Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

A full plate: Zagat Survey’ namesake explores Las Vegas dining scene

Thirty restaurants. One night.

A culinary junkie's dream is Tim Zagat's reality.

On any given evening his rounds may take him to the hottest, hippest, most exclusive, upscale eateries in the country, helmed by the most renowned chefs on the planet.

Other stops, however, may be at neighborhood pizza joints and 24-hour diners.

But they all have their place on the dining scenes of upward of 50 cities in several countries, as well as in "Zagat Survey," the best-selling restaurant guide of which he is co-chairman and co-founder.

It's one of Zagat's jobs to check out as many of the restaurants featured on the survey which he and wife Nina have been publishing since 1979 as possible. He's been known to visit as many as 30 eateries in an evening.

On Monday night it was Las Vegas' turn.

Zagat (pronounced Zuh-gat) hopped in a black Lincoln sedan and, with a Las Vegas Sun reporter in tow, was driven up and down the Strip for a nearly six-hour tour of hotel-casino restaurants to learn what dining options the city has to offer.

The 2001/2002 "Zagat Survey" of Las Vegas restaurants was released this month (Zagat hosted a news conference Tuesday at Cili at Bali Hai Golf Club to herald the latest installment).

Still, Zagat pounded the pavement, checking in on this year's favorites (Bellagio's Picasso, Mirage's Renoir, Venetian's Delmonico) and checking out some up-and-comers that may find themselves featured on future surveys. He hit (or, at the very least, poked his head into) about 15 restaurants on Monday night.

"I do it all the time in New York, and I do it a lot in other cities," the 61-year-old Zagat explained of his touring tendencies prior to his visit, by phone from his office in the Big Apple.

He doesn't eat at each of the restaurants he visits, mind you. "But I go up and down the avenues to make sure that we haven't missed a restaurant that is new and looks exciting or that we haven't included a restaurant (on the survey) that has closed."

The footwork is important, especially since Zagat doesn't write the restaurant reviews featured in his guides.

That task is left up to the surveyors -- readers of the books and visitors to his company's website (zagat.com) -- ordinary folks who volunteer for the task by filling out and mailing in cards included in each book or completing applications available on the website. More than 200,000 readers this year let their opinions be known.

The survey lists dozens of restaurants, and surveyors complete it by writing comments about establishments at which they've dined and also by including ratings for menu prices, food, decor and service.

Zagat's job: "I have to go out and make sure all of the interesting restaurants have been listed" on the survey, he explained, as well as make sure restaurants that have closed don't appear on future surveys.

"Really, it's a way of making sure that you've got everything up to date" on the survey, he said of his tours. "The other thing is, you get that sense of the level of the (restaurant) industry.

"Year in and year out, if you go in, you can see when the restaurants are really jumping, or whether they're a little slow from year to year ... Restaurateurs will lie to you. They'll all tell you how great they're doing, and right now, for example, in New York, a lot of them are not doing as well as they would make you think."

The only way to know for sure, Zagat said, is to see it for himself.

A helping of history

"Zagat Survey" was started by Zagat and his wife, Nina, both attorneys, as a crib sheet-style survey of restaurants in New York. It was based on the recommendations of their food-loving friends and family members.

"We did it for three years where we just gave it away," Zagat recalls, "and each of those years we just got better at it. Then we started selling it. We were really doing it still as a labor of love."

The Zagats expanded the survey by the mid-1980s to include more cities, and eventually the trademark slim maroon books were also printed in versions to include critiques of the airline, hotel/resort, spa and, most recently, night-life industries.

Plans this year call for the addition of restaurant surveys for 30 more cities, including some in Europe and Japan.

Zagat -- who is also chairman of New York City and Company, parent of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau -- said one of his favorite subjects to discuss is why surveying makes sense.

"It is not the denigration of a great (restaurant) critic, but it is simply saying there is a big difference between having a large numbers of people and one person" giving his or her impressions.

"You have restaurants that are built for 20-year-olds, and 20-year-olds say, 'They're lively, exciting, fun, a great place to pick up a date at the bar over a burger and beer,' and their parents say, 'Loud, overcrowded, made me feel older than I already am' ... Those kind of distinctions, where they exist, are really useful to point out."

Zagat also calls on the knowledge of professional foodies in each city where the guide is published to lend some insider insight -- especially when he hasn't visited all of the restaurants on a particular city's survey. (For the Las Vegas edition, Sun Food Editor Muriel Stevens and Sun food writer Max Jacobson served as editors.)

When surveyors describe a restaurant as serving "very unusual French" cuisine, Zagat said it's helpful for an editor to flesh out the text by adding, " 'Chef So and So uses Thai spices because he used to work at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok.' Bringing in factual points like that are important."

Vegas bound

Prior to his arrival in Las Vegas Zagat speculated that his Las Vegas tour would work a bit differently than his others.

That would amount to the understatement of the year.

Zagat said he hadn't visited the city in at least five years.

"There's been so much change in Las Vegas," he said. "Las Vegas has been importing every major chef that they can get from anywhere else in the country."

He wanted to feel out some of the city's dining trends, as well as some of the rumors surrounding the local scene.

"The buzz is that so many of the hotels and casinos have realized that having a good restaurant is a major appeal to other people besides the ones who are purely interested in gambling," he explained.

Also, "Having a famous chef downstairs appreciates the value of the rooms upstairs. It's not the normal restaurant financial equation.

"You can afford to spend a lot more on a restaurant (in Las Vegas) than you would normally because of the fact that it generates other kinds of business for you."

That's not the case with restaurants in other large cities, he explained.

Zagat said he'd also heard and seen that the cost of eating out in Las Vegas is on the rise.

"Not, per se, because you can't still get the great buffets, but because the mix of restaurants is different than it used to be," he said.

"Therefore Las Vegas is no longer -- when you look at the averages of price -- the super-bargain that it was when it was a meat-and-potatoes and buffet town."

Play by play

Zagat's Las Vegas tour began around 6 p.m. Monday at Charlie Palmer Steak at the Four Seasons. He was visibly impressed by its richly appointed, cavernous dining room.

"It's a handsome restaurant. You've got a lot of space," he told members of the attentive staff, who seemed well aware of Zagat's influence in the restaurant industry.

At New York restaurants, he said, "You'd be getting half the space ... for the same number of seats."

He declined an offer to tour the kitchen and later remarked, "If you start nibbling on one of these tours, you start eating and it slows you down so much."

Zagat exited the restaurant and headed for an elevator that took him to the lobby of the adjacent Mandalay Bay. (A copy of his latest guide peeked out from the pocket of his dark suit jacket.)

His next stop: Aureole, famous for its wine tower that stretches to the ceiling -- and the harnessed workers whose job it is to "fly" up and down, and from side to side, to retrieve the bottles.

The whimsy of the tower struck Zagat who, when it comes to the restaurant industry, one might assume has seen it all before -- and then some.

"This is Peter Pan getting wine ... I never thought I'd see it anywhere," Zagat replied when asked if had expected to see such an unusual concept in Las Vegas.

"People in wine are so conservative, generally, and the idea of having a sense of humor about it ... It's pretty amazing. The idea of these girls going up and down for the wine ..."

He checked in on Aureole's private dining rooms, tinkered with its "interactive hand-held wine list" (the ultimate Palm Pilot for wine connoisseurs) and took in the elegant beauty of the restaurant's "Swan Room." This time, an opportunity to view the kitchen was welcomed.

So much for not nibbling: Zagat headed straight for a pan of freshly roasted beef, grabbed a butcher's knife and promptly pronounced the meat tender.

He chomped on a cooked portobello mushroom and sipped club soda while chatting with Executive Chef Joe Romano about the 3,100-square-foot kitchen and its amenities.

Zagat made his way to the kitchen freezers where Aureole's homemade frozen desserts are kept. He was presented with a selection of small scoops of ice creams and a bowlful of raspberry red-wine granita (a lusciously flavored shaved ice). A couple of spoonfuls, and it wasn't long before he was off and running again.

Zagat made his way, awestruck, through Mandalay Bay's restaurant corridor, with short stops at China Grill, Shanghi Lilly and rumjungle. At Red Square he donned a furry hat with earflaps and (briefly) stepped inside the vodka locker, where the temperature is a bitterly cold 10 below zero.

On the road again

Back to the car. At 7:35 p.m. Zagat entered the Venetian and marveled at the ceiling frescos and ornate decor on his way to Delmonico, the steak house owned by celebrity Chef Emeril Lagasse.

Standing in the middle of the packed dining room, he said, "I have not eaten here, but I don't think it takes a genius to know the food here is good ... just by watching other people eat."

Across the way, the trendy V Bar caught Zagat's attention. Despite its smattering of weeknight customers (just try getting into this place on weekends, he was advised) he saw its potential and was also taken with its unusual lighting schemes.

On to Mirage at 8:45 p.m.: The hotel is home to one of the restaurants Zagat had flown across the country to see: Renoir.

Although normally closed on Mondays, this elegant restaurant, which was named by Zagat surveyors as having the best food in Las Vegas, was opened specifically to accommodate his tour.

Zagat stood amid beautiful furnishings, surrounded by the handful of original Renoir paintings that hang on the walls, and smiled.

"This room is so beautiful," he said between sips of champagne. "The thing that's amazing is, you know this is part of a big, huge building ... but it's like escaping to another world."

Next up was Bellagio. At around 9:30 p.m. Zagat stepped into the dark wood and dusty blue-hued Prime steakhouse, which was brimming with diners who were, between bites, gazing upon the hotel-casino's exploding fountains through a bank of windows facing the Strip.

"Every desert should have a few lakes," Zagat quipped as the water show commenced.

A few steps away from Prime is another restaurant Zagat was eager to see: Picasso, which placed first in the "Most Popular" category and third for "Top Food" in the most recent survey.

Zagat was greeted at the door by Executive Chef Julian Serrano, who escorted him through the restaurant. Its walls are adorned with original works by its namesake artist.

"You're never going to see that in any restaurant anywhere other than Bellagio," Zagat said, motioning toward a large painting near the front of the dining room. "You wouldn't have too many restaurants in America that cost as much as that Picasso does."

Following a tour of the kitchen, it was time for dinner -- a multicourse meal that featured a selection of excellent wines, succulent lamb, a small lobster dish and tiny potato pancakes topped with caviar, among others, followed by a half-dozen desserts for the tasting.

It was a decadent and delectable meal in a city where the dining scene ain't what it used to be -- and that's certainly not a bad thing, according to Zagat, who called it an evening at around midnight.

"I like being awestruck," he said, "but really, there are a lot of things here that are bigger and more kooky than anything anywhere else in the country."

And they're all in a day's work.

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