Eating Las Vegas has confirmed that the Daniel Boulud Brasserie at Wynn will close when its five year operating agreement is up in April, 2010.

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When ELV was but a mere sprout, his father would take his family (four siblings plus Marcella Ruth Schroader Curtas — D.O.B. 8.10.24 — The Official Mother Of ELV) to a restaurant in Orlando, Florida (as opposed to Orlando, New Hampshire) called Ronnie’s.

Ronnie’s represented a genre of restaurant that has gone the way of the Greek diner and the mom and pop soda fountain — the huge, Florida Jewish deli.

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To the surprise of no one who has read it in the last few years, Gourmet Magazine is soon to be tossed out with the kitchen scraps of the Conde Nast empire.

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THE BEST TV CHEF EVER
Keith Floyd Dies at 65

by John Mariani

There never was and now never will be anyone to match Keith Floyd as a raconteur gourmand, the British TV chef and cookbook author who died this week at his home in Montfrin, France. His personable style of irreverent, make-it-up-as-you-go-along showmanship was in complete contrast to the over-produced, contrived glitz of most contemporary food shows in which loud, crass personalities with weird haircuts go around the world looking for the worst things to eat and the oddest people to eat them with.

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The first time I ever ate at Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois was in the summer of 1984. It was at the original on Main Street in Santa Monica, and I recall driving past the front door, looking for the address, and seeing a telephone pole right in front of it with its street light off.

On closer examination, that telephone pole turned out to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar waiting for his car. (more…)

CHINOIS in the Forum Shops hung up the Chinese hat for good last Saturday….inspiring yet more (bad) haiku:

Wolfgang Puck closes

Offshoot of groundbreaking place

Eighties are over

“The critic, if he is to justify his existence, should endeavor to discipline his personal prejudices and cranks…and compose his differences with as many of his fellows as possible, in the common pursuit of true judgment.” – T.S. Eliot

“A good critic is one who tells of his own soul’s adventures among the masterpieces.” – Anatole France

“The duty of a critic is to educate, not pander to the lowest common denominator.” – ELV

We at ELV haven’t had a whole lot of respect for GMG ever since they canned us over eight years ago (as the first restaurant critic for both Las Vegas Weekly and Las Vegas Life magazines) for being “too critical.” (Translation: we value advertising more than integrity, and our publisher doesn’t want to take any heat for whatever some pesky critic has to say.)

Now we’ve just heard that a new round of layoffs has claimed uber-food writer Max Jacobson, leaving Las Vegas with a serious hole in the knowledgeable foodie department.

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Dear Readers: Sonny Ahuja of Bleu Gourmet just posted this message on Facebook:

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This just in: RM Seafood has shuttered it’s fine dining operation for the forseeable future. ELV learned this during a panel discussion of chefs at the BITAC convention luncheon of hotel operators this afternoon at Encore. The downstairs Cafe continues to operate and is going great guns from our recent drive-bys of the place.

Rick “Sustainable Fish Man” Moonen” assures us that the upstairs, more formal operation is only on temporary hiatus until things loosen up, and he and Sobel will be pouring their hearts into the bar menu (upstairs) and keeping the Cafe humming along. (ELV regrets the wording of his original post that may have misled readers into thinking the entire operation had shut down.)

The good news is uber-chef Adam Sobel is now on board there assisting uber-uber-chef Rick Moonen in both revising the downstairs RM Cafe menu, and eventually looking to put RM (upstairs) on the Michelin map where it belongs.

The bad news is that those looking for a dose of Moonen’s finely tuned, sustainable seafood may have to wait for a while.

More later.

High end restaurants from New York to Los Angeles are hurting…

This article in the Wall Street Journal explains how even such a strong operator as Stephen Hanson’s B.R. Guest group has not been able to halt the receding tide of customers in the biz. He’s just closed multiple restaurants in the Big Apple and the Windy City, including the mega-famous Ruby Foo’s and the highly regarded Fiamma — helmed by uber-chef Fabio Trabocchi to 3-star status over the past two years. (So much for the power of restaurant critics.)

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