Category: Chefs

This Just In: Middleton Moving to Boulud; Stratta Returning to Marche Bacchus

Jeff and Rhonda Wyatt will announce tomorrow that Executive Chef David Middleton will be leaving Marche Bacchus to accept a position as a chef with a very famous, New York-based icon of French gastronomy, who may or may not be named Daniel Boulud, who’s very, very French and very charcuterie-centric outpost  may soon be coming to the Venetian.

Middleton will be departing the Desert Shores destination in mid-January, at which time Alex Stratta will reclaim the title of top toque in this kitchen. According to the Wyatt’s, Stratta will be launching a new menu soon, and will continue to serve as the grand fromage and consultant to the restaurant even after a replacement for Middleton is found.

Translation: Stratta will continue to lend his considerable chops to the menu, and maintain the exec chef title, even after they find a Chef de Cuisine to run the day to day operations.

I Suppose We Should Say a Few Words About the Closing of HOPS & HARVEST

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Hops & Harvest bit the dust a few days ago less than six months after it opened to great fanfare in Tivoli Village.

Its ignominious demise was hardly a surprise, as we had received a stream of reports over the past few months about how empty it was even on weekends.

H & H marked the first time in Las Vegas’s history that a nationally acclaimed chef had ventured off the Strip and into the neighborhoods. The fact that Bradley Ogden‘s star had dimmed a bit over the past twenty years in no way diminished this milestone, and lot’s of us kept our fingers crossed that his bold move to the ‘burbs would herald a new dawn in quality, off Strip dining.

Alas, it was not to be.

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