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If you want to know what makes a place like Bouchon so good, all you have to do is spend five minutes in the kitchen. Just smell the stocks, inhale the aromas of fresh bread, and sense the intensity of a dozen chefs (and a dozen more bakers, pastry chefs, and assorted helpers) as they go about their tasks of making everything as perfect as possible.

Until the above photos were taken, Eating Las Vegas had been in every kitchen in every major restaurant in Las Vegas, save one.

We don’t know why we had never asked for a tour, nor been offered one, but we suspect it was because we were usually too busy scarfing down all that superior sustenance a la Francaise.

But Sous Chef Bruno Morabito and his too live crew couldn’t have been more accommodating, whether we were wavering around the waffle station, piping up about the piping of meringue, or being bowled over by brioche.

The in-house baking at Bouchon is, of itself, an impressive rarity. Only a few of the best restaurants in town bother t0 commit such resources to the art of bread making, but your first bite of the warm-from-the-oven sourdough rolls tells you it was worth it.

If you wondering, yes, we were offered a loaf hot from the oven….and yes, we did devour it on the way home. Bribery? Of a sort, but we at ELV will plead guilty as charged when the chow is this lip-smackingly good.