Dishing out their BEST BITES
Vegas Uncork’d serves up culinary star power on a silver platter
She was the smallest person in the room, but she had the biggest, brightest smile.
She was also the night’s most famous person, thanks to her TV shows, chart-topping cookbooks, restaurants and even her branded cookware. And for a few hours one night in early May, she captivated an intimate gathering at the annual and star-studded culinary festival called Vegas Uncork’d.
“Who wants shrimp?” Giada De Laurentiis said, a platter of canapes in each hand. Practically all eyes were on her as she moved through one private dining room and then another in her posh, sleek restaurant — called what else but GIADA — on the second floor of the Cromwell Hotel Las Vegas, a boutique property on the Las Vegas Strip.
Over two hours, the Emmy-winning celebrity and the restaurant’s waiters brought guests an array of nibbles, dishes and platters — antipasti, artichoke and fennel salad, a creamy pasta in which lobster shone, big, breaded veal chops and pan-seared branzino with tomatoes and capers. The dishes were essentially Italian, but made with a lighter, American hand, and their recipes, adapted for home cooks, could even be found in De Laurentiis’s latest cookbook. For dessert, there were black and white brownies and ice cream cake, not because they’re Italian but because De Laurentiis loves them.
Between courses, the upbeat and personable celebrity took questions about her food, family and more.
“How do I stay so slim?” De Laurentiis said, repeating one query. “Partly it’s genetics, partly it’s I don’t eat a ton, and partly it’s I move. I move, I get those platters, I serve you. I move a lot.”
At the end of the night, De Laurentiis’s satiated fans left with copies of that new cookbook, Giada’s Italy, plus selfies of themselves with the evening’s leading lady.
The De Laurentiis dinner was just one of two dozen or so overlapping events fit into the four-day girth of the 13th Vegas Uncork’d, a celebration that was launched in 2007 by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Since 2012, it has been overseen by Bon Appetit magazine.
Over the years, Vegas Uncork’d has emerged as a behemoth of a culinary festival that feeds uniquely on Las Vegas’s special nexus of fine dining and fame, melding casinos with conspicuous, and at times dangerously gluttonous, consumption. (In Sin City during Vegas Uncork’d, the prevailing sin would have to be gluttony.)
The rise of Vegas Uncork’d coincides with the explosion of upscale restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip, luring high rollers who also yearn for haute cuisine.
As Caesars Palace, president Gary Selesner told CBS News earlier this year: “We began to see younger and more diversified groups of people arriving in Las Vegas with different aspirations with what to do with their vacation, and it turned out that one of the key drivers for many of these people became food.”
While casinos of yore served cheap buffets or even free food to gamblers, the arrival in 1992 of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Spago Las Vegas paved the way for other culinary greats to come do business here. Now, ambitious casinos and resorts on the strip wouldn’t be complete without a famous chef ’s restaurant.
Miami-based celebrity chef Lorena Garcia said that opening her upscale restaurant Chica two years ago in the Venetian was “100 per cent my dream come true.”
Every single place is absolutely amazing. You have to keep up. You have to be excellent.
“There is no bad restaurant here in Las Vegas,” said Garcia, who stars in TV shows and has her own cookware line. “Every single place is absolutely amazing. You have to keep up. You have to be excellent.”
At this year’s Vegas Uncork’d, which was based at but not exclusive to Caesars Palace, the festival’s roster of chef-stars included not just De Laurentiis. Also on the roster: Gordon Ramsay, the British bad-boy chef with five eponymously branded restaurants in Las Vegas; Guy Savoy, the Paris-based Michelin-starred god of French cuisine who in 2006 opened Restaurant Guy Savoy in Caesars Palace; Masaharu Morimoto of Iron Chef America fame, whose contemporary Japanese restaurant is in the MGM Grand; plus TV personalities Lisa Vanderpump, with her dog, and Guy Fieri, with his frosted tips.
Sampling the food of these chefs, and being in proximity to them, did not come cheaply. Fans of Di Laurentiis paid US$400 for their experience. A multi-course lunch with Ramsay along with recipe cards and a commemorative photo cost US$425. Champagne brunch and a lesson in truffle-making with uber-pastry chef Christina Tosi cost US$250. But these and other events sold out, and latecomers could only add their names to waiting lists online and cross their fingers for cancellations.
The most popular and signature event during Vegas Uncork’d was the Grand Tasting (US$260), which drew more than 2,500 people to the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis at Caesars Palace. There, from 7 to 10 p.m. on the festival’s Friday night, revellers grazed at the stations of more than 50 Las Vegas-based chefs and their restaurants, washing down their fare with free-flowing wine, beer and cocktails.
“It’s a living catalogue of gastronomy tonight,” said Savoy, who went back and forth that night between his restaurant and its poolside station at the Grand Tasting. For the tasting’s masses, Savoy had taken one of his most iconic dishes — artichoke and black truffle soup with toasted mushroom brioche — and made it smaller and portable.
Savoy said he looks forward to the social side of Vegas Uncork’d and of the Grand Tasting in particular. “It’s a good way to meet other chefs, the ambience, it’s really warm. Nobu (Matsuhisa, the famed Japanese chef ) is a friend. Gordon Ramsay is like my son. All the chefs are like a family.”
At the tasting, Ramsay was practically inundated by fans seeking photos with him. All the while, his restaurant’s cooks doled out stout burger sliders, miniature portions of fish and chips, chocolate caramel tarts and more.
Garcia, who grew up in Venezuela, served areas, a kind of South American corn cake, with braised short ribs, chicken salad and beets and chèvre mousse fillings. Estiatorio Milos, the Las Vegas progeny of the veteran Montreal institution of Mediterranean seafood and Greek fare, served its stellar grilled octopus with Santorini fava purée.
Meanwhile, acrobatic performers and groovy piped-in music added to the party atmosphere as well-dressed guests sampled De Laurentiis’s creamy risotto, lamb barbacoa tacos from Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill and succulent chunks of beef brisket from Los Angeles star chef Susan Feniger.
Between the end of the Grand Tasting and Saturday afternoon’s Picnic in the Park (US$200), there was scarcely 12 hours for a gourmet to recuperate. While the afternoon event hosted by MGM Resorts was a smaller gathering of star chefs and restaurants, excellent eats and beverages abounded just the same.
Under a beating sun, we tried delicacies such as Morimoto’s grilled Goose Point oysters with sake and soy sauce, served by the friendly Iron Chef, as well as more robust treats such as Los Angeles chef Roy Choi’s spicy barbecue pork sliders, handed out by staff at one of Choi’s food trucks.
Jean-georges Vongerichten, the French-american chef with a slew of opulent restaurants in New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, Las Vegas and beyond, served a Thai salad made with Wagyu beef that was out of this world. Los Angeles chef Feniger was back in business after the Grand Tasting with more food — this time a Mexican-inspired seafood cocktail that delivered the event’s boldest flavours.
After the picnic, we still had room for one more epicurean extravaganza — the seven-course dinner at Savoy’s restaurant (US$500, including wine pairings).
Savoy opened for business in Las Vegas 13 years ago at the invitation of Caesars Palace. The French chef’s Las Vegas location, his only restaurant outside France, was designed to give customers the same food, atmosphere and spirit found at Restaurant Guy Savoy Paris, which this year was ranked the best restaurant in the world by La Liste.
Savoy said the menus of his Paris and Las Vegas restaurants are “95 per cent the same,” with American ingredients that are on par with their French counterparts.
“And the wine list is better here, with French wine,” he added with a laugh when interviewed at his
Las Vegas outpost, a bright, spacious, high-ceilinged space where modern art hangs on the walls and is reflected in Savoy’s elegant platings.
At dinner, Savoy’s treatments of oysters, octopus and lobster were visions of beauty and demonstrations of sophisticated culinary technique. Seared foie gras topped with sea urchin and a buckwheat tuile ratcheted up the richness.
A full serving of Savoy’s artichoke and black truffle soup followed, with an instruction from our server to sop up the soup with the mushroom-truffle brioche. The course combined luxury and primal hedonism. For a final savoury course, Savoy served medallions of New Zealand lamb and a tiny breaded chop, accompanied by asparagus. An exquisite dessert starring rhubarb and strawberries concluded the meal.
While Savoy was less visible at his dinner than De Laurentiis had been at hers, he nonetheless made sure his guests went home with a keepsake typical of Vegas Uncork’d. Before dinner, I and other diners had posed with a smiling Savoy outside his restaurant, and we received our framed photos as we left.