Diamond Cabaret gets a new menu, courtesy CY Steak

Lori Midson

At CY Steak, the Caesar salad is dressed...even if the entertainers aren't.

But the dining room at CY Steak, the revamped steakhouse attached to the Diamond Cabaret at 1222 Glenarm Place, warmed up fast -- and not just because of the evening-gowned (at the start) girls dancing past on a raised runway. No, Fey and Cliff Young, who took over the restaurant just two months ago, were trading more than thirty years of Denver dining stories, discussing everything from the duck Fey used to order from Young at Le Profile to the time Young hosted two young New York chefs -- Thomas Keller and Tom Colicchio -- for a week at the Amethyst Room, an adjunct of what was then Cliff Young's (and is now Hamburger Mary's) to Fey's legendary run to the Palm to get a bottle of Heinz 57, because Gallagher's didn't have any in the kitchen.

CY Steak does.

Young spent the last decade in France, and it shows on the menu at CY Steak, which includes Caesar salad and bananas Foster prepared tableside, as well as a French onion soup that we were ready to dive into. And the steaks -- including, yes, the strip -- come with eight possible sauce choices, each one more delicious than the last.

But Young has also made his mark in the club next door. Gone is the loss leader, all-you-can eat lunch buffet (although the prime rib still comes out on Friday). In fact, just yesterday the Diamond introduced a new menu, which includes such unusual "bar fare" as a variation on the charcuterie platter that's offered at CY Steak, Kobe beef sliders and grilled steak potato skins; a roster of sandiches; and entrees including chicken piccata and troll king salmon for $15, "grilled and served with brown butter vinaigrette, pine nuts, wilted greens and Japanese black rice."

The girls may be scantily clad, but the dishes here come very well-dressed.

With plenty of stories on the side.