Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Summer corn and ricotta ravioli
AT many restaurants way up high or along the water, the views are effectively on the menu: to distract from (and atone for) any stumbles by the food. Happily, Rivea in the Delano tower doesn’t belong to this category. Consider the restaurant’s summer corn and ricotta ravioli, which would taste as good in a hobbit hole as they do 64 floors above the Strip.
Chef Alexandre Gregoire said he drew inspiration for the dish from elote, the grilled Mexican street corn swaddled in a creamy-spicy sauce of mayonnaise, cotija and chile powder.
The chef cooks his summer corn in chicken stock, purées it off the cob, then mixes it with ricotta, Parmesan, pecorino and herbs (parsley, tarragon, chives) to fashion the filling; the stuffed pasta parcels emerge with just the right give and bite.
The gently sweet-savory ravioli are plated in a simple sauce of butter and chicken stock, then garnished with blistered chunks of corn, and with pale yellow-green corn shoots the color of diluted chartreuse. In a Venn diagram of French, Italian and Mediterranean cooking, the ravioli would occupy the intersection, in keeping with Rivea’s balmy culinary approach.
The restaurant comes courtesy of Alain Ducasse; in 2022, he has more Michelin stars (17) than any other chef in the world. Gregoire, who trained under Ducasse in his native France and in the U.S., became executive chef of Rivea (and its adjacent Skyfall Lounge) in 2020.
The ravioli ($22) debuted this month, but they’re already among the restaurant’s most popular dishes, Gregoire said. Pair with a glass of 2018 Joseph Drouhin Mersault ($18), one of the classic Burgundian expressions of chardonnay that is silky and full with good acid.
For more information, visit delanolasvegas.com