He was once the best chef in Vegas. Back when Laurent Tourondel was top toque at Caesar’s Palace (and presiding over the last days of the Palace Court Restaurant from 1996-1998), Vegas had never seen anything like his refined take on French cuisine. Classically trained at Troisgros in Roanne, France, he also experienced immense critical success at the ill-fated Cello in New York, before devoting himself to the more prosaic concerns of building a restaurant empire.

Now he’s two days from opening a 200 seat hamburger restaurant right off the Mirage Casino-in the space formerly home to the famed white tigers of Siegfried and Roy fame – one of whom once tried to make its own burger out of Roy’s face. We’re guessing the cuisine will be a bit less refined than Tourondel’s peekytoe crab soup en gelee (Yup…Nuthin’ gets past EATingLV.com!), but from our sneak peek and taste test of yesterday, the burgers will take you straight back to the classic California Googie diner burgers of the 1950’s, albeit with substantially better beef.

Here’s a preview of the space, and a good look at what goes on in the final hours before the launch of an $8,000,000 burger joint!