Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS:

Celebrated chef plans final menu at Andre’s

Andre Rochat

Andre Rochat opened Andre’s in 1980 in a boarding house he renovated. The downtown landmark will close Dec. 31, 2008.

Click to enlarge photo

Chef Andre Rochat has dinner with the staff of his original restaurant last week before they begin work. The employees at the Sixth Street restaurant will be moved to Rochat's restaurant at the Monte Carlo. He also owns Alize at the top of the Palms.

In 1980, when a young and ambitious chef opened Andre’s, the classically styled French restaurant downtown, celebrity chefs hadn’t yet begun to create a presence on the Strip.

There was only Andre Rochat — and he quickly made a name for himself through his interpretations of sturdy, traditional Gallic fare, including such staples as escargots, filet of beef au poivre and Dover sole.

The restaurant was an immediate hit. Andre’s became the place to go both for locals and out-of-town gamblers and conventiongoers willing to hop in a cab for haute cuisine.

Rochat has two outposts on or near the Strip. But at the end of the month, his original restaurant, at Sixth Street and a street Las Vegas named for him, will close.

Although the Strip is inundated with fine-dining options, the departure of Andre’s — the only Michelin star-rated restaurant north of the Strip among the 17 in the region — will leave a gaping hole downtown.

Rochat, 64, said recently he simply can’t afford to be downtown anymore. Two or three years ago, he realized that with revenue just half what it once was, he had to close.

“In the 1980s, it was a whole different city. We were the only freestanding gourmet restaurant in town. We were very busy, very busy, sometimes with a line at the door,” said Rochat, who was raised in a small town outside Lyon, France.

“It’s been a big dilemma for me, because it’s my heart and soul.”

The main reason business has slowed, he said, is the Strip’s megaresorts, each with a growing stable of upscale restaurants.

Closing also will allow him to slow down a bit after working in kitchens for a half century with little break.

“I’ve been cooking 51 years,” said Rochat, a compact man with salt-and-pepper hair. He was wearing a dark blue sweater-vest and the slightly restless expression of a man who knows his next dinner service is rapidly approaching.

“I never take holidays,” he said. “No kids, no wife. I sometimes think, what am I doing?”

The change will give Rochat — who, despite owning and operating three successful restaurants, likes to cook in his downtown restaurant’s kitchen — more time to spend at his other restaurants, Andre’s at the Monte Carlo and Alize at the top of the Palms.

The staff of Andre’s downtown will move to the Monte Carlo.

Rochat started in the kitchen by apprenticing with a well-known Lyon chef. He immigrated to America in 1965, with little more, he said, than a set of knives in his suitcase and $5 in his pocket.

After stints cooking in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., he made his way to Lake Tahoe in the early 1970s. Soon after, he went to the Sands, where he worked as a sous chef.

But he wanted to run his own restaurant and realized that Las Vegas, then without much in the way of refined cuisine, was perfect.

He bought the 1930s-era house he turned into Andre’s in 1978. It was a boardinghouse then, and in need of major repair.

Fortunately, Rochat enjoys that type of work. The restaurant has expanded several times, and every July, when it closes for the month, Rochat has renovated the several dining rooms. The dining rooms, each named for a French city, have the homey feel of a country inn, with halved copper sugar pots that have been turned into light fixtures, and framed old wine labels on the walls.

Andre’s has regularly won plaudits from local publications. But the restaurant received its highest-ever honor in late 2007, when it was awarded a star by the famed Michelin Guide. Alize received one star as well. They were two of only 17 restaurants in the region to receive the honor.

Over the years, Andre’s has fed notables including Frank Sinatra, mobster Tony Spilotro, Steven Spielberg and Andre Agassi.

Senior U.S. District Judge Lloyd George, whose chambers overlook the restaurant, said he’s eaten there many times, including once with Sen. Harry Reid and the men’s wives.

“It’s an absolutely marvelous restaurant,” George said. “I’m sorry to hear it’s closing.”

Mayor Oscar Goodman said at a recent news conference that when he heard the news, he tried to persuade Rochat to stay downtown.

“Andre’s has been an institution downtown and we are sad to see it go,” Goodman added in a statement. “We wish Chef Rochat the best of luck with his other restaurants in Las Vegas, and I can promise you that the street outside the downtown location will continue to be known as Andre Rochat Place.”

The final meals at Andre’s downtown will be served New Year’s Eve. It will be a $135 prix fixe spectacular, a classic-heavy menu with everything from pan seared fois gras to duck l’orange to hazelnut souffle.

Rochat’s menus at his downtown restaurant have mostly been tradition-bound, more so than at his other restaurants. That style has suited his most loyal patrons well.

Though the menu prices have been lower than they are at his hotel restaurants, the average checks downtown, Rochat said, have been higher.

“This is because we’ve kept a clientele of diners, not eaters,” he said. “There’s a real difference.”

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