By Robert St. John
LAS VEGAS – What is a family man who doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble and has trouble staying up to watch David Letterman doing in Las Vegas with his wife and kids? Two words: The Beatles.
I have pulled my second-grader and sixth-grader out of school to travel to Las Vegas to see Cirque du Soleil’s production “The Beatles Love.”
I am a huge Beatles fan and have seen “Love” twice. My kids are huge Beatles fans, too. They have never seen “Love,” though they have heard me go on and on and on and on about it for the last two years.
Top city
My kids also love food (the apple doesn’t fall far from the chef coat). Over the last decade, Las Vegas has become one of the country’s top 10 restaurant cities. Some of the top chefs have opened branches of their most popular restaurants, here.
The restaurants are, for the most part, manned by seasoned professionals who have been in that particular chef’s system for many years. The best thing about the upscale restaurant business in Vegas is that, unlike other big cities, all of the restaurants are within a few miles of each other – hundreds of them.
One of my favorite Las Vegas restaurants is Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in The Venetian hotel. Keller is the country’s preeminent chef. He mans the stoves at The French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., and Per Se in New York and serves food that is humbling to even the most accomplished chefs.
My daughter ordered Steak Frites, a dish found in French bistros and brasseries. It’s basically steak with a side order of French fries. In a good establishment, the fries can often match the steak in terms of satisfaction and satiety. Left in the hands of Thomas Keller, the basic french fry can become remarkable.
I love comfort foods. I love potatoes in all forms. There is a beautiful and ideal simplicity in a side order of perfectly prepared mashed potatoes or french fries. The best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten outside of my grandmother’s dining room were served at Watershed restaurant in Decatur, Ga., on chicken night.
And a perfect example of taking a simple offering, adding four straightforward, yet ideal, accompaniments, and creating a masterpiece. The beauty is not only in the simplicity, but the combination of flavors. When duck fat is thrown into the mix the satiety level rises tenfold.
Best fries
Bouchon’s fries were – as one would expect from Keller – excellent. My daughter had enough to share with her brother – who was busy putting away an order of gnocchi – and a few for her father.
Bouchon fries aside, possibly the best order of fries I have eaten in the last several years were at restaurant Char in Jackson. Char’s french fries were every bit as good as Bouchon’s, probably better.
So what have we learned today? One will leave Vegas with more money in his bank account if he or she stays out of the casino and spends time in the restaurants.
The Beatles are a good excuse to miss a few days of school, and fries aren’t just fast food, though if we’re paying homage to the Beatles, we should probably call them chips.
For this week’s recipe, Robert’s Mashed Potatoes, go to the column link on www.robertstjohn.com.
E-mail Robert St. John at www.robertstjohn.com.
Loading ...
