Personal Favorites: The Chefs of Las Vegas

By JULIETTE ROSSANT In Personal Favorites: The Chefs of Las Vegas (Stephens Press 2004) by Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviewer Heidi Knapp Rinella has the nearly impossible job of arriving at a list of chefs and their restaurants to include. After all, Las Vegas is home to so many chefs these days. As an example, all six chefs of the chefs whom I profiled in Super Chef have restaurants in Las Vegas, yet two are inexplicably missing: Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. (See Super Chef, pp. 163-168, for a discussion of Border Grill Las Vegas.) For each of the chefs, Ms. Knapp Rinella provides a short profile about their careers and recipes from their menus punctuated by large photographs framed by cut outs of hearts, diamonds, spades and clovers -- it's Vegas, you see. This is a coffee table, corporate gift-kind of book, covered in heavy paper with a handful of recipes and plenty of photos of chefs, diners, and restaurants. Personal Favorites: The Chefs of Las Vegas would be a good memento item for Vegas-visiting Foodies -- a growing number. Ms. Knapp Rinella has captured the patter of some of the chefs very well, like "I think that was the first thing I dialed into," from Todd English on his early love of restaurant energy (pp. 79-83). Todd's chapter touches on his desire to sell to a corporate investor, his desire not to be overexposed, and his dream to open a cooking school. That is followed up by Todd's famous recipes for Parmesan Pudding with Pea Sauce (see also The Olives Table, p.86, and elsewhere), Halibut with Artichoke Crust, and a Deep Dish Apricot Pie (pp.86-90). What I found strange is the inclusion of both Wolfgang Puck under his restaurant Postrio and David Robins' under Spago. Was Wolfgang ever executive chef of Postrio? For that matter, while David Robins is the executive chef of Spago, he also oversees all of the restaurant Puck owns in Las Vegas (Postrio included). Meanwhile, come April, Steve Wynn will be opening Wynn Las Vegas hotel-casino, and we'll have a new crop of stars to profile and watch. Previous articles: Anne Willen: The Good Cook Gale Gand's short+sweet More Food from Alton Brown Manju Malhi's India With Passion SOS: Baking from the Heart Madhur Jaffrey: Our Lady of India, CBE All Hail Alfred Portale Agassi's Star Palate: Celebrity Chefs Technorati Tags: chefs restaurants food cookbooks biography branding -> back to superchefblog