Cheftimony Episode 002 – Bistro in the Desert
Cheftimony Episode 002 is a long way from home, all the way from Vancouver, BC to the very bright lights of Las Vegas, Nevada.
I’m never sure how to talk about Vegas, and I just might take a future episode of Cheftimony to set out my confused thoughts on the city. For now, let’s just acknowledge that Las Vegas is a city of extremes. The experiences it offers, for example, are extreme ones. At one end are the highest-end hotels, restaurants, night clubs, casino table limits, you name it. At the other end is the real prospect of losing it all, in a city where money is the key to everything. Las Vegas also invites extremes, and few are neutral on the city. People love Las Vegas. People hate Las Vegas.
The city concerns me – excess for the sake of excess and environmental strain come to mind – but here’s the truth: I’m a lover. And I think the extremes are the reason I love Las Vegas. For all its facades, Las Vegas is the most human place I know. There is no pretence. There is only unfiltered human ambition – greed, fear, vanity, passion, gluttony, lust, creativity. Unfiltered human ambition often makes things better. And, of course, it often makes them worse. In Las Vegas it does both, simultaneously and around the clock.
This much I know, though. Las Vegas draws talented people from around the world. It attracts singers and bartenders and acrobats and contortionists and magicians and artists and card counters, many of them world-class. And Las Vegas attracts chefs, of course, who interest me the most. In my last entry here on Cheftimony, I wrote about a day I had in the kitchen at Bouchon Bistro in the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. That was in 2015, and on my most recent trip over Easter in 2018, I was happy to step into the kitchen again, under the guidance of a very talented brigade. It’s a privilege to watch that team work and to help them where I can.
As fun as the day in the kitchen was, the focus of this episode of the Cheftimony podcast is on my interview with the Chef de Cuisine of Bouchon Las Vegas, Joshua Crain. After spending a great afternoon with Chef Josh and his wife Rachel off the Vegas strip (including the very old, very quirky and absolutely fantastic Pioneer Saloon), I joined them at their home in Henderson, Nevada where we enjoyed some beautiful snacks and a glass of wine around the firepit in their back yard.
Chef Josh and I then sat down at his kitchen table for our interview, where we talked about everything from his early days at the Culinary Institute of America (both in New York and at Greystone in St. Helena, California) all the way to his current role as Chef de Cuisine of Bouchon Bistro in Las Vegas. Chef reminisced about early days in California where he landed after graduating from the CIA. Josh was involved in the opening of Dean & Deluca in St. Helena and he spent close to nine years at the original Bouchon in Yountville, California, the “little engine that could.”
I spoke to Chef about his early Las Vegas years at restaurants in the Michael Mina group. Josh worked at Michael Mina’s Nobhill Tavern and American Fish within the MGM Grand and later at Seablue (now Bardot Brasserie) in the Aria Resort, further north on the Strip. After years with Michael Mina (a chef he respects deeply), Josh answered the call to return to the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and joined the team at Bouchon in the Venetian Resort.
In this position, Josh leads the kitchen, and he spoke of the satisfaction he gets from creating great memories for his guests. Josh also told me about the teamwork and collaboration that happens within the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, from chef meetings off-site to the fact that kitchens are linked by live video screens so that chefs in both Bouchon locations can see what everyone is doing during service. Chef emphasized that for him and for others in this group, cooking is not a job, it’s a craft.
When Josh gets away from the Strip and is looking for a bite to eat, he recommends The Goodwich in downtown Las Vegas, just south of Fremont Street. Goodwich was started by Josh Clark who had been a server at Nobhill Tavern when Chef Josh was cooking there, and Chef is impressed with their sandwich offerings – everything from roasted cauliflower with butternut puree to a classic Rueben. In Boulder City, Josh likes The Dillinger for burgers, wings, grilled artichokes… good, simple food.
To the interview now. Please join me on a pleasant spring evening in Henderson, Nevada for my talk with Joshua Crain, Chef de Cuisine of Bouchon Bistro Las Vegas.