Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
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FAR LEFT: Chef Daniel Boulud. ABOVE: The chef joins writer Jay McInerney in saluting Boulud's return to Las Vegas. LEFT: Poisson fumés, with balik smoked salmon, smoked sable rillettes, potato dauphine, salmon roe, and preserved cucumber and dill. PHOTOGRAPHY BY SABIN ORR (BOULUD, FISH); SETH OLENICK (MCINERNEY) Home at Last! DANIEL BOULUD MAKES HIS TRIUMPHANTAND HIGHLY ANTICIPATEDRETURN TO LAS VEGAS, AND HIS FRIEND JAY MCINERNEY HELPS HIM TOAST THE OCCASION. A fter an absence of more than five years from the Las Vegas dining scene, Daniel Boulud roars back with DB Brasserie, a 266 -seat venue at Venetian that seems aimed at the culinary sweet spot between haute and hearty. "I always love bistro cooking, but I wanted to do something more festive, more large-scale," says the irrepressible and impish Boulud when I catch up with him for a meal at his f lagship in New York a few weeks before his return to Las Vegas. We are perched in the skybox, the rectangular glass capsule suspended above the bustling kitchen of the three-star Michelin restaurant that made him famous, sam- pling some of the dishes that will be featured at the new Vegas restaurant. When I first met Boulud, he had just opened his eponymous restaurant, although he'd already made a big name for himself with his stints at Le Regence a nd Le Cirque. I happened to live a block away a nd quick ly became a regular, addicted to such dishes as Daniel's Black Sea Bass en Paupiette w it h Sy ra h sauce. Up unt il t hat point , t he rest aura nt s I frequented were better known for their buzz than their food. Restaurant Daniel was my first serious exposure to haute cuisine, but happily the atmosphere was relatively informal, and I learned that if I arrived late I could eventually share a glass of wine with the chef, who turned out to be disarmingly friendly, at the bar. While he made his bones as a master of haute cuisine, and trained with some of France's greatest three-star chefs, including Roger Vergé, Georges Blanc, and Michel Guérard, Boulud g rew up on a farm near Lyon and maintains a deep reverence for the heart y, earthy cooking of that cit y, often referred to as the homeland of French cooking. For all of his training in Escoffier classics and the nouvelle cuisine, his cooking has never left t he fa r m, or t he t radit ions of French home cook ing, behind. Since his continued on page 66 64 VEGASMAGAZINE.COM BACK IN TOWN