Restaurant design trend: Kitchen counters

The hottest seat in the house at Tilia -- aside from the sometimes difficult act of obtaining any seat inside chef Steven Brown's popular Linden Hills hothouse -- is one of the half-dozen seats at the kitchen counter, where diners get a front-row-center view of the cooking crew as they go through their breakneck paces. It's dinner theater at its most riveting, and a free culinary tutorial.