ML - Vegas Magazine

2012 - Issue 8 - December 2012/January 2013

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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SO MANY DINNERS… SO LITTLE TIME Puck's trend-setting smoked-salmon pizza with dill crème fraîche, chives, and caviar. Jack Nicholson is a longtime customer of Spago. FOODIE FIRSTS continued from page tk Chinois-style Colorado lamb chops from the original menu. continued from page 80 Within two months, everyone started breath- ing easier. By the end of 1993, locals had Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group Managing Partner David Robins with Spago Executive Chef Eric Klein. What Wynn couldn't adopted it as the place to see and be seen, and A-list celebrities like Puck friend and fellow fight fan Jack Nicholson started treating it as their home away from home. One Spago enthu- siast who didn't have to travel very far was Steve Wynn. "He used to come in all the time," says Puck with a smile, "because apparently he didn't have any place [at Mirage] to eat." get enough of was Puck's—at the time— groundbreaking Cal-Ital-French cooking, which was as creative as it was toothsome. Twenty years later, the food is better than ever while still holding true to Wolfgang's vision. These days top toque Eric Klein keeps the flame burning—and the standards as high as any high-volume gastronomic restau- rant on earth. (On a busy weekend, Spago Las Vegas might serve 900 customers in a day.) Besides turning out the signature smoked-salmon pizza and an array of seasonal specialties, Klein will celebrate his restaurant's 20-year anniversary from December 10 through 14 by featuring Spago's original menu from two decades ago (at 1992 prices!), including a glistening roast Cantonese duck, Chinois-style Colorado lamb chops, and a superior wild mushroom risotto. Pastry chef Crystal Whitford joins the fun with a gor- geous Kaiserschmarm—sort of a light-as-air soufflé pancake—and a melting chocolate cake that was de rigueur on dessert menus way back when. Puck and Spago literally changed the way all of us think about restau- rants. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a non-traditional pizza or wondered happily why proteins are no longer smothered in sauces owes him a debt of gratitude, as does every famous Las Vegas restaurant. But for this gregari- ous Austrian, our hotels would never have seen that there's gold in them thar gourmet hills—leading them to jump on the celebrity chef bandwagon that Vegas culture practically invented. Just ask Steve Wynn. The Forum Shops at Caesars, 702-369-6300; wolfgangpuck.com V 82 VEGASMAGAZINE.COM LOYAL-T Tom Kaplan, the man Puck chose to move to Vegas in 1992 to open Spago, has a degree in art history— which explains why the restaurant has always adorned its walls with world-class paintings, letting diners revel in good taste while reveling in good taste. The visual arts may have beckoned Kaplan, but running great restaurants was his calling—a fact Wolfgang Puck spotted early on—and 10 years later moved him from LA to Vegas for his new locale. "I honestly don't know why he hired me," Kaplan says, "since my sole restaurant experience had been washing dishes in my college frat house. I asked him once, and he said it was because he could train me his way, and because I hadn't been corrupted by an American or European vision of what fine dining could be." Twenty years on, Kaplan is now senior managing partner of Tom Kaplan in front of a Tim Bavington mural at Spago. the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, overseeing 22 restaurants worldwide, from Singapore to London. Besides his keen eye for art, Kaplan knows how to make a restaurant both fashionable and fun. "We want people to know that if you're going to spend your hard-earned dollars, you're going to have great food and service in a pretty room." Bravo to Spago! With all of the restaurant revolutions that have occurred in Vegas over the past two decades, people tend to forget that it all started with Spago. The list of Spago innovations that have been copied, often the world over, bear repeating: the open kitchen: Spago; the first restaurant to serve sophisticated food in a casual, unstuffy setting: Spago; two restaurants in one (a casual one combined with a more formal dining room): Spago Las Vegas. Puck also started the gourmandization of the lowly pizza with his signature smoked-salmon pie with caviar. Spago was even the first gourmet restaurant unafraid to feature items like burgers and chopped salads on its menu. Put all of that together, and you have the single most influential restaurant of the 20th century. Caption will go here tk xerit lore del utpatisit velisl

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