Former Sahara executive chef Anderson dies at 67

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 | 9:06 a.m.

When The Beatles came to the Sahara hotel in 1964 and President Lyndon Johnson arrived a year later, the hotel's Executive Chef Donald Anderson was ready to prepare anything for them.

They could have chosen from an array of his innovative dishes such as brochette of beef tenderloin Sahara, beef stroganoff Sahara or even his Sahara stuffed potatoes with chives and finely diced ham.

Instead, The Beatles ordered hamburgers, ice cream sodas and chips, while Johnson requested a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and four glasses of milk. Undaunted, Anderson applied his food preparation skills to complete those far less challenging dishes.

"My husband didn't mind things like that," Valerie Anderson said. "He was just happy to give customers what they wanted. He was a hands-on executive chef."

Donald Anderson, who worked at the Sahara from 1955 to 1980, earning Las Vegas Chef of the Year honors in 1972 and co-founded the Fraternity of Executive Chefs of Las Vegas, died Saturday at Nathan Adelson Hospice. He had sufferered from a liver disease stemming from his 20-year battle with adult-onset diabetes. He was 67.

There will be no services for the Las Vegas resident of 48 years, who in the 1980s owned Bob Taylor's Steak House and in recent years worked as a chef at the Excalibur.

"Don was a straightforward chef who drew concentrated flavors from even simple foods," said Excalibur Executive Chef Lucio Arancibia, who hired Anderson out of retirement four years ago and made him the resort's coffee shop chef.

Donald Anderson Jr., who worked for his father at Taylor's, said Anderson blazed the trail for today's celebrity chefs and modern local gourmet restaurants.

"Dad brought real gourmet food to Las Vegas," he said. "When hotels opened in Las Vegas, the owners called and offered him jobs at their fine restaurants. Dad told them he could never leave Del Webb (then-owner of the Sahara) but that he would send one of his chefs to run their place. He trained so many chefs who today work all over this town."

Anderson opened one of the town's earliest gourmet rooms, the House of Lords at the Sahara, where he also introduced a Don The Beachcomber Polynesian-style restaurant, the Caravan Room coffee house and the Sahara Buffet.

Born Sept. 12, 1934, in Brainerd, Minn., he was the second of three children of Ben Anderson and the former Agnes Peak.

Hired by the Sahara in 1955, Anderson quickly climbed the ranks to sous chef in 1958. According to newspaper accounts of the early 1960s, he became America's youngest resort executive chef at age 27.

Anderson left the Sahara in 1980 to run his own restaurant and later was a chef on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition to his wife and son, Anderson is survived by another son, Rodney Lamme; and a daughter, Deborah Sirianni, both of Las Vegas; two sisters, Corrine Coffey of Manitoba and Margaret Cane of Duluth, Minn.; and one grandchild.

The family said donations can be made in Anderson's memory to Nathan Adelson Hospice.