Pauline Frommer's Las Vegas Guide
Cooking Vegas Style
Haute cuisine is hot in Vegas, with more star chefs arriving each day than Elvis impersonators (well, almost). As Catherine Margles of the Creative Cooking School puts it: "Las Vegas has gone from buffet to gourmet. Every major celebrity chef in the U.S. -- Wolfgang Puck, Charlier Palmer, Alain Ducasse, Hubert Keller -- now has restaurants here." For those entering the industry, there's a feeling -- perhaps justified, perhaps not -- that a cooking career in Vegas puts one on the fast track in the culinary world.
It's no accident that the grand prizewinner of 2006's reality cooking show, Hell's Kitchen, got the chance to be Executive Chef at a swanky new restaurant in Vegas. An impressive operation called The Creative Cooking School (7385 W. Sahara Ave.; 702-562-3900; www.creativecookingschool.com $99 for 3-hr. class; Tues-Fri 6-9pm, Sat 10am-2pm). Offering a mix of recreational classes and certification courses for would-be pros, it's intimately connected with the Sin City sautéing scene, drawing much of its faculty from the kitchens of the big Strip restaurants. When you take a class here, you'll likely be taught a recipe currently being used at one of Wolfgang Puck's branches, or Roy's, or an Emeril Lagasse venture. Each student leaves with a thick sheath of recipes tucked under her arm, a much better Vegas souvenir than fuzzy dice.
She also my leave with a raft of new friends, as this is not only a learning experience but a highly social one as well. Classes are hands-on affairs, so you'll be cooking in a group of no more than four students, with a maximum of 16 students grouped at four marble-topped cooking islands, as glossy and high-tech a facility as you'll see on the Food Network. Two TV monitors broadcast the view from cooking cams aimed right into the mixing bowl or frying pan the instructor is using, ensuring that everyone gets a good view of the instructor's technique. Class topics change by week, but you might find yourself baking) as I did in my last class), or learning how to roll sushi, or creating a gourmet meal in 30 minutes, or making appetizers to go with margaritas (yup, you get to drink 'em). And you not only cook and chat with your fellow students but feast on what you've made at end, and will probably be given a doggy bag to take home the extras. "It's like a dinner party and a college-level class all in one," says Catherine Margles, founder of the school -- and she's right.
The food was scrumptious on the day I last visited, and though I consider myself a good cook, I learned a number of new techniques, including how to best hand-whip cream (a figure eight with the wrist works best), where to order ingredients, and how to create the right-sized "well" when incorporating liquids into flour. My teacher was Anthony Sinsay, a roly-poly charmer who has toiled in the kitchens of both Wolfgang Puck and Nobu and is now a personal chef and instructor full time. A mini-Emeril, with the same verve, spirit, and remarkable eye for detail as that famous chef, Sinsay cracks jokes while cracking eggs, giving the class its marching orders with such exhortations as: "If you haven't tried a Florentine bar, you haven't lived yet! So let's melt that chocolate!" He's a heck of a lot of fun, as are the other instructors, who include such Vegas notables as the "Dancing Gourmet," cook-book author and former prima ballerina Linda Hymes; and Stephen Gillanders, who appeared on the Today show's "next Celebrity Chef" competition and has won a number of other national cooking competitions.
While the Creative Cooking School does occasionally shanghai a Celeb Chef to teach, for the most part you're going to be learning from their lieutenants, the men and women who are actually working in the kitchens on a daily basis and keeping standards up (while the white toqued genius is tossing salads on Good Morning, America).
