Little Russian meets modern cuisine in new Boulder restaurant Amuse

If you miss the Little Russian Cafe, don’t despair. It’s all in the family.

Thanks to Maxim Ionikh, son of the café’s owners Olga and Alexander Ionikh, the

Little Russian has met the 21st century in Amuse, the new restaurant at 1430 Pea

rl St. in Boulder.

Although he grew up in the business, Ionikh earned a degree in aerospace enginee

ring at the University of Colorado in 1996. “After I got my degree, it hit me th

at engineering was not something I wanted to do,” he says with a smile. “I decid

ed that I wanted to learn about food and cooking.”

So he left Boulder for Chicago to work in restaurants. “I was given a break by o

ne chef who let me into his kitchen with no skills.” Eric Aubriot, the French-bo

rn chef at Carlos, “gave me the chance to work at the first place he had worked,

” Ionikh recalls.

When Aubriot decided to open his own restaurant, he asked Ionikh to come on boar

d. “That was my experience seeing what it’s like to open a restaurant. I was abl

e to learn from other people’s mistakes. I couldn’t have done this without that

experience,” he says, gesturing at the bright and spacious interior of Amuse.

But before he returned to Boulder, Ionikh spent three months last fall studying

“with my culinary idols” in London. “I wanted to see how they do food in Europe,

” he says. “It’s totally different than what they do with it here. The food cult

ure is so much older, and they pretty much eat just about anything.”

Another difference is in freshness. Europeans won’t eat anything more than one d

ay old, he says.

At Amuse, Ionikh is “trying to do something we haven’t seen much in Boulder, try

ing to present very elegant and clean-flavored food.” Whether it’s a piece of mo

nkfish or venison, the main ingredient is the focus of each dish.

“We don’t want to overburden the palette,” he says.

While he utilizes classic French technique, he stays away from lots of cream, ma

king the classic style more contemporary and lighter.

The menu at Amuse, which changes seasonally, is based on the very freshest ingre

dients and is “labor-intensive,” according to Ionikh. On the fall menu, for exam

ple, Ionikh is offering whole rabbit. “We take it apart and cook every piece dif

ferently,” loin, chops and rabbit ragout ravioli.

Also on the fall menu are Argentinean beef tenderloin, roasted venison, pan-roas

ted monkfish, cod and silkie snapper and a vegetarian spinach pasta dish.

Open for dinner only, Amuse features desserts by Olga Ionikh, the restaurant’s p

astry chef. Her husband Alexander is general manager.

It’s definitely a family affair, and that’s fine with the chef, who has created

an atmosphere that’s urban and sophisticated, yet very simple and elegant, like

his food. And, as if it were his family home, he adds, “This is like having 50 p

eople over to the house for dinner every night.”

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