You need not be a high roller to dine well in Las Vegas in 2005, but it sure helps. So difficult is it to get a reservation at restaurants like Aureole, Nobu and Le Cirque that only a high roller, who is comped by the casino, can score a table on short notice. That's a far cry from the days when Vegas was famous for its six-dollar buffets and all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts (of which, nevertheless, you can still find plenty).
Indeed, fine dining is now a major attraction in Vegas. The hotel-casinos have poured multimillions into their food service, signing up big-name American chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Charlie Palmer and Emeril Lagasse. French masters like Alain Ducasse, Joël Robuchon and Guy Savoy have opened or are poised to open places this year.
In addition, Vegas restaurants currently feature some of the world's most spectacular wine cellars: Picasso stocks more than 1,550 selections, Valentino has 2,500, and Aureole has 4,000—plus a forty-two-foot-tall glass-walled tower from which some of the restaurant's 65,000 bottles are fetched by "wine angels" in black catsuits swinging from wires.
The high-end restaurant arrived in Vegas in 1998, with the opening of Le Cirque at the Bellagio and Renoir at the Mirage, followed in 1999 by Aureole at Mandalay Bay and Valentino at the Venetian. Their superstar chefs were promoted with as much hype as Céline Dion and Wayne Newton are, and the national media rushed to Vegas only to find expensive, cavernous showcase restaurants—Olives, the Palm and Aureole, for example—that bore little resemblance to their more modest originals.
There's no question that the quality of food, wine and service improved dramatically at that time, but the buzz surrounding celeb chefs who were seldom in Vegas began to seem like another shell game. The rare commitment of restaurateurs like Mario Maccioni, of Le Cirque and Osteria del Circo, and chefs like Julian Serrano, at Picasso, and Alessandro Stratta, formerly at Renoir, who actually moved to Vegas, paid off. They garnered high praise from the media, while restaurants with absentee celeb chefs flopped, including Lutèce, from New York, Coyote Cafe, from Santa Fe, and Star Canyon, from Dallas.
Now a second wave of restaurants is hitting Vegas, and mere size and razzle-dazzle are joined by professionalism and refinement. On my most recent visit to the city, I found more substance and a lot less mass feeding.
For haute cuisine I will still return to Le Cirque, which was recently refurbished. Of the newer restaurants, I'm betting on chef Hubert Keller's Fleur de Lys, in Mandalay Bay, to compete mightily. Keller, who regularly flies in from his nineteen-year-old San Francisco restaurant of the same name, has every intention of cooking here as much as possible. His menu is very French, with complex appetizers such as brandade of cod with osetra caviar, tomato and gelée of cucumber. Pan-seared foie gras comes atop an almond galette and is served with a spiced-duck infusion. Maine lobster with an artichoke puree and tangerine salad is dressed with porcini oil, and roasted sea bass is done with a chicken jus flavored with passion fruit. Don't miss the dessert soufflés; they are textbook perfect: high, puffy and so rich they're made to be finished by two. Set far from the ching-ching-ching-ching of the casino floor, Fleur de Lys is a decent-sized restaurant with large round tables, well-appointed with exquisite china and stemware; a soaring ceiling; and theatrical curtains that made me think a movie screening would be part of the evening. One wall has a fascinating leaf-shaped hanging that I realized, on closer inspection, was made entirely from 3,500 fresh-cut pink roses. Three prix-fixe dinner options, from $68 to $88 (prices throughout do not include beverages, tax or tip); 702-632-9400.
Sumptuous but wholly unfussy is the new namesake restaurant of chef Bradley Ogden, partner at One Market, in San Francisco, and the Lark Creek Inn, in Marin County. Ogden has committed himself to Vegas in a big way by moving there with his family and spending most of his time behind the stove. Bradley Ogden, the restaurant, partakes of the kinetic, swirling energy of its setting, Caesars Palace, in its colored-glass, amoeba-shaped serving plates and its dramatic presentation of food, which is more ambitious and extravagant than the homey northern California style of his other restaurants. Ogden's cooking is richly flavorful, as is evident in his caramelized scallops with porcini, beet cream and celery root; his roasted butternut-squash soup with Southern-fried frogs' legs, apples, crisp arugula and pistachios; and his Wisconsin pheasant breast with sweet potatoes, spiced fennel and a quail egg. Don't even think of leaving without trying his "chocolate sins": a sampling of Brooklyn egg cream, vanilla pie, flourless chocolate cake and milk- chocolate ice cream. Three-course dinner $85; 702-731-7731.
If you crave good, simple seafood, head through the labyrinthine corridors of the MGM Grand to Seablue, a production of San Francisco's Michael Mina Group, situated opposite a Starbucks and a McDonald's. When you see a huge glass tower of water with thousands of fish swimming round and round, you've found it: a shadowy, water-colored, low-lit room with very comfortable booths and an amiable waitstaff. Here you may happily feast on a platter of Florida stone crabs or even "peel 'n' eat" shrimp. Dishes on the almost exclusively seafood menu are categorized under the subheads "grilled," "marinated," "steamed" and "raw" (a scallop seviche and a tartare of tuna). Seafood entrées—including Pacific king salmon with roasted cauliflower, asparagus and curried couscous; North Sea cod with wild mushrooms, shaved truffles and white-wine risotto; and fruits de mer with fettuccine, baby fennel and Portuguese sausage—are cooked in Moroccan tagines and brought steaming to your table. Three-course dinner $65; 702-891-3486.
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