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sorbet and ice cream. Saffron and black pepper were some of his early attempts to push his own boundaries and those of Shiraz’s diners. He’d been at Shiraz almost three years when his father guided his career in a new direction. While on vacation, David Elbow was having dinner with Christopher’s mother, Linda, at Emeril’s in Las Vegas. Elbow told the general manager that his son was a chef. Emeril Lagasse was preparing to open Delmonico Steakhouse at the Venetian and was hiring. Christopher Elbow called the manager and sent a resumé. A week later, he was driving his Toyota pickup and a U-Haul trailer to Las Vegas. He shared an apartment just off the strip with a roommate from Liberty High School who, two weeks earlier, had secured a position in the nightly show at Treasure Island. The role: pirate. Elbow’s friend was in the process of growing a curlicue mustache. “I was there a year on the nose, and that was probably nine months too long,” Elbow says. “He’s still a pirate to this day.” While still at Delmonico, Elbow took a second shift under chef Jean Joho at the brandnew Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris Hotel. It was there that he learned to make chocolates from a French pastry chef in a kitchen that served up 200 soufflés a night, in seven flavors. “It was brutal, but I discovered I could cook in a kitchen with people who had gone to culinary school,” Elbow says.
D
o you have toilet paper?” asks Pamela Henry, environmental compliance manager with the Johnson County Environmental Department. It’s 11:06 a.m., and she has just checked the temperature of the ice-cream freezer and noted her findings in a small voice recorder. “Yes, it’s out in my van,” Elbow says. “OK, I’ll see you in about 60 days for the first routine inspection,” Henry says. She walks out the front door, catching it before it snicks closed behind her. “Actually, when will you be opening?” “This afternoon, if all goes right.” Elbow taps his iPhone, concerned that he
hasn’t yet heard from the menu-board printer. Meanwhile, the building inspector returns and is satisfied with what he sees. It’s 11:45 a.m., and Glacé is set. Elbow texts his manager, J.K. Hufford, who splits time between Main and One Nineteen, and tells her to begin bringing over ice cream. “The last place didn’t make it. We wish you the best of luck,” the building inspector says. “We’re going to give it a go,” Elbow replies.
A
fter Las Vegas and a return trip to the kitchen at Shiraz, Elbow was hired as a pastry chef at the American in 2000. Within three years, his signature at that downtown restaurant had become his chocolates. The American’s menu was the first to feature his rosemary caramels, a marquee item for his retail operation today. “It was the perfect storm of falling in love with the craft of making chocolate and having
all these new single-origin chocolates come to market,” Elbow says. He left the American with two wholesale accounts — Halls and Dean & Deluca — and no idea how to run a business. In the beginning, it was just Elbow in the back of a building that once held the High Cotton furniture store, at 118 Southwest Boulevard. He struggled to keep up with demand, which was high from the start and has seen double-digit growth every year. He was reluctant to use his moniker in the chocolate shop’s name, but his wife, Jenifer, convinced him that it was his name that should stand for his work. The look of Christopher Elbow was born on the West Side, and Jenifer Elbow has served as his creative partner. His color whirls are painted in the chocolate, while her sense of typography and balance defines the packaging. (She’s a graphic designer at Hallmark.) “I thought it would become something because everything he does is so perfect,” Jenifer
Glacé’s scoops stand at attention. says. “I don’t think he ever thought in a million years that would happen, that people would be banging down the door to get it.” People were hungry for more than his chocolate, though. They wanted access to him. The crisp storefront at 1819 McGee, the Elbow store that opened in April 2007, made him visible in a new way. He was no longer toiling in a small back room. On McGee, he and his product are on display through a window wall that shows the production kitchen to customers waiting in line. (There is often a line.) The transparency allows Elbow to highlight what he values most: process. The ice-cream concept developed as a complementary idea to the chocolate shop — a way to keep his employees busy during the slower summer season. The first batches were sold in the summer of 2009 at the McGee store, a test to see if Kansas City was ready for $7 pints. His expansion, while continued on page 12
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