Food becomes fine art in Las Vegas

Jace Radke

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

The metamorphosis of Las Vegas from a town known for 99 cent shrimp cocktails and buffet lines to a culinary destination continued Monday with the announcement that two of the top 18 restaurants in the United States and Canada call the Strip home.

Both the Bellagio hotel-casino's Picasso, and the Mirage's Renoir have been named Mobile Travel Guide five-star restaurants. The award marks the first time any Nevada restaurant has been ranked that high and gives Las Vegas the distinction of having more five-star restaurants than Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans.

"We were surprised and stunned by this," Steve Wynn, Mirage Resorts chairman, said of the two restaurants located on his properties. "For a long time no one wanted to elevate the food level here. No one thought people would come to Las Vegas for the food. We were wrong.

"When people go on vacation they want to go somewhere nice with art galleries and outstanding food, and Las Vegas didn't have that before."

New York, with four, has more five-star restaurants than Las Vegas, and Atlanta also has two.

Since 1958 an independent network of national culinary and hospitality experts have been evaluating restaurants and lodgings for the Mobile Travel Guide. Four- and five-star ratings are considered exceptional, with only the top 2.5 percent of restaurants in the United States and Canada graded at that level.

Picasso serves cuisine inspired by Spain and the south of France, while Renoir serves contemporary French food. Both showcase paintings by the artists they are named for.

Julian Serrano serves as executive chef at Picasso, while chef Alessandro Stratta runs Renoir. This is the first time either has had a restaurant recognized with a five-star rating.

A meal at either restaurant with wine, but not including tax or tip, runs around $100 per person.

Wynn says much of the credit for the restaurants' success, and the successful boom in fine dining establishments in Las Vegas, can be attributed to superstar chefs such as Serrano and Stratta.

"I've always been sensitive to entertainment," Wynn said. "We've been pretty hip with that, but the culinary arts were never really my ball park.

"A reporter recently told me I was like King Arthur and Las Vegas was becoming a Camelot of fine dining. I reminded him that there would have been no round table without the knights. These famous chefs are the knights that built this."

Serrano is a winner of the James Beard Award for "Best Chef in California" during his 14-year-run as chef at Masa's, a four-star restaurant in San Francisco.

Stratta also is a winner of a Beard Award for "Best Chef in the Southwest" when he was at Mary Elaine's restaurant in Phoenix, another Mobile five-star winner this year.

Renoir received the five-star rating after opening only six months ago, which is an amazing accomplishment, industry insiders said.

"I'm floored by this," Stratta said. "I came to Las Vegas after nine years in Phoenix because I wanted to make sure I was a part of the beginning of Las Vegas becoming a food town. Wolfgang Puck planted the first seeds here with his restaurants, and now we're seeing the impact."

Charlie Trotter, owner of the acclaimed Chicago restaurant that bears his name, said during his brief time at the MGM Grand hotel-casino that within the decade Las Vegas would become a serious culinary destination.

Puck began the trend of giving Las Vegas dining credibility by opening Spago Las Vegas in the Forum Shops at Caesars about five years ago.

Other chefs soon followed including Santa Fe, N.M.'s Mark Miller, who opened a Coyote Cafe at the MGM, and New Orleans' Emeril Lagasse, who brought Emeril's New Orleans Fish House to the MGM.

The Rio hotel-casino soon enticed another renowned chef, Jean-Louis Palladin, former chef of a namesake restaurant at the Watergate in Washington to open Napa.

"These chefs are very successful, highly regarded, celebrated men," Wynn said. "They didn't come here looking for jobs. These chefs courageously left very successful restaurants behind to establish a beachhead here."

Serrano said he didn't think Picasso would gain such acclaim so quickly.

"I thought Las Vegas would make a very good restaurant town, but I thought it would take two to three years," Serrano said. "In San Francisco I was in one of the best food cities in the world, but when I visited Las Vegas, I thought we could have something special."

Serrano believes that the five-star ratings at the two restaurants will only help Las Vegas to continue to grow into a place people come to not only to gamble and be entertained, but to enjoy great food.

"Las Vegas has been written about in all the papers and culinary magazines, and now everyone wants to have a place (restaurant) here," Serrano said.

Stratta says he has already noticed a subtle change in the tastes of Las Vegas visitors as he catches snippets of conversations.

"Now instead of hearing people talking about going to this show or how was that show you hear 'Did you go to Picasso?' " Stratta said.