An evening at Dueling Spoons, the ‘anti-restaurant’

Dueling Spoons is the home your family always ended up at for big Sunday dinners.

On paper (and across multiple reviews and awards), it is a restaurant that exudes fine dining. 

And sure, chef/owner Billy Reid’s command of French cuisine (The mother sauces. The cream. The braises. The wine. Did we mention the cream?) is evident in every dish. 

Yes, your 34-ounce tomahawk steak will be rolled out on a metal cart while smooth jazz plays over a soft-lit dining room.

But unlike some upscale restaurants, you won’t find unobtrusive service, a sea of suits and cocktail dresses or Reid sporting a white chef coat (he swore them off long ago).

“We’re anti-restaurant here,” Reid told me, just before the dinner rush began.

As the family-run destination enters its fifth year, dinner reservations — especially on Saturdays — remain tough to snag, and with good reason.

For one, Dueling Spoons doesn’t turn tables: Along with a small-but-mighty kitchen crew, Reid cooks every dish himself and maintains a 50-person cap per dinner service, ensuring he can spend time at every table. Most meals are a two-hour affair.

I arrived at 5 p.m., the start of dinner service, and planned to stay only an hour or so. But then Chef Billy whisked me around the dining room, pointing out why the walls are mustard yellow (they’re the same color as a West Village restaurant he worked at) and why the place is lit by fairy light trees (another cherished restaurant from his past). He showed me the newly installed wall of family photos by the bathroom. Everything here carried meaning.

Throughout the night, Reid introduced me to his regulars, his kitchen staff and some of his six children — all of whom have worked at Dueling Spoons. Guests walked up to me to say how much they loved this place, that they’d been here so many times they lost count.

I listened to Reid and staff members belt out “Happy Birthday” to about five or six guests and thought, “This is where you come to celebrate.”

Kathy Gibson was one of those guests. She celebrated her birthday with the “not so short” braised short rib ($55) and a decadent brownie sundae.

“You can be a glutton here,” she said. “It’s like being in Vegas.”

From the Irish soda bread brought to your table first thing, to the New York City Subway sign above the kitchen door, the entire place pays homage to the birthplaces of Billy and his wife, Dueling Spoons co-owner Kathleen Reid. You can also learn Irish while reading the menu (your hints for “mairteoil” are wagyu, ribeye and porterhouse).

The menu, while embossed and maroon and ritzy on the outside, reads like a family cookbook: Their bestseller, “Chicken Kathleen,” is named after the first dish Kathleen Reid made for her future husband more than 30 years ago. In fact, every dish has a family connection.

“The menu is a reflection of what we eat and drink at home,” Reid said.

‘It’s an experience’

Alongside his national cooking awards and graduating with a grand diplome from the French Culinary Institute in New York, Reid seems to have also mastered teleportation.

Look up: He’s showcasing the lobster you ordered, now beautifully butterflied, right before roasting it. You blink and he’s across the dining room hugging a regular who just walked in. Wait, over there: He’s singing “Happy Anniversary” to a couple, his arm around Kathleen. Oh, your lobster is being rolled out now. When did he run back to the kitchen? 

Celebrations, while a regular occurrence at Dueling Spoons, are made precious each time. Remember that tomahawk? You choose your desired cut from the back fridge, but you must ring the bell to make it official, prompting exuberant clapping from the staff as Reid shouts, “Biiiiiig steak!” 

“That’s what it is out here, it’s an experience,” said John “Gianni” Barofsky, who co-owns Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria in Eugene, as he dined with his wife, Conni Barofsky.

It’s something Reid prides himself in. Take the regular who brought his wife to Dueling Spoons for their anniversary one year. While making the reservation, he warned Reid, “No singing.” 

No problem. 

As the couple dined, a bagpipe player marched toward their table, drone pipes blaring. 

“I didn’t sing,” the chef whispered coyly in the man’s ear mid-performance.

Accommodations are made, but sometimes the choice is between “loud” and “louder.” Either way, you can’t avoid being celebrated here.

Such personal touches (and practical jokes) aren’t always grandiose: After his steak dinner, guest Robert Wyers told Reid how much he enjoyed the black pepper cream sauce with his steak. As he was getting ready to leave, Reid brought over a cup of the sauce to go.

For one longtime guest, supporting Dueling Spoons became one of her final wishes after being placed in hospice.

“I’m getting goose bumps remembering,” Reid said, recounting the woman’s family coming in, ordering a chicken dish, and handing over her debit card. They told him she was in a coma, but they would dab a little sauce on her lips.

That’s the magic of this place: It stays with you long after you leave. It’s why Ryan Nelson makes the 45-minute trek from Cottage Grove about a dozen times to eat here with his family.

“It’s worth the drive,” he said. “(Reid) makes everyone here feel like they’re part of the family.”

One exception: The few guests who end up on Dueling Spoons’ “No More” list. Reid will kick people out, but it’s pretty easy to avoid.

Just don’t be entitled or rude.

‘The good stuff’

Dueling Spoons started as a salad dressing company. 

“I remember it was 1996 because the Yankees had just won the World Series,” said Billy Reid Jr., one of Billy and Kathleen’s children, as he placed a salad on my table. “Our basement was full of salad dressing jars. We would pack them into our station wagon and sell them everywhere.”

They brought their bottled beginnings back with the house salad ($12), served alongside an entire jar of Dueling Spoons’ OG roasted vegetable vinaigrette. It’s one of the most ’90s things to come out of the ’90s, and it is fantastic. 

Appetizers (“géarú goile”) include the seafood crepe, stuffed with salmon, cod and shrimp in a cheesy béchamel and served on a silver fish-shaped platter.

“I’m not a fan of fish,” said Seamus Reid, another son, in between rolling out dishes. “But this is the good stuff.”

Chicken Kathleen ($35) is a love letter to cordon bleu, with a prosciutto-wrapped, broccoli and monterey jack-stuffed breast that’s baked and sliced into juicy pinwheels, then fanned out over a plate-licking-good cream sauce.

As for libations, you won’t find hard liquor here, but you can enjoy wine, cider and beer. (Dueling Spoons also brews its own red ale and Irish lager.) Soothe your soul with Irish breakfast tea (what Billy Reid’s mother drinks) or drop a cool $1,000 on a 3-liter bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Somewhere in the middle is a pint of Guinness begging to be drunk with the steak, lamb and ale pie ($35).

Not sure how to dress for Dueling Spoons? Get dolled up, wear your most posh outfit, add the $70 lobster tail to your $65 porterhouse, and enjoy the fancy cart-to-table service. Or button up that Hawaiian shirt and listen to the cart rumbling toward your table with the same excitement that sizzling fajitas at a Tex-Mex restaurant bring.

As the food and stories and songs kept flowing, I looked at my phone and suddenly it was past 8 p.m. Still, I couldn’t leave without dessert (piorra póitseáil.)

The poached pear dish is a fan (and now my) favorite and a Reid family Christmas tradition, with a whole pear simmered in champagne until tender, then chilled and served over a pool of sweet, vanilla-scented creme anglaise. The sugar puff pastry point makes it almost too beautiful to eat. Almost.

There are more dishes to recommend and stories to regale you with, more accounts of Reid’s boundless energy and good humor, but it’s getting late and the check has arrived and anyway, Dueling Spoons should be experienced in person.

So make the reservation, bring someone you love, put away your phone and let Chef Billy sing to you. Raise a glass, feast and feast some more, loosen your belt and get the dessert. Stay for a while.

If you go

Dueling Spoons is open for lunch 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and for dinner 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. Make a reservation online, and follow Dueling Spoons on Facebook (Reid sometimes posts about canceled reservations there). The restaurant is at 39074 Jasper Lowell Road in Fall Creek.