Thursday January 25, 2001

Eating in Las Vegas

Today in Las Vegas the action isn't only at the gaming table… it's at the dining table! Wolfgang Puck led the way eight years ago when he opened a branch of his famous L.A. eatery, Spago, at Caesar's palace. According to Tom Kaplan, Puck's managing director, Wolfgang's celebrity fans have followed. He says, "We've had Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson. Over the years we've been very fortunate to get quite an array of stars."

But you don't have to be famous to find a table in this town. If formal fine dining is more your speed then head down the strip to the beautiful Bellagio hotel and Le Cirque.

Le Cirque, a New York dining destination for over 25 years, is now also serving classic French cuisine to Las Vegas food lovers. Mario Maccioni, son of Le Cirque's famous founder Sirio, moved west to recreate the family's fabulous eatery. He says, "The idea was we were going to do here what we did in NY, you not only have the restaurant itself but the people behind it."

Charlie Palmer's another gastronomic guru from Gotham with a new Las Vegas address. Aureole at the Mandalay Bay Resort is a grander version of Palmer's New York restaurant, known for it's progressive American cuisine. But in Vegas it's the wine that gets most people's attention. The Plexiglas wine tower at Aureole is over four stories tall, contains about 10,000 bottles and is serviced by a "wine angel," who ascends and repels to retrieve the bottle you order.

Palmer says, "We were given the opportunity to do something really world class and I think we've done it."