Hell’s Kitchen and Kinky Boots

Hell's Kitchen is a friendly place

Adjacent to the theatre district is the neighborhood real estate refers as “midtown west” and New York knows by its more colorful name, which Hell’s Kitchen restaurant embraces proudly. Star chef Jorge Pareja emigrated from a southern Mexico region that specializes in both farming and fishing. His menu has fresh, confident flavors: boiled pork shank in mixiote (barbeque) sauce, sea bass over plantain purée, grilled half chicken with molé negro. (The chicken is Murray’s, which uses oregano oil in place of antibiotics and tastes much better.) Corn tortillas are made in-house. Hell's Kitchen fish tacos are the best ever.

Staff might take an order for an appetizer-size portion of a main course or main-course size app. There is a weekend brunch including bison eggs benedict with jalapeño hollandaise. Hell’s Kitchen has a clean and modern décor, soft lighting and spectacular food. Any leftovers mysteriously seem to taste better the next day.

Harvey Fierstein and company

Kinky Boots originated with the 2005 film set in Northampton, England, based on a true story. A shoe factory’s economy was revived by Lola (the versatile comedian Billy Porter), a drag queen in ladies’ shoes, observed by the straight junior CEO of the shoe factory, Charlie (Stark Sands, every bit as cute as Justin Timberlake), who recognizes the potential in creating a boot for drag queens that can support a male’s weight and structure. Charlie hires Lola to be his designer.

By the end, Lola and Charlie begin sleeping with one another and make plans for a traditional church wedding – no wait, that’s a different story! By the end, Charlie switches from a rich girlfriend to a poor one (Annaleigh Ashford, sensationally funny). Diva Lola is still fabulous, but alone. The main thing is, everyone male and female, gay and straight, starts wearing high-heeled boots, as though we were in the court of Louis XIV.

Stunning, narrow-hipped drag queens abound, however this production feels too tame by half. Kinky Boots is carried along, mostly, by the want-to-have-fun, guitar heavy music of the great Cyndi Lauper, and by the oft-repeated line, “Ladies and gentlemen, and those who haven’t made their minds up yet.”