Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/660157
37 ina Lind stands in front of the house that she and her fam- ily are renovating in Hana, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Statuesque and strikingly beautiful in shorts and a tank top, her long, curly hair casually tied up and tucked with a plumeria flower while the youngest of her five children— 3-year-old Kaihawanawana ("Kai Kai") and 10-month-old Adrianna—cling to her limbs, she's calmly directing a snarl of family traffi c. Eight-year-old Talia and 6-year-old Wai'oli are trying to corral the litter of pup- pies that was a surprise feature of the new property. Her oldest, 13-year-old Ekolu, is helping his father, Greggie, unearth the 70-pound pig that's been steaming in the imu in the front yard. The compact earth oven is meticulously layered with wood and basalt stones to hold in the heat, and the pig is wrapped in ti leaves and chicken wire to keep the tender meat from falling apart. It's a fragrant, smoky, labor-intensive once-a-year treat—an indication of just how excited the family is that Uncle David has come to visit. The "uncle" designation is honorary, but David Walzog, Executive Chef of Lakeside and SW Steakhouse in Wynn Las Vegas, and Greggie Lind greet each other like long-lost brothers. They've been texting all morning, planning the logistics of the next few days of fi shing, cooking, and entertaining. Greggie has recently switched mobile phones, since the last wasn't consistently picking up Walzog's texts. "Forget about his wife," Gina says in her characteristically gentle, teasing way. "He needs to make sure he can be in constant contact with David." Yet what Gina laughingly calls the "bromance" between the fi sherman and the chef has become crucial to Walzog's deceptively simple menu of Hawaiian fi sh at Lakeside—2,700 miles away from this scene of celebratory chaos. Walzog is well aware that restaurants will go to great lengths to engineer a narrative in the name of attracting diners who, now more than ever, care about the origin of their food. Certainly any restaurant with sufficient resources could create the Epcot version of Mama's Fish House, the famous beachside restaurant on Maui's north shore. But Walzog wanted to dig deeper. The story behind Lakeside's now-renowned Hawaiian fi sh program, which brings snap- per, mahimahi, and ono, among other species, directly from their clean Pacifi c waters to Wynn—sometimes within a day—involves this friendship, naturally. But at its core, it is about supporting the traditions and practices of family fi sher- men for whom conservation has been an unspoken principle for hundreds of years. And of course, it's about the purity and the freshness of the fi sh that Walzog can deliver to diners in less time than many Maui restaurants can. A longtime Maui vacationer, Walzog had always been drawn to the idea of living off what is abundant and available. "You've got to love the freshness right out of the water," he says on the fi rst day of our fi shing trip, his slim boning knife zipping through a snapper. "So the question has always been how we take this experience to the next level and really tell the right story about it." G "You've got to love the freshness right out of the water. The question has always been how we take this experience to the next level and tell the right story about it."— DAVID WALZOG