Wild Life: Puck proteges strike chord with own LV restaurants

Ken Miller

Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 | 8:27 a.m.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series on restaurateurs throughout Southern Nevada.

To hear them tell it, Laurie Kendrick and Stan Carroll are the most unlikely couple ever to start their own restaurant.

Kendrick, who grew up on a farm in Illinois, hadn't even seen the inside of a restaurant until she was 9. And Carroll, whose Midwest family considered the neighborhood steakhouse the highlight of cuisine, leaned toward art as a child.

But thanks to a wealth of experience and a little help from Wolfgang Puck the couple, both 40, have not only jumped headlong into the restaurant business, they have created one of Las Vegas' most distinctive eating experiences.

Wild Sage Cafe, described on the menu as "thoughtful contemporary American cuisine," opened its doors at 600 E. Warm Springs Road in late 1999. A second Wild Sage opened at 8991 W. Sahara Ave. in March.

The first restaurant nestled next to a Subway and Starbucks in a business center at the intersection of Warm Springs and Amigo Street is deceptively small, with 22 tightly packed tables looking out onto a patio. Umbrellas stand at the ready for diners wanting to stay out of the sun.

Carpeting is separated by a stone tile walkway down the middle, and the walls' muted earth tones are complemented by hanging artwork. The kitchen is partially visible from the dining area, and wine bottles are tastefully displayed in the front and rear of the establishment.

"The feel we had agreed on was patterned to capture the feel of a small bistro in San Francisco," Kendrick said.

The couple have plenty of San Francisco experience to draw from: From 1990 to 1992, they worked for Puck at his San Francisco Postrio restaurant.

Kendrick was part of the management team and Carroll was a chef in charge of purchasing. They met and fell in love, and together they have a daughter, 8-year-old Haley.

They moved to Las Vegas in 1992 to work for Puck at his Spago location, and learned enough from the master to eventually start their own.

Humble beginnings

Kendrick still marvels at her career path. Nothing in her childhood suggested she would someday be in charge of one of the valley's finest restaurants.

Growing up in Aurora, Ill., Kendrick calls her upbringing "very rural. I'd never even been to a restaurant."

When Kendrick was 9, her family took a cross-country trip to her grandmother's house in California, and stopped at a Howard Johnson-type restaurant along the way.

"Someone brought a menu, and I thought, 'There are places you can choose what you eat?'," Kendrick remembers. "I'm sure it was one of those Naugahyde-bound menus, but to me it was this big, leather-bound menu."

By the time Kendrick reached her dating years, "I didn't know any restaurant etiquette -- that you put your napkin in your lap, where you put your elbows, anything."

She ended working at a restaurant while still in school, and her career was set in motion.

"The restaurant business can really suck you in," she said. "I would be ready to go to school, and someone would call and say, 'Someone called in sick, can you come in?' So I would skip a day of school, thinking I could make it up. Before I knew it, I had skipped a lot of school."

Carroll's experience closely mirrors that of his partner. During his formative years in Oklahoma City, Carroll's frugal family believed that "eating was sustenance. Let's sit down, let's eat, and then get on with our lives."

Carroll remembers being "fascinated" with cookbooks and recipes as a child, as well as expressing his creative, artistic side.

He pursued art at the University of Oklahoma -- eventually earning a bachelor of fine arts degree -- and got a job as a dishwasher while attending classes.

"It was so easy to excel in the restaurant business," he recalls. "Within a few months, I was one of the senior staff."

Carroll quickly honed his craft, and quickly landed a job with Puck. He said the food industry was initially a "survival thing," but feels now his career path was heavily impacted by his love of art.

"I've come to realize (food preparation) is a culmination of art forms," he said. "You eat food first with your eyes."

Getting started

The more they learned from Puck, the more Kendrick and Carroll dreamed of opening their own restaurant.

Striking out on your own "I think is a dream shared by many," Kendrick said. "We wanted to expand the culinary experience in Las Vegas. True cities have not just the tourist element. They have great, successful restaurants where people live, a more affordable, closer option."

Kendrick saw an opportunity to make those dreams reality in 1999, and it started with a Starbucks.

"We live close to our (Warm Springs) location, and this whole center didn't exist at the time," she remembers. "This center is one of Las Vegas' largest class-A business parks. When we saw Starbucks going in, I said, 'They must have done some research on the customer demographic,' and I figured ours would be the same. Plus, there's a lot of executive offices, which means more business."

The gamble paid off. Wild Sage Cafe quickly became a hit, not only with the local offices, but also the local community and the airport, which isn't far from the location.

Wild Sage Cafe's menu consists mostly of dishes easily prepared at home: meatloaf, pot roast, pork chops and the like. The difference is Carroll's "reinvention" of each dish to the gourmet level. Good examples are his homemade baloney and the use of bleu cheese in the macaroni and cheese.

Carroll's upbringing partly inspired his menu choices, in that he now knows what not to do. "My mom was not a very good cook. I never ate a piece of meat that wasn't extremely well done.

"We try to take the mundane and make it special. Nobody wants to cook at home anymore. We're appealing to what homemade food really is."

He stresses that everything at Wild Sage Cafe is made from scratch.

"Do my guys think I'm insane? Definitely," he said. "But it gives us bragging rights."

Kendrick insists the decision to name her restaurant Wild Sage Cafe had nothing to do with the "amazing garden" her family tended on their Illinois farm.

"One of our co-workers (at Spago) went to work at a restaurant called Sweet Basil, and I liked that name," Kendrick said. "Plus, I believe in two-syllable names. I think they do well."

Family ties

Mention the word "hobby" or "pastime" to either Kendrick or Carroll and you're likely to get a blank stare.

"We're here all the time," Kendrick said. "We work 80 hours a week, and when we're not here we're talking about the restaurant."

Their grueling schedule doesn't leave a lot of time for family bonding. Despite the fact that most of Kendrick's family lives in Redlands in Southern California, she doesn't get to see them much.

All their free time is spent with their daughter, Kendrick said.

Haley certainly isn't wanting for food. Her favorites are steak, chicken, macaroni and cheese (the Kraft kind) and salad, and a lot of her meals are takeout from the restaurant. "She's pretty happy with it," Kendrick said. "Filet mignon on a regular basis is not a bad thing, right?"

In the meantime, Laurie gets to see her brother quite often -- he's an executive chef at the Warm Springs location.

Wes Kendrick, 33, who has been part of his sister's restaurant since it opened, started cooking at age 15. "It's just something that came easy for me, and there was a point in my life where I had to make a (career) decision," he said.

Working alongside his sister, Wes said, is "no different than any other management. It's sometimes difficult to see eye to eye, but we're both here for the same goal: to serve the customer."

He then added, "Actually, if it's any other manager, it's harder to be blunt. With my own sister, it's easy because we can get right to the point."

Carroll said his family is only recently realizing the extent of his success.

"Even when I was working for Puck, they were sending me job clippings," he said laughing. "I guess they are proud of me, but for the longest time, working in a restaurant was a second-grade job."

Looking forward

Despite her passion for what she does, Kendrick said she hopes her daughter pursues other options.

"I would hope she would go to college and become an accountant," Kendrick said. "This is really high-paced, stressful, low-pay, 24-7, and waking up at 3 a.m. and worrying."

Despite Wild Sage Cafe's reputation on Warm Springs Road, the Sahara Avenue location continues to fight for attention among all the other heavy hitters.

"The first year of a restaurant is difficult. It caught us by surprise, to be sure," Kendrick said.

Still, she and Carroll wouldn't have it any other way. They continue to get strong support from Puck, who is constantly sending customers their way, and both are actively involved in the community, helping out at fund-raisers and donating their time to worthy causes.

"I don't know what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this," she said. "I tried a lot of other jobs, and I couldn't sit behind a desk."

Carroll said his prime interest will always be food, acknowledging he still has a lot to learn.

"You can never master anything," he said. "In any art form, you're always striving for change."

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