Eat Live Love Die : Selected Essays (9781619028616) by Fussell Betty

Author:Fussell, Betty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619028616
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 2016-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

The Count of Cuisine: Jean-Georges Vongerichten

IN A PRETEND-ITALIAN hotel called Bellagio, I look across a fake lake called Como to a faux tower called Eiffel and feel lucky that the steak on my plate is real. In the virtual geography of Las Vegas, food may be the only real thing left—except for money and the giant numbers game that sucks it up. And yet there’s some conjuring going on here, too: the creator of this seemingly down-to-earth American steak house, called Prime, is one of New York’s finest French chefs, and his Las Vegas debut is typical of his skill as a gamester who keeps diners on their toes.

“I love blackjack; that’s my game,” Jean-Georges Vongerichten says, when I ask him whether he gambles when he flies to Vegas—which he does for four days every two months, to check on his tables. It’s a world Vongerichten understands because it’s about numbers, and he’s addicted to numbers. I am not surprised when Vongerichten tells me that geomancy, divination through numbers, is an essential part of his private life. He depends on geomancer Jerome Brasset, “the crystal-ball guy,” as he calls him. “Right away I connect. I go to him for everything,” His Prime menu is a study in numbers: seven types of red meat, five sauces, six flavored mustards, eleven potato sides, six salads, six desserts. (As a footnote, he also offers chicken, lobster, and dover sole.)

Other well-known chefs have installed more predictable versions of their best-known brands in Vegas: Sirio Maccioni replicated both Le Cirque and Osteria del Circo restaurants from New York, Todd English transported Olives from Boston, Wolfgang Puck brought Spago from L.A. But when Vongerichten’s partners, the advertising team of Bob Giraldi and Phil Suarez, asked him how he would like to fill one of the dozen restaurant spaces in the megalopolitan Bellagio, he surprised them. “Steak house,” he said.

“It was brilliant,” says Giraldo. “Gamblers. Guys. Broads. Hotels. Money. Steak.” And in the high adrenaline atmosphere of the casino, Vongerichten is onto a sure thing. I was told that Prime is the biggest cash cow of the restaurants in his empire and that sales swelled to $14 million in 1999. (Note: Jean-Georges and his partners refuse to release any more-recent figures on this or his other enterprises.)

Vongerichten is young, he’s hip, and he likes motorcycles, Prada shoes, the Knicks, jet airplanes. He’s airborne one week out of four and has plotted unique game plans for each of his restaurants, five in New York and six more around the globe. And, like others of the world’s finest chefs, he is in the business of fine cuisine. While Americans in particular cling to a nostalgie de la vie pastorale in which the master chef lives above his studio and daily turns out masterpieces for a favored few, 40-odd years of wanderings by France’s celebrity chefs—Bocuse, Vergé, Ducasse—should have exploded the myth that an haute kitchen demands the constant presence of the master. “Maintain quality” is the mantra of Vongerichten’s

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