slay chef who actually hung around all these years while her brother David ran off to Hollywood, is putting together the menu -- another example of great talent that Mallett has cultivated and kept around for a long time.

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