Category: Chefs

ZYDECO PO-BOYS is Closing (Sigh)

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Zydeco Po-Boys — that bastion of casual N’Awlins cooking in Downtown Las Vegas — will shut its debris doors for good on March 3rd.

Here are some of the comments (taken off Facebook pages) from some of its fans and other folks about its demise:

This was predicted by City planning when they recommended to deny Container Park’s box enclosure plan realizing it would artificially cut off the streets behind it from normal urban flow. Making it many times harder for a business to succeed. But Council let amateurs make planning decisions for better (sometimes) and worse (most times).

“Unfortunately, people don’t want to be eating inside a restaurant while watching someone dig in the trash directly outside the window.” – Chef Bradley Manchester – Glutton (Who knows a thing or two about operating downtown.)

This is the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard. Obviously chef Bradley Manchester has never been to San Francisco or any other major metropolitan area in the United States. To even make a comment like this is beyond the pale. I can’t even believe I spent a dime at Glutton.

Parking rates are too high and parking control hovers around more than a panhandler needing a fix.

Parking, planning, panhandlers…what caused the failure? Well, to answer the question, we put it to the chef/owner Brandon Trahan, a thoughtful fellow who poured his heart and soul into the business for the past two years. Here’s what he had to say:

Was it the landlord?

No, not at all. The Downtown Project did everything they could; they built the space and gave me every chance to succeed.

Was it your location?

In a way, yes. It’s hard to get tourists to make the trek just a couple of blocks over from East Fremont Street to here.

Was it the closing of Glutton?

That didn’t help. Glutton created foot traffic on the block that we definitely benefited from. Once they closed, there were a lot less people walking by. Also, after Glutton closed the street got much darker at night. It’s really dark down here and not having that business open on the corner did not help things.

Are there too many places downtown?

Maybe. Maybe there aren’t enough people (living) here to support all of us. VegeNation does great though, so does EAT, Carson Kitchen and the Donut Shop. They’ve been great neighbors. We’re like a community down here.

Was it the bums?

Not really. I didn’t see some of the bad activity that others have described. Besides, anywhere you go in any big city you’ll see lots of bums. You’ve been to San Francisco, right? There, you can be having a fancy meal and see all sorts of homeless right outside the window of a nice restaurant.

Was it your food?

People here don’t really understand Cajun food. They think it’s real spicy. It can be, but it mostly is just well-spiced. We also fry a lot of things so it isn’t a light cuisine, but, of course, that’s where the flavor is.

What about parking? Everyone always wants to blame the parking.

Everyone wants to blame the parking situation, and it could be better, but I don’t think that causes a business to fail.

What would it have taken to stay open?

40%. 40% more customers, 40% more gross revenue. Without that it just didn’t make any economic sense to continue.

Any parting words?

We tried our best. The landlord was great, it was all on me to make a success of the place. They let me do my thing my way, and for that I am very grateful. In the end, there just wasn’t enough daily business down here to keep the place open. Some days we were busy; some weekends I’d see a line out the door at EAT and we’d have only a handful of customers the entire day. I’m sad but I gave it my best.

We’ll miss Brandon — a second career chef who went to culinary school and left Louisiana after the Hurricane Katrina disaster wiped him out. We’ll miss his warmth and good humor, as well as his gumbo and shrimp po-boys. He also fried the best skinny onion rings on earth:

If my waistline would’ve allowed it, I would’ve eaten his food at least once a week.

Zydeco Po-Boys closes a week from tomorrow – March 3, 2017.

ZYDECO PO-BOYS

616 East Carson Street

702.982.1889

https://www.facebook.com/zydecopoboys/

ZUMA-nating About Sushi

 It’s hard to get excited about big box Strip Japanese restaurants anymore.

It’s hard because they’re all clones of each other.

What Nobu started back in the late 90s has spawned copycat after copycat, until these days it’s tough to tell your Hakkasan from your Yellowtail.

Morimoto, Nobu, and Mizumi are essentially the same restaurant. Remember Social House? That’s okay, no one else does, either. Kan’t rekall Koi? You’re not alone. Everyone of them follows the same blueprint. You’ve got your bar, your sushi bar, and your fancy steaks and your edamame. Then there’s the Japanese veggies, extravagant sushi and your robatayaki this and your yakitori  that. The only thing that’s different is whatever flourishes the chef want to add to their garnishes and presentation platters.

We ascribe this phenomenon to the improbable/ecologically indefensible rise of sushi as the protein of choice for a world looking to “eat healthier.” Ever since sushi became a “thing” around fifteen years ago, our insatiable hunger for what is, in essence, a pretty bland fish (tuna), has become the go-to ingredient for those looking to satisfy the hunger of the elite and the hoi polloi. Other fish (some of them actually tastier) are thrown into the mix, and by the time you’ve downed them, a few skewers and a “creative cocktail” or two, you’ll leave fat and happy and about $200 lighter. Which is just what the hotels want.

But here’s a dirty little secret: there isn’t a whole lot of creative cooking going on in any of them. This is formulaic food pure and simple. Putting ponzu and jalapenos on some sashimi is nothing new. In fact, it’s soooo 1996. Virtually everything else being dished up in these “modern Japanese” places is some repackaged idea the chefs learned from a Nobu Matsuhisa or Roy Yamaguchi cookbook, or from someone’s recent trip to Japan, where the chefs have been serving their minimalist food with a flourish for centuries.

(Cooking-cutter, faux creativity also being what the hotels want, the better to impress the rubes — just like they do with all those Cirque du Soleil shows. Each one assaults you with the same, idiotic acrobatics, only in different costumes; each served with different, annoying music.)

In this way have big box Japanese restaurants become the steakhouses of the 21st Century. Everyone’s doing the same thing. Everyone gets their fish from the same place; everyone’s using the same Sriracha. Only the window dressing is different.

Which brings us to Zuma. The brainchild(?) of one Rainer Becker…someone who sounds as Japanese as Fabio Trabbochi.

But we ate in his restaurant — the eleventh location, just opened in The Cosmopolitan* — and had a very good meal there.

Which is another thing about “modern Japanese” restaurants: like steakhouses, it’s pretty hard to have a bad experience in any of them. The formula is now so pat, and the techniques so well-taught, that whatever comes to your table is usually pretty tasty.

The first thing you notice about Zuma is the wood. There is lots of wood. Wooden hostess desk, wooden tables, wooden bars, wooden everything. We’re talking whole trees here, not some namby-pamby sliced logs:

 There’s a sleek, modern bar (natch), and nice high top, thick wooden tables (natch), and sushi bars (natch) and three kitchens (natch) and a lot of seats filled with lots of good-looking young people who look like they’re enjoying their skewers and their sashimi and their creative cocktails (triple natch).

What knocked us out was a beautiful lobster tempura:

….and a Japanese mushroom/rice hotpot of sublime earthiness:

….and a peppery watercress salad that hit all the right flavor notes:

…it being dressed to a wasabi “T” with a subtle-yet-plenty-piquant dressing.

The fish was also top notch (see top of the page) with only a slice or two being a bit past its prime. The uni was out-of-this world wonderful, and the best we’ve had this side of Tsukiji.

The wine list is absurdly priced (natch) with the usual Strip gouges on things like $85 for a sauvignon blanc and $64 for a shot of gin. But hey! if some fool is going to pay that, who are we to argue?

What you can’t argue with is the formula. It’s getting as familiar as an old shoe, but at least Zuma is off a fresh and fast start. It doesn’t feel like a high-roller/club kids haven (Hello Hakkasan!), or a tired re-tread (Nobu), or celeb chef money machine (Morimoto), or a copy of a copy like Kumi. What it feels like is a chef and his company trying to tweak a template with enough fun stuff to keep the crowds and the fussy critics happy. Which will always bring a smile to our face.

Natch.

ELV’s dinner for two was comped and he left an $80 tip.

ZUMA

The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino

3708 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702.698.2199

https://www.cosmopolitanlasvegas.com/restaurants/zuma

* Which (we guess) makes Zuma the Ruth’s Chris to Nobu’s Palm, with Morimoto making himself the Morton’s of the bunch. Or something.

AUREOLE’S Identity Crisis

http://www.charliepalmer.com/content/slides/mb-aureoleentrance-v3s1.jpg

Aureole is a restaurant that no longer knows what it wants to be. And the disconnect between what it once was, how it still looks, and what shows up on your plate is startling. If you have a long history with the place, as I do, you will leave your meal here — be it in the main, cavernous dining room or the bar — scratching your head. If you’re the kind of new customer it is now hoping to attract, you might be satisfied, but you won’t be a thrilled. And that’s a pity.

The most pitiful thing they’ve done to the dining room (with this new reboot) is to darken it (with lighting and fabric) in an attempt to warm things up. What before was a stunning, three-story architectural wonder with 40 foot ceilings, blond wood and a stark, sophisticated feel, now has the same bones, but feels like a feeble attempt to “go casual” with print fabrics, awkward place mats, and muted atmospherics. The effect being one of trying to turn a gastronomic temple into a something-for-everyone dining hall.

They’re not fooling anyone. Anyplace this big and striking advertises itself as a very special, big deal meal emporium, but big deal meals are no longer in favor, so the powers that be are stuck with trying to fit a ho-hum concept into a gourmet hole.

The poor fellow in charge of trying to make all of this work is Johnny Church, one of our most talented chefs, who has the unenviable task of crafting an all-over-the-map menu and somehow make it distinctive so prices can be charged commensurate with the architecture.

Church is an inventive, resourceful guy, but here he’s a thoroughbred  being chained to a milk wagon. The menu is filled with the usual suspects — surf, turf and root — with each dish trying very very hard to distinguish itself from dozens of other rooms in town doing the exact same salmon, steaks, kampachi crudo and roasted beets. Crafting a menu for a 335 seat restaurant cannot be easy, but why bother composing a beef and octopus carpaccio that tastes of neither? And leave the pastas to the Italians, rather than sling a beef cheek ravioli was so thick it could be used to patch a tire. But the sea bass comes with its head on it (and standing up(?) the head that is), and there’s all sorts of dribbles and drabs on the plates to impress the rubes. (And, apparently, every other food writer in town.) But look closely and you see a lot of been there done that dishes. This isn’t a Charlie Palmer restaurant anymore; this isn’t a Johnny Church restaurant. It’s just a random assortment of recipes in an eye-popping setting. Throw in the obligatory Caesar salad, risotto, meatballs (very good), four fish and three pricey steaks and a California crab roll…and voila! you have a menu that’s obviously been designed by committee.

The service at the bar was terrible on the night we tried out the happy hour menu, as were the dips: tzatziki, babaganoush and hummus. But at least the bread was stale.

The wine list is outstanding. If you can get the bartender’s attention.

Think of it this way: What is the thing that keeps you coming back to a restaurant? (Or, put another way, why do you go somewhere in the first place?) At Mr. Chow it’s all about the spectacle of intensive care service and upgraded Chinese standards. Carbone ropes you in with old fashioned Italian food made formal and fun, with a great retro vibe permeating the place. Le Cirque is classic, old school French, with marvelous food in a jewel box setting. Spago is Spago. Sui generis. The place that invented the type of Cal-Ital menu it serves — a menu that’s been copied a million times by now. Aureole used to be about the soaring, inventive American cuisine of Charlie Palmer, with drop-your-jaw decor (along with a soaring wine tower) to dazzle you along with his architecturally precise food.

Now, there is no focus, nor theme. This is functional food designed to dazzle conventioneers from Kansas. MGM (the parent company) did the same thing when they re-booted and ruined FLEUR a few years ago. Because they figured Norm and Edna from Evansville want to see Hubert Keller (one of America’s greatest French chefs) do tacos.

A restaurant should me more than the sum of its parts. Really special restaurants are. Aureole has ceased to be really special, and at the prices it’s charging, it cannot afford not to be.

AUREOLE

Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino

3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702.632.7401

http://www.charliepalmer.com/aureole-las-vegas/