ELV note: The following review appears in today’s Las Vegas Weekly, and can be accessed on its website by clicking here, if you want to read it in its original, on-line format. Our staff suggests doing so…but also suggests scrolling down this page to indulge your eyes in some of our tasty snaps.
Daniel Boulud recently closed his two Vancouver restaurants. Gordon Ramsay has opened and closed outlets from Prague to Los Angeles in the past five years, and some wonder if the whole “celebrity chef” thing has suffered from a surfeit of sensationalism (or “fabulous fatigue” as the New York Times dubbed it). Our friend and colleague Steve Dolinsky weighs in with thoughts on these and other chef/restaurant phenomena (and quite a bit of discussion about the Vegas restaurant scene) in this article in the Montreal Globe and Mail (where Ramsay recently opened to (what sounds like) a collective shrug).
Monday
15 August 2011
3 a.m.
Las Vegas does food better than any place on Earth.
From a simple shrimp cocktail to a banquet for thousands, our hospitality industry is legendary. That legend has grown during the past two decades to include scores of the world’s greatest restaurants. An argument can be made that because of the breadth and depth of our culinary offerings, we are, alongside New York, the greatest restaurant city on the planet. If any other city in the world had our concentration of great restaurants and chefs, everyone from the captains of industry to ordinary citizens would be shouting about it from rooftops. As it is, despite all of this world-class quality, much of the known food-centric universe who could and should be beating a path to our delicious door never hear about it. They don’t hear about it because, in a classic case of the tail wagging the dog, Las Vegas’ marketing machines have failed to keep pace with the extraordinary changes that have occurred ever since Wolfgang Puck took the bold step of opening Spago in the Forum Shops in December 1992. But the fact is, no place in the world has such a unique food and beverage product to sell, and nowhere sells so much of it against such a stunning backdrop.
You name it, we’ve got it: More master sommeliers than New York, more great steakhouses anywhere but the Big Apple and more extraordinary French chefs anywhere but Paris. Do London, Chicago, San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles have two Joël Robuchon restaurants plus a Guy Savoy plus Alain Ducasse plus a Pierre Gagnaire outlet? Nope. Does anywhere but here have a concentration of 50—50!—world-class eateries along a two-mile stretch of road? Not even close. How many cities can boast the best of Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse? None. But outside of food professionals, writers and intrepid foodies, precious few seem to know the depth and scope of what’s going on along Las Vegas Boulevard. Even the hotels, both individually and collectively, seem behind the croissant curve when it comes to crowing about the phenomenon that has taken the food world by storm.
As cataclysmic as Spago’s opening proved to be, it took a few years for its seismic effects to be felt. Shortly thereafter, in 1994, the MGM Grand moved our epicurean needle forward, when it brought Mark Miller (Coyote Café), Emeril Lagasse and Charlie Trotter on board. But it was only when Steve Wynn opened the Bellagio in 1998 that the gastronomic ground shook under the High Mojave Desert and the whole world felt the shudder. (more…)
There are three things in this world ELV can’t stand:
1) People who are intolerant of other cultures;
2) The Dutch; and,
3) Nincompoops who think its okay to mess with Mother Nature and the writers who give them currency.
What’s hot in our humble burg? Besides the sidewalks? See the list of muy caliente eateries below — all compiled by the mega-foodie-website www.Eater.com and a certain critic we all know and love. (You’ll have to click on the Eater site to see the actual map.)
One caveat and one apology: The map quotes an outdated review of Bar + Bistro of ours (when it was doing a spaghetti and meatball menu). As readers of this website know, the nuevo/Latino/tapas food being done by Beni Velazquez has been a vast improvement. Also, Due Forni should also have been on the list. ELV regrets the error.
Batali/Bastianich Group mixologist Lucas Swallows has one of those names that’s too good to be true — you know like the florist named Rose Flowers or a lumberjack named Mark Wood. Hugh Alexander Curtas (d.o.b. 10-15-84 – The Official Number Two Son Of ELV) once had Mr. Earthman for a geography teacher, and there is actually an attorney in New York called Sue Yoo.
ELV note: Click here to read today’s feature in the Las Vegas Weekly on a dozen or so things some of us think would vastly improve the quality of life in our humble burg. For your information (and ease of digestion) of this discerning, delectable, diverse degustation of a discussion, here is our dutiful diatribe:
ELV note: Here is the link to today’s edition of the Las Vegas Weekly wherein these awards are bestowed upon the worthy recipients. Yours truly wrote about ten of these (can you guess which ones?) and disagrees with a few others, but on the whole, the recognition is more than earned by most of the winners.
The last time I paid serious attention to an Emeril Lagasse restaurant, Congress was asking Monica Lewinsky to explain the stains on her dress. Polite company should not be forced to discuss such things, so I’ve tried to avoid both subjects since the turn of the century. It’s not that I don’t like Emeril—he’s a charming, generous and funny guy—but the mass appeal of his ingredient-heavy, caloric, fatty, often charmless food is lost on yours truly. When he opened Table 10 in the Palazzo in 2008, two meals there convinced me his food (as it appears outside of New Orleans) was headed straight to Applebee’s land. Then, a month ago, an email arrived from chef Sean Roe that intrigued me …
ELV note: This review appears in today’s Las Vegas Weekly. Click here to read it in its original format, or continue below, to enjoy the prolific, profound prose, for which ELV is known, plus Beverly Poppe’s propitious pics.
Tired of the same old Korean food? Bored with bibimbap (rice and vegetables in a stone pot)? Jaundiced about jjigae (soup with vegetables)? Had it with haejangguk (meat soup with veggies)? Then consider heading to South Rainbow Boulevard at Robindale, where Soyo Barstaurant will set you up with some good ol’ chicken wings, Korean-style.
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.
