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Las Vegas Serves Up the World on a Silver
Platter
LAS VEGAS - For decades, Las Vegas simply meant gambling,
interspersed with 24-hour all-you-can eat buffets, tacky
wedding chapels, outlandish floor shows and cheap motel
rooms. Words like tawdry, sleazy, garish seemed to have
been created just for this neon-glazed town.
Like many Americans who wanted to stay as far away
as possible from such a substanceless place, I spent
53 happy years of my life having never set foot in the
state of Nevada.
Then everything began to change. Familiar faces in
the American food world - Charlie Trotter, Wolfgang
Puck, Jean-Louis Palladin, Emeril Lagasse - were heading
for Vegas, making deals that would alter the face of
this desert town forever.
Stephen Wynn, the head of Mirage Resorts and the figure
credited with sanitizing Las Vegas, is a man of ''serial
passions,'' and one of his latest passions is food.
It did not take long before chefs, sous-chefs, sommeliers
and waiters, as well as eager diners, were flocking
to this Disneyland for adults.
Today Las Vegas is creating a cultural revolution in
America, a new set of values for leisure, and one that
quite naturally has an international impact. Once a
nickel-and-dime gambling joint, the city is now a true
family vacation destination with a European feel.
With Americans more sophisticated and moneyed than
ever, the city plays right into their hands, and foreign
visitors are enjoying it, too. Want entertainment? At
the Bellagio, you have the Montreal-based Cirque du
Soleil production with its international cast of synchronized
swimmers, divers and acrobats. Want pampering? At the
Venetian there is the Canyon Ranch SpaClub, a mini version
of the famous spa in Tucson, Arizona, where you can
sample the famous unsinfully delicious 125-calorie chocolate
cake. Want to go to Europe without purchasing a trans-Atlantic
ticket? Then ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower in
the 2,900-room Paris hotel or take a gondola ride on
the faux canals at the 3,000-room Venetian hotel. And
almost everything is available 24 hours a day, with
the hum of slot machines ever present in the background.
Wynn, also creator of the Bellagio, says that his goal
is to have the best Broadway show not on Broadway, the
best French restaurant not in France, and the best world-class
art not in a world-class museum.
He is not far from it. His Cirque du Soleil can easily
compete with anything on Broadway. His art gallery is
filled with works by Cezanne, Degas, Matisse and Picasso.
And after four days of sampling the awe-inspiring variety
of restaurants with chefs from all over America and
the world, I would say that Las Vegas qualifies as a
food lover's destination of the first order.
A FINE SMORGASBORD The city now serves as a smorgasbord
of some of the country's finest restaurants. At the
Bellagio alone, the lineup includes Sirio Maccioni's
Le Cirque from New York; Olives from Boston; Jean-Georges
Vongerichten of New York changing gears with a simple
steak house called Prime; and great seafood from San
Francisco in the name of Aqua.
The Bellagio's own staff includes Julian Serrano from
San Francisco for Picasso and Grant MacPherson, longtime
executive chef at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.
And don't forget the Bellagio's Jasmine (refined Chinese
with a chef from Hong Kong), Shintaro (a sushi bar),
Noodles (specialties from Thailand, Japan, China and
Vietnam), Cafe Bellagio, Sam's American from New York,
and The Petrossian Bar from Paris and New York. Not
to mention that all the artisanal bread in the house
comes from the famed La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles.
At the newly opened Venetian hotel, restaurants have
been created at a cost of $3 million to $9 million each.
They include Eberhard Muller's Lutece from New York;
Piero Selvaggio's Valentino from Los Angeles; Stephen
Pyles's Star Canyon from Houston; Joachim Splichal's
Pinot Brasserie from Los Angeles; Kevin Wu's Royal Star,
featuring master chefs from Hong Kong; Lagasse's Delmonico
Steakhouse from New Orleans, and Puck's Postrio from
San Francisco.
Elsewhere, there is Palladin's Napa at the Rio Suite
Hotel & Casino; an excellent outpost of New York
and London's Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel, and the only
offshoot of Charlie Palmer's New York Aureole, at the
Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino.
The end result of most of these new showcase restaurants
is stylish, sophisticated, elegant and fun. Certainly
the prime dining experience of the moment can be found
at the Bellagio's Picasso, a place with a clear lesson
on how it pays to pay attention to detail.
In the 116-seat dining room at the edge of the Bellagio's
eight-acre lake, one sits beneath a changing gallery
of Wynn's collection of Picasso paintings, offset by
a large display of colorful Picasso ceramics. The carpet
and the furniture were designed by Picasso's son Claude.
Indoors one has a spectacular view of the hotel's water
show, astonishing for its choreography, complexity and
scale with about 1,000 fountains rising as high as 240
feet (73 meters), dancing to the music of Pavarotti
and Sinatra.
The food - a Mediterranean mix of specialties from
France and Spain - includes the biggest scallops I have
ever seen, Maine day-boat scallops roasted to perfection,
topping a potato mousseline in a pool of flavorful jus
de veau. It would be hard to choose between chef Serrano's
sublime wild Atlantic turbot teamed up with a confit
of leeks, or the rich aged roasted lamb chops served
with tender rosemary potatoes. The wine list is a veritable
tome, including treasures from the entire world of wine.
At Aureole, I was prepared not to like the gimmicky
wine wall, a four-story glass wine tower housing a $2
million collection of wine.
To retrieve a selection from the 10,000 bottles stored
there, a lean and sexy wine server wearing a harness
and a cat suit scales the tower to snare the bottle.
Once I was face to face with this modern wonder, I loved
it. It is pure Las Vegas: glitzy and glamorous and fun.
I was less taken with the food there, despite excellent
service and a chic and elegant dining room. It was simply
boring, from tasteless and textureless cardboard lobster
to a filet mignon without a personality and a much touted
Oregon pinot noir that lost its punch long before we
were able to finish the bottle.
We fared better at Emeril Lagasse's New Orleans Fish
House at the MGM Grand Hotel, where spice is the order
of the day. Best bets included a tempura-fried spicy
salmon roll served with an infused soy sauce, wasabi
and pickled ginger; and his rich cornmeal-fried Louisiana
oysters served with marvelous addictive grits dotted
with smoked gouda cheese. Only the pan-fried Louisiana
crab cakes disappointed, as I searched for the crab
bits hidden among the breading.
Near the tour's end, a simple dinner at Nobu made up
of a gargantuan platter of sushi and sashimi, washed
down with a flinty white French sancerre, left me planning
a return trip, soon.
- Picasso, Bellagio
3600 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas.
Tel: (702) 693-7223.
Fax: (702) 693-8563.
Open for dinner only, Thursday to Tuesday. $75 prix
fixe, $85 tasting menu.
- Noodles, Bellagio
3600 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas.
Tel: (702) 693-7223.
Fax: (702) 693-8563.
Open daily. Dishes priced from $4.50 to $24.75.
- Emeril's New Orleans Fish House, MGM Grand Hotel
3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas.
Tel: (702) 891-7777.
Open daily. Main dishes priced from $19 to $36, $65
tasting menu.
- Aureole, Mandalay Bay
3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas.
Tel: (702) 632-7401.
Fax: (702) 632-7425.
Open daily for dinner only. $95 tasting menu (with
optional $45 wine pairing), $75 prix fixe.
- Nobu, The Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road
Las Vegas.
Tel: (702) 693-5000.
Fax: (702) 693 5010.
Open daily for dinner, and for lunch Friday to Sunday.
About $50 for dinner, not including wine, $70 tasting
menu.
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