Category: Wine

James Beard Awards Finalists Announced

This morning at the Frontera Grill in Chicago, the James Beard Awards Finalists were announced. Las Vegas scored four nominations as follows:

Paul Bartolotta (Bartolatta Ristorante di Mare) in the Best Chef Southwest Category

Claude LeTohic (Joel Robuchon) in the Best Chef Southwest Category

Kamel Guechida (Joel Robuchon and L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon) in the Best Pastry Chef (National) Category

Picasso (Robert Smith: Wine Director) in the Outstanding Wine Service Category.

For Picasso and Smith, this is their third nomination in a row. Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare was nominated two years ago for Best New Restaurant, and Paul Bartolotta previously won a Best Restaurant Midwest (in 1994) for Spiaggia in Chicago.

Eating Las Vegas offers its congratulations to all of these worthy nominees, and looks forward to the Award Ceremony on May 4th. We predict at least two of these nominees will garner the big prize. FYI: We correctly predicted that Bartolotta, Guechida and Smith would again make it to these finals, but whiffed on Saipain Chutima of Lotus of Siam making it to the last round (even though she was a finalist last year for Best Chef Southwest).

The complete list of JBF Nominees continues after the jump:

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Road Trip – DRAGO CENTRO

PART THREE – KICKIN’ IT NEW/OLD SCHOOL

The thing that struck us about Drago Centro — Celestino Drago’s new, northern Italian eatery smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles — besides the other-worldly pastas, the spot-on food and wine pairings of sommelier Michael Shearin, the packed house, cool design, and the smart move of having Matteo Ferdinandi (formerly of Spago Las Vegas) as Owner/Manager — was how inexpensive it was.

Appetizers ran $12-$20, pastas about the same, i.e., less than $20 a serving, mains were almost all well under $30, and the porter house for two (a steak that Las Vegans get routinely gouged for in excess of a hundred buckeroonies) was $75. And did we mention the place is on the ground floor of a fancy office building in downtown L.A.?

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