Joël Robuchon

would go back to one of the very first projects very early in my career, which actually was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

So there was a chef, he's now passed, his name is Joel Robuchon, and he had a contract to open his very first restaurant in the United States.

And that was the Joel Robuchon restaurant at the MGM Grand.

And in his contract, it said that he was going to have a terrace, except the challenge was there was a big hotel above where the terrace was supposed to be.

There's no windows.

But the thing is, only five restaurants got stars.

And so you have Joel Robuchon.

That was the only restaurant that was in Vegas.

They got two stars.

You have E by Jose Andres, Guy Savoie, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, and then one restaurant in Utah called Monty.

just received one star each and so arizona and new mexico got the guide to come to the state as part of this region and they each of those states got had zero starred restaurants they have you know bib gourmand and michelin selected restaurants that maybe we can talk about but when michelin last covered las vegas i want to remind everybody here the joel robuchon there held three stars the geese of wah had two stars and this restaurant called wing lay had one star And now they just have this two-star place and then, you know, one-star and Bib Gourmand and just kind of going down the list.

And so I specifically want to touch on this restaurant called Monty.

This is the Utah kind of like phenom that kind of...

It's a more quiet restaurant.

Like you can't get into Joel Robuchon without walking through the guarded doors.

Okay.

So, but they're right there, the same place at MGM Grand.

Look at, look at Poppy.

Uh, well, you've Poppy and, or Robuchon.

She made a career out of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Robuchon with the, with the-

Yeah, yeah

So I think it was in 1996 or 97.

And it was a huge success because one of the chefs that worked already with Jean-Yves, the famous chef Joël Robuchon, he used to make his puree with Bordier butter.

And when he heard that Jean-Yves has developed the seaweed butter, he tried a recipe with a puree with mashed potato with seaweed butter.

And And I think it's, yeah, it was a very good recipe.

Not a surprise.

And what was a little bit eye-opening was the two big ones, Joel Robuchon and Guy Savoy were down a star from 17 years ago.

Joel Robuchon had three stars back in the day.

This year, it got two.

Guy Savoy got one star this year, down from two before.

I would push back against that because if you're one of those major restaurant, I guess, brands at this point, right? And you're opening in Las Vegas.

Like, for instance, Kwame moved here, right? He's here now full-time, right? When Robuchon opened here, you know, he's putting his best people on here, right? You have to make the splash because there's all this competition here.

When Christophe was... you know, at Robuchon, and he was the youngest executive chef ever chosen by Joel Robuchon.

You're not going to go out of your way, but if you're going, buy it, and you want something really good and expensive, this is the place to go.

So we've got Letelier, which is also a Joël Robuchon restaurant, Guy Savoie at Caesars, and José Andrés A at...

Cosmopolitan.

Cosmo.