Category: Openings

PAYARD Perfection

Payard Bistro and Patisserie

Caesars Palace

702.731.7292

The most common questions I get asked about this second job of mine as a world famous restaurant critic are: how does one become a restaurant critic? How many times a week do you eat out? And finally: why aren’t you the size of sperm whale? Well the answers are: It’s a long story, 10 times a week, and I have the metabolism of a hummingbird. I’m hardly svelte, but I like to say I’m not as fat as I could be nor as thin as I should be, and one of the ways I keep from looking like a building with feet is by avoiding (or at least minimizing) my intake of sweets, pastries, cakes and desserts. And that was pretty easy for me, until Francois Payard came to town.

Click here to listen to my current review of Payard Patisserie and Bistro.

Because one of the first things The Food Gal and I do whenever we travel to New York, is to hop a cab to Lexington Avenue on the upper East Side, and immediately tuck ourselves into a tiny table at Payard’s for a generous sampling of superlative pastries. We’ve done this for years, because for years it’s pretty well been acknowledged that Payard is the best pastry chef in America. And as long as he stayed in New York, I could indulge myself with his croissants, pain du chocolat, madeleines, financiers, macaroons or whatever tasty cakes struck my fancy. …because I was only there for a few days and could go nuts without serious waistline consequences. The Food Gal of course never has this problem, because she’s never hungry for the stuff like I am, preferring instead to pick off my plate….which just means that I have to order twice as much.

Unfortunately, for the past 8 months or so, I’ve become vexed, tortured, tempted and tormented, ever since Payard diabolically moved into Caesars Palace and brought all of his French delicacies with him. He even went so far as to hire Gregory Gorreau, the immensely talented pastry chef from MIX, to be his Executive Chef, to further plague and confound my best laid dietary plans.

WORST of all, they decided to open a charming bistro along side their pastry shop….that provokes me morning, noon and night with the best omelette in town, the best quiche in town, the best croque monsieur in town, and a chocolate nutella banana crepe that will make you weep. They also do a pretty spectacular hamburger, and the eggs benedict are nothing to shake a baguette at either. And when you’re done swooning over all of those, there are those pastries and chocolates in the shop next door, calling to you like a siren song of forbidden delights.

Lash me to the mast please! It’s just not right I tell you!…..The best breakfast in town, a stunning lunch and dinner, and the best sweets and baked goods on this side of the Atlantic….something needs to be done about that perfidious Payard, and his henchman Gorreau….because they constantly remind me that I can resist anything except temptation.

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“The Donald” arrives, and with characteristic modesty, names his restaurant after himself.

DJT The Restaurant opens Monday, April 7, 2008 right off the lobby of the Trump International Hotel and right across the street from Nordstrom’s (how con-VEEN-ient!) It’s a small, dark, 65 seat, club-like space-lilliputian by Vegas standards-with a bar that opens onto a good, old fashioned, no-gambling, hotel lobby loaded with enough glitz and “quality babes” to keep Trump knee-deep in apprentices for seasons to come.

Taking no cues from the owner’s hairstyle, menu is simplicity itself, with 10 starters and mains that are mercifully light on introductory prose (chilled sweet pea soup, duck confit, sous vide halibut, et al…), but we’re confident Executive Chef Joe Isidori and Chef d’Cuisine David Varley (late of the ill-fated Company experiment in the Luxor), will make it dazzle if allowed to follow their muse. Having Lucas Riemens (late of Guy Savoy) man the front of the house is a plus as well. No doubt gourmands will line up to taste slices of true pata negra jamon Iberico, but we’re more interested in Mr. Trump’s bibb wedge salad-that has to be more interesting than it sounds.

It’s now April 12, 2008, and I’m still swooning from the fabulous food Chefs Isidori and Varley laid before me and The Food Gal last night. A full article and review will be forthcoming, but in the meantime feast your eyes on some tasty snaps….

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Restaurant Charlie (as in Trotter) Returns to Vegas

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Charlie Trotter may be the most intellectual of the American chefs who
rose to prominence over the past twenty years, but that doesn’t mean he
lacks a sense of humor. Open only one night, we found him working the
rooms of Restaurant Charlie and Bar Charlie with the ease of Wayne
Newton charming the Depends off Sun City socialites. His fine-tuned
food was too hip for the room when he first tested the Vegas waters(?)
in 1994, but he’s back, and riding the current wave of Big Kahuna
restaurants spawning in (wait for it) the deep end of the Palazzo’s
restaurant pool. His menu of (mostly) swimmers, crustaceans and
bivalves can be sampled a la carte (unlike 14 years ago), and Bar
Charlie is right next door for those whose tastes run to the
experimental, the Asian and the au courant. Try to pick a foie gras
fight, and Charlie will win you he’s a libertarian about such things. Try to find anything wrong with the
knife work of Executive Chef Hiroo Nagana (creating mini-masterpieces
at Bar Charlie) and you won’t be able to.

Here is my interview with Charlie Trotter that was previously posted on Eaterla.com:

THE COMEBACK KID

By all accounts, Charlie Trotter should be as fond of Vegas as PETA is of prime rib. His eponymous restaurant flamed out famously in 1995, after 15 months in the MGM Grand. Bloodied but unbowed, he maintained his flagship in Chicago while (apparently) plotting a return to the High Desert whenever the time was right for a return bout. He doesn’t seem to have the empire-building urges of many of his colleagues- Cabo San Lucas houses his only other outpost-so when word got out that the Palazzo was granting him a rematch, gourmands and bean-counters alike wondered if he was punch drunk. With this in mind, we grabbed him for a Q & A just two days into the life of Restaurant Charlie and Bar Charlie.

John Curtas: It was a sad day for local gourmands when you pulled up stakes here in 1995. The smart money said we’d never see you again. What happened then and now?

Charlie Trotter: We started out as an all-comp restaurant for high rollers exclusively. It really went much smoother than people think it did. Sure, there were occasional requests for prime ribs and baked potatoes, but we handled them and it was never an issue as got reported at the time.

JC: The rumors were that no one could touch the sacred food of such a renowned chef (serving only rigid, degustation menus every night), and you balked at the low-to-middlebrow tastes of the casino crowd and couldn’t take it anymore.

CT: The real issue was a new management team took over the MGM and wanted to double our size (from 65 seats), change our menu, eliminate the tasting menu and add more “basic” food like meatloaf and spaghetti and meatballs, and we did balk at that. But until that happened, we were happy. I was the one who talked Emeril into opening in the MGM. I had a 10 year contract to be there and was happy with it right up until the point that (the Food and Beverage people) began wanting to tell me what I should serve. They ended up buying me out of my deal after 15 months, so I was happy with that too.

JC: So how is this time going to be different?

CT: We’ve had lots of offers over the years; the Bellagio, Wynn, but nothing seemed like a good fit until now. Rob Goldstein (President of the Venetian) is a passionate food guy and he and his people really seem to understand what we’re trying to do. Bar Charlie will revisit some of our ideas from 14 years ago, and the main restaurant will be a la carte, so I guess we’re trying two concepts in one this time.

JC: And if I’d like a silky-smooth, Sauterne-poached slab of foie gras…..?

CT: Look, I’m the most libertarian guy you’ll ever meet. I really am a live and let live person….not a polemic about foie gras, smoking in restaurants or anything else. Eight years ago we just decided not to serve it and a couple of reporters came in, we said we just weren’t doing it anymore, and then they went out and got other chef’s reactions to create the “controversy.” I also stopped people from smoking in my restaurant 20 years ago, and that was controversial then too….even though we didn’t make any announcements about it….it was just something we decided we didn’t want in our environment. What other people eat and what other restaurants serve is their business not mine.