Some Final Thoughts on L’Affaire Bourdain

Never bite off more than you can chew. – Anonymous

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Since our post on Mr. and Mrs. Bourdain was driving so much traffic to the site (a five fold increase in hits) we were told by people in the know (and by “in the know” we mean “our staff“) to leave it up as the lead story for a couple of days. First of all, we want to thank all of our loyal readers for the traffic and for the thoughtful comments. ….which almost all of them were.

All we really did was something Eater.com and (let’s face it) no serious journalist would do, which is question Ottavia Bourdain’s trashing of a steak dinner she had in our humble burg, and speculate about who or what could have pissed her off so much with such an inferior performance from such a name chef. In a town internationally renowned for its steakhouses, and its celebrity chef steakhouses at that, it read as quite a shock that a top-flight meat emporium could fail so miserably, especially when serving an even more famous guest in the rarefied air of the food world.

That the offending steakhouse in question turned out to be Charlie Palmer STEAK did not surprise us at all …but that’s another story.

Continue reading “Some Final Thoughts on L’Affaire Bourdain”

Working Girls

ELV note: The article below appears in today’s edition of the Las Vegas Weekly. These tasty snaps were taken (mostly) at Le Cirque during my interview/dinner with Megan Romano (Aureole/Charlie Palmer Steak), Vita Shanley (Scarpetta/D.O.C.G.) and Dyan Ng (Restaurant Guy Savoy). That interview provided the basis for the piece, and since space constraints didn’t allow us to go into the meal itself…or how impressed the gals were with Philippe Angibeau’s spun sugar creations (and apple tarte and coconut sorbet and melting chocolate ball, and…and…), we thought we’d post them now for your salivation and delectation.

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By: John Curtas

Wed, Feb 9, 2011 (5:12 p.m.)

Las Vegas may have the greatest concentration of top pastry talent anywhere in America. Continue reading “Working Girls”