Simple words, beautiful food

Flames lick the blackened bottom of a well-worn skillet. Chef Virginia "Ginny" Wooters grabs the handle and makes the skillet's contents - cubed potatoes and onions, shredded ribbons of succulent duck confit scented with shallots and garlic - shimmy around the warped pan with a few snaps of her wrist. The unmistakable whiff of waffles floats through Jax Kitchen.

It's close to noon. The restaurant is closed and hours away from dinner, but the kitchen's a-rockin' as Wooters auditions potential dishes for The Abbey, a new eatery by restaurateurs Brian and Sandy Metzger, who opened Jax two years ago.

• • •

Flash back to a week earlier.

It's Wooters' first day on the job. She and the Metzgers sit face-to-face - after more than a month's worth of phone calls about the new Foothills-area restaurant - around a long table at Jax, curtains drawn and lights dimmed. The 30-somethings all met and bonded at Wildflower restaurant a decade ago. When Brian and Sandy decided to open The Abbey, they immediately thought of Wooters and her classic, Southern-tinged food.

With The Abbey's working menu up on the screen of Brian's silver Dell laptop and printed copies in front of them, the trio looks over each dish.

Snacks and Soup + Greens top the list. Baked Brie Wellington. Mug of soup - not cup, mug.

"It's more playful, casual, using the word 'mug,' " Brian explains.

On a menu, semantics can be almost as important as the food. The Abbey is designed to be a neighborhood restaurant with a friendly, gastro-pub feel.

"The Abbey, to us, is really beautifully simple food on the plate," Brian tells Wooters.

So, no froufrou words like tartine, a French open-faced sandwich, even though that was his and Sandy's inspiration for the straight-to-the-point section called Toast With Stuff, their ode to bruschetta.

"At The Abbey, we don't use fancy words - we call it what it is," Brian says.

Also important on a menu - price. Is the Wellington, at $11, too high to be the first thing diners see? The Abbey is family-friendly. Brian and Sandy want to keep things more reasonably priced, with the most expensive entree a $22 steak.

And what about the kids? The Metzgers have two children of their own, Jackson, 4 - for whom the first restaurant is named - and Abby, 5, who finally gets her own place after complaining bitterly about the previous slight.

On a children's menu, peanut butter and jelly is a given, they decide.

"Do we want to give them little jars and make their own?" Brian asks.

"No," Sandy says emphatically. "Could you imagine our kids making their own? I'd want to stab myself. No."

Some menu items are fully thought-out, like the lamb pot pie. Others are more a concept, like Breakfast for Dinner. The working menu simply describes it as "a house favorite ... always with farm-fresh eggs."

Everyone's excited about this one.

"It stops following the rules about what dinner is," Brian says.

Wooters describes her idea. "Duck confit hash with sweet potato waffles and bourbon-maple syrup. I picture taking waffles and skewering them, making this tall tower. I was thinking four quarters, with whipped butter on top."

"That's a lot of food," Brian says.

"We could do two or four," Wooters responds. "We'd have to play with it. I have a waffle maker at home."

"Is it awesome?" Brian asks. "Can we use it? If it breaks, I'll buy you a new one."

Wooters, who has helped open five restaurants from the ground up, says you never get the perfect menu from the get-go. Just because a dish sounds good on paper, doesn't mean it will be.

• • •

Clearly, Breakfast for Dinner will live up to its high expectations.

While Brian cuts a fat, round Belgian waffle into quarters and spears it onto a wooden skewer, Wooters scoops the duck confit hash alongside it. Two sunny-side-up eggs slide onto the plate. As she promised the week before, Wooters plops a ginormous scoop of butter onto the fluffy burnished orange wedges. She pours a stream of bourbon-maple syrup over the tower of carbs.

Brian whips out his BlackBerry Curve 8900 - which is filled with photos of memorable meals, his kids and The Abbey's progress - so he can snap a picture to show Sandy later.

"I could eat that every day. Every. Day," says Wooters, a thin woman who maybe weighs as much as her clunky chef's clogs. Maybe.

In the weeks before The Abbey's official Nov. 2 opening, menu items will be tweaked, others booted off entirely. Kitchen duties and dishes will be divvied up so that service will be as efficient as possible.

Brian surveys the smattering of entrees and appetizers, all cleanly presented on white plates. He eyes the long, skinny-as-a-pencil sweet-potato strips tucked into a glass with a puddle of whole-grain mustard aioli in the bottom. On the side is a silver pot of candied bacon jam, a buttery, smooth spread that's a smidge sweet from brown sugar and caramelized onions and full of campfire smokiness, courtesy of bacon.

Only a portion of The Abbey's menu got a test-run today, but each item lived up to expectations.

"They're playful, whimsical neighborhood eats - simple in execution, but the flavor is ridiculous," Brian says, summing up the late-morning kitchen fest.

And just what would the restaurant's namesake think?

"Abby wouldn't eat any of these things," he says with a smile. "Well, maybe the fries - if we told her they were regular fries."

If you go

• What: The Abbey

• Where: 6960 E. Sunrise Drive, on the southeast corner of East Sunrise and North Kolb Road.

• Contact: 299-3132; www.theabbeytucson.com

• Hours: Dinner, 5-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. Closed Mondays.

• Happy hour: 3-6 p.m. and 10 p.m.-midnight Tuesdays-Sundays. Tuesdays are half-off wine nights.