Kitchen crew marches out a meal for the millennium

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 10:05 a.m.

"I brought a pillow and blanket just in case I have to sleep in my car," Mary Bergin, Spago pastry chef, says as she punches holes in tiny eclairs that soon will be filled with maple cream.

It's 10 a.m. Dec. 31 and Bergin already knows she has a long shift ahead. Tucked in the far back corner of the restaurant's kitchen, she has desserts and candies stacking up around her. "This is all for tonight."

Like the other chefs, Bergin has been at the restaurant in the Forum Shops since 8 a.m., and will be working well past midnight. Like the others she knows that the street closures and possible riots may keep her from making it home that night.

There are other concerns, however.

"I think the big thing for us is not knowing whether people can get in," Brent Anderson, Spago kitchen manager, said.

Four hundred reservations were made for the New Year's Eve dinner. With the streets to the Strip closing at 6 p.m., he wonders who will actually arrive.

"It's pretty up in the air," he says. "Whoever shows up, shows up. We're just going to have everything ready. We've been working on New Year's Eve nonstop since yesterday morning."

Two hundred red lobsters delivered from Maine await on shelves in the walk-in coolers. The salmon has been smoked, the duck for the duck confit sits on trays near the 500 pounds of beef tenderloin that are waiting to be prepped.

If the reservations hold up as promised, the crowd will begin to arrive at 5:30 p.m. The evening's first meal, an a la carte menu that includes a variety of choices from Sauteed Foie Gras to Crisp Quail with warm Chanterelle Mushroom salad, will be served at 6 p.m.

The five-course $200 prix fixe menu will begin at 9 p.m.

The chefs also prepare for the lunch crowd, who will fill the cafe in one hour.

"I'll be happy when it's tomorrow morning," says David Robins, who is executive chef at all four of the valley's Wolfgang Puck restaurants.

Robins has been making phone calls and stops since 7 a.m. More than 1,600 people will eat in the four restaurants. In addition to that, he is catering three off-site parties. He arrived at Spago around 10:30 a.m. to talk with his chefs.

"Pretty much everybody's working," he says. "We need everybody on tonight.

"New Year's is probably one of the most exciting and most difficult days of the year because of the expectations.

"There's a lot of significance to the year 2000. The whole year has been building up to this point. I feel an obligation to do a good job."

The food Robins brought in for the restaurant's last meal of 1999 came from all over the country.

"It's a good day for the purveyors," he says. "I probably brought in more than $20,000 worth of stuff today.

"Luckily everything has arrived but the figs so we'll have to substitute with pears tonight. If that's the only thing, then we'll be OK."

Blocked roads after midnight and Y2K problems hardly concern him.

"We may stay here tonight and eat scrambled eggs and truffles in the morning," he says. "Here, we have food and friends. If we don't get home, we'll be OK."

The next day at 5 p.m. Robins is relieved that it's over and pleased that everything went well.

"It was a wonderful evening," he said over the telephone from one of his restaurants. "We had a spectacular New Year's. For all the hype, all the craziness, all the expectations, it went without a glitch."

Not only that, this was the first New Year's Eve in 10 years that he made it home by midnight.