Chefs finding supplies they need in Las Vegas area

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, June 13, 2001 | 9:14 a.m.

Think globally, shop locally, as one popular New Age dictum suggests.

No matter where you dine in this country, almost every top chef relies on a complex network of purveyors to bring food to your table. All but a handful of these chefs relies on products from afar: seafood from Maine, meat from Midwestern stockyards, produce from California or Chile and specialty items from all over the world.

But it's also true that good restaurants love to serve as many local products as they can, or at least rely on a few well-chosen local purveyors. An increasing number of foods are either grown or have become available locally, and our top chefs take full advantage. Several chefs recently revealed a few of their buying secrets.

With a little sleuthing, or just by calling places, you can easily obtain many of these top-notch products yourselves.

Michael Jordan, executive chef at Rosemary's Restaurant, uses many local products. He buys edible flowers, such as snapdragons and Johnny jump-ups, as well as bay leaves, chives, thyme and, of course, rosemary from Nepenthe Gardens in Pahrump.

From apiaries owned by Bill McDonough in Las Vegas and Pahrump, Jordan he buys buckwheat and root-beer honeys, and the lemon honey he drizzles on his lavender ice-cream sandwich cookies.

Gardens of Christiane in Pahrump supplies various lettuces, corn, and in summer, squash and zucchini. The chef gets chicken and quail from North Las Vegas company Norris Farms. The chickens are large, penned (as opposed to free range) birds that are grain fed and quite delicious. The next time you order Jordan's chicken three ways, leg confit, brick breast and spicy fried wing, served with truffled potato and roasted shallot cream, you'll know the provenance.

Meanwhile over at Postrio, San Francisco-born chef John Lagrone likes to buy as many local products as he can. He uses Anderson Dairy for creme fraiche, sour cream and other items, and gets produce such as artichokes, green beans, cherries, nectarines and mulberries for his special foie gras dish from Get Fresh, a Las Vegas produce firm.

From Michael's Gourmet Pantry, a new distributor, the chef gets porcini, morels and various high-end fish. (Interestingly, the chef pointed out that this year's bumper crop of morels comes from Montana, where there were many forest fires. Morels, it turns out, do well in areas that have had recent fires.)

From the local firm Vinus Distribution, and a purveyor named Salvatore Cesareo, he gets imported Italian and Greek products, cheeses, olives, cured meats, olive oil and similar specialty products.

Speaking of Italy, crackerjack Italian chef Luciano Pellegrini of Piero Selvaggio Valentino in the Venetian also shops locally. He uses a local company called Enzo Foods to get the soft buffalo mozzarella that he uses in many dishes, as well as sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil and the imported San Marzano tomatoes that he uses in his marinara sauce.

From Vinus, he gets San Daniele prosciutto, Italy's best, olives for his giardinera mix, the oil-marinated artichokes he uses in his antipasto mix, and other items. Most of his seafood comes straight from Italy, though. "I'm gonna open up my own grocery store," he jokes.

Renoir's Alex Stratta is a wonderful chef, and although almost everything he buys is from purveyors outside Las Vegas, he does use a local fish company, King Fisher, to get the incredible Santa Barbara, Calif., spot prawns that are currently in season.

If you haven't tried them, no one does them better. Stratta takes these prawns, which are bursting with orange roe, and grills them simply. Then he mixes the roe with olive oil, egg yolk and lemon juice to make a killer mayonnaise.

Grant MacPherson, executive chef for the Bellagio, and Marc Poidevin, chef at Le Cirque, also in Bellagio, don't buy much in Las Vegas, but they do get a few things. MacPherson is getting his basil from a place called Nutra Garden in Pahrump, and from the same gardens, his nutty, mildly bitter arugula.

Poidevin, who shops not only for Le Cirque but also for Circo, his Italian restaurant next door, also uses Enzo Foods for mozzarella and tomatoes, and Anderson Dairy for his creme fraiche, sour cream and heavy cream. He likes to go out to the north side of town to Gilcrease Orchards.

"The local produce is wonderful out there," he says, "although it is still early in the season for what I like."

At Commander's Palace, Chef Carlos Guia gets the bulk of what he serves from New Orleans and other ports of call. But he uses Van Rex, a local specialty food company, for his Cypress Grove cheese pyramids (made from a boutique California goat cheese), J&J Seafoods for lump crabmeat and crawfish, and Urbani for truffled soft cheese, morels, cepes and fleur de sel, a special gray sea salt imported from France.

Andre Rochat, and his partner Norbert Koblitz (chef at Andre's at the Monte Carlo), also uses Urbani for truffled products, fiddlehead ferns, ramps, caviar and other mushrooms. Andre and Norbert use Norris Farms for the turkeys they serve every Thanksgiving.

They use J&J for Kumamoto and Malpeque oysters, whole Atlantic salmon, Chilean sea bass and Alaskan halibut. From L.A. Specialty, a Los Angeles produce company that recently opened an outlet here, the chefs get microgrown lettuces, kale, pea shoots, wild strawberries, golden raspberries and more.

Finally at Wild Sage Cafe, Chef Stan Carroll buys his Prince Edward Island mussels and Malpeque oysters from the local Supreme Seafood, La Brea Bakery breads stocked by a place called Westwind Foods, gourmet grocery items such as sun-dried tomatoes and truffle oil from Van Rex and lots of produce from Fresh Point, a local produce wholesaler.

Whether eating in or dining out, the choices are more abundant than ever.