Eating New York…and Deconstructing Dufresne

Yes food fans, this entry finds me eating my way through the Big Apple. And last weekend I was eating my way through Vancouver – a town that’s as serious about food as any I’ve ever come across – but more on British Columbia later.

For now, I thought I’d give you a taste of the effort and stress and work that yours truly goes through to keep up his street cred as the world’s greatest restaurant critic.*

My New York summer day began late with lunch at La Goulue (746 Madison Ave., 212.988.8169). We were feeling fashionable – decked out as we were in a fetching ensemble of faded Chuck Taylor’s, RL jeans, and a Brooks Brothers seersucker jacket – so we ducked into the most fashionable restaurant we know on the Upper East Side. There we tucked into a superb steak tartare with equally good frites and a demi-bouteille of Gilbert Picque Ses et Filles Chablis.

All seemed right with the world as we strolled down Fifth Avenue (working up a sweat in the process in the 88% humidity and 85 degree heat), and found an outside table at Brasserie Ruhlmann (45 Rockefeller Center, 212.974.2020, www.brasserieruhlman.com) for yet another glass of Premier Cru Chablis (Robert Vocoret ’06) before heading to a business appointment. This being New York, showing up for a meeting with a decent Bourgogne blanc on your breath is quite acceptable.**

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KLAS TV Channel 8 (CBS) Restaurant of the Week-MAINLAND (in the Palazzo)

This groove-filled spaceship of awesome Asian cuisine inside the otherwise predictable Palazzo has got serious personality. And, as we know, personality goes a long way. Watch us explicate the merits of this well-worthy noodle joint on KLAS in his latest segment of Restaurant of the Week.

Click below to see the man, the gourmand, the myth….and a guy who talks too much with his hands….(with his second favorite food gal-Denise Valdez.)

BLT BURGER Preview-The Return of Mr. BLT: Laurent Tourondel

He was once the best chef in Vegas. Back when Laurent Tourondel was top toque at Caesar’s Palace (and presiding over the last days of the Palace Court Restaurant from 1996-1998), Vegas had never seen anything like his refined take on French cuisine. Classically trained at Troisgros in Roanne, France, he also experienced immense critical success at the ill-fated Cello in New York, before devoting himself to the more prosaic concerns of building a restaurant empire.

Now he’s two days from opening a 200 seat hamburger restaurant right off the Mirage Casino-in the space formerly home to the famed white tigers of Siegfried and Roy fame – one of whom once tried to make its own burger out of Roy’s face. We’re guessing the cuisine will be a bit less refined than Tourondel’s peekytoe crab soup en gelee (Yup…Nuthin’ gets past EATingLV.com!), but from our sneak peek and taste test of yesterday, the burgers will take you straight back to the classic California Googie diner burgers of the 1950’s, albeit with substantially better beef.

Here’s a preview of the space, and a good look at what goes on in the final hours before the launch of an $8,000,000 burger joint!