Emeril Lagasse: Milestones And New Beginnings

Photo Credit: Andreas Branch

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREAS BRANCH
GROOMING BJ BATTERMAN

Emeril Lagasse is celebrating a major milestone this year. The chef and national TV personality is toasting 25 years of his Las Vegas institution Delmonico Steakhouse at The Venetian, which he opened before Sin City became a globally recognized destination for fine dining. As a testament to his success, the Fall River, Massachusetts-born chef, who has hosted more than 2,000 shows on the Food Network, as well as, most recently, two original Roku Channel series, Emeril Cooks and Emeril Tailgates, in addition to Amazon’s daytime Emmy Award-winner Eat the World With Emeril Lagasse, is still innovating. The 65-year-old restaurateur opened 34 Restaurant & Bar in his hometown of New Orleans, his most recent and most personal eatery in The Emeril Group (which also includes Emeril’s, Meril, Emeril’s Brasserie at Harrah’s casino, and Emeril’s Table at the MSY Airport in NOLA; Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House and the aforementioned Delmonico Steakhouse in Las Vegas; Emeril’s Coastal in Miramar Beach, Florida; and three restaurants at sea in Emeril’s Bistro 1396 on Carnival Cruise Line’s Mardi Gras ship, Emeril’s Bistro 1397 on Carnival Celebration, and Emeril’s Bistro 717 on Carnival Jubilee) back in October as an homage to his Portuguese heritage. Here, we speak with the 19-time cookbook author, James Beard Foundation’s “Humanitarian of the Year,” and Bocuse d’Or Americas’ honorary president about what it takes to have longevity in Las Vegas, and why he continues to push the envelope — and refuses to stop — even after 40-plus years in the industry.

Let’s talk about Delmonico Steakhouse: what’s changed since you’ve started and what has stayed the same.

What’s changed is that we have done some serious interior design work on the restaurant; it’s absolutely beautiful. The basic footprint has pretty much stayed the same. The seriousness of food, wine, and service has probably elevated since we began this journey. I have a great team there that’s under the direction of Ronnie Rainwater, who’s been with me a long time and who is our culinary director-slash-operations guy, and Mike Olson, who’s just recently moved back to New Orleans and has been out there with me since day one. Getting back to 25 years, when I first got approached by Rob Goldstein, who was at the time senior vice president under [the late Sands casino owner Sheldon Adelson] I had already been [in Las Vegas] with The Fish House for a couple of years. So, I kind of knew the vibe of what was happening in Vegas for the most part. I said to him, “Hey, listen, I’m really interested in doing the steakhouse.” And he said, “Well, tell me about that.” So, I said, “I want to go back to the roots; I want to go to the Midwest. We want to do a lot of exploration about where the best meat comes from, how it’s dry-aged, where it’s dry-aged. I really would like to do a serious steakhouse.”

I picked the space at the very end of the corridor, which, at the time, was a wall — but I knew that in the future, that wall would be broken down and the space would become The Palazzo, and that we would then have the best spot — right in the middle of the whole complex. I did have that insight, and from there, we managed to become a pretty local restaurant — they have a 40 percent local clientele — which is rare, especially for a steakhouse.

I brought some tableside items to the table, like the Caesar salad. In the beginning, we did Steak Diane and Chateaubriand. We began a dry-age program on premise. We probably have about $400,000 of meat tied up at one given time that we’re dry-aging on property, and then probably another $400,000 off-property that we begin wet-aging for 30 to 45 days, which we then bring on-property. I’m proud to say that I’m one of very few chefs who has two Wine Spectator Grand Awards awards: for Emeril’s and the steakhouse. Our wine program is awesome. Our service is probably one of the best in Las Vegas. We have a lot of loyal people who have been with us pretty much from day one. Our captains, most of our managers, our wine people. It’s been a great ride.

Photo Credit: Andreas Branch

What do you think you owe that longevity to?

I think our staff has a lot to do with it. Our food and service quality have a lot to do with it, and it’s the same thing with The Fish House, which has been there for almost 28 years; the Emeril’s flagship in New Orleans has been there for 35 years. My son, EJ, has just taken over as the chef patron, and he’s doing a phenomenal job. But ultimately, I think it’s all about the people. As a leader and a mentor, I don’t ask people to do anything that I wouldn’t do, and I certainly don’t ask people to work any harder than I am. I think that respect level carries a long way into what we do.

So how are you celebrating the anniversary this year?

We had a week of celebration. When the anniversary came, I went out to Las Vegas for five days and worked with the staff and lots of our local customers. And when I say local, I don’t only mean Las Vegas people, because we have a good amount of people from California, particularly from Los Angeles, who come in once a week, or once every two weeks, on the weekends, as well as from Phoenix. Our big international gamers come in and just flock to the steakhouse, thank God. We also have a good amount of wine people and wine collectors who come because of our great list.

When those clients come in once a week, what are they ordering?

I would say because it’s a steakhouse, we sell a lot of Cabernet Sauvignon and a lot of Bordeaux. We also have a great international list, particularly in our DRC list, our Burgundies. Those international people in particular are stunned by the selection that we have: Château Latour, et cetera. But on an average basis, people are drinking $80 to $140 bottles. Food-wise, a dish I did right from day one is still one of the most popular. They’re these truffle potato chips, very thin sliced potatoes, served crispy with truffle and parmesan cheese. It seems like every table is getting an order of those. Our in-house, dry-aged cowboy steak is also very popular; there are nights that we sell 100 of those. And the Caesar salad: when people see that it’s made tableside and from scratch, they get a big smile on their faces.

Have you done anything in a limited run just for the anniversary?

Not really, no. The newest thing we’ve done is a renovation of the restaurant two years ago. It was beautiful before, but after we were done with it, it became absolutely stunning; we kind of elevated it a little bit. We took some of the hard surfaces away and added some soft surfaces like carpeting. The most important thing we did was make a lot of changes to the bar. We now have the capability of serving at the bar.

How has Vegas changed since you first came, and has it changed for the better or the worse?

It’s changed a lot, and for the better, since I first got there. At first, it was hard to find a place for dinner that wasn’t a buffet. Basically, the mentality was: have dinner, ask for the check, and it would be like, ‘good luck, thanks for coming.’ It was the mindset of gambling. Then, that evolved into an importance on dining, because there’s so much variety now; everybody pretty much is there. The variety that you can choose from on the Strip alone is amazing. When the food scene first started, it was only Wolfgang Puck, Mark Miller, Charlie Trotter, and me.

Photo Credit: Gabrielle Geiselman

Photo Credit: Romney Caruso

Which poses a great question for you: if you’re not dining at your restaurants while you’re in town, where are you going?

When I’m there, I’m mostly working, so I’m not really going out. I’m pretty much tied up working at both of the restaurants and enjoy that, actually. My managers and my chefs dine out and they know what’s going on in town.

The chef community is such a tight-knit community, and it’s a very inclusive one, especially in Las Vegas. Would you consider partnering up or doing a special pop-up with any of your chef friends? I recall Thomas Keller popping into our photo shoot to say hi to you.

There are several chefs I have that relationship with and respect for, Thomas being one of them. I was very close to Mario Batali when he was there. He had three restaurants on property, and I would try to have lunch in one of his restaurants every time I was there. I used to like his Otto concept. I also like [Milos], the Greek fish restaurant next door to the steakhouse; I occasionally sneak a lunch there, but other than that, I’m pretty much in my restaurants.

Obviously, we’re talking about Vegas, but you also recently opened a new restaurant in New Orleans, 34. In your words, tell me a little bit about it and where the concept came from.

It’s called 34, because I’m Emeril the third, and EJ is Emeril the fourth. 34 Restaurant & Bar is modern Portuguese cuisine. It’s the real deal. The wine list is predominantly about 90 percent Portuguese, which is very unusual in New Orleans, or in Louisiana, for that matter. We did a lot of research to be able to do that. There’s no American wine or French wine on the list; they’re all Portuguese and Spanish. We only have Portuguese beer on tap. We make our own tonic for the Portuguese gin and tonics that we do with white port. We have white and red sangria, a crafty cocktail program, a pretty decent bar. We have a small speakeasy that we’re getting ready to open that will be somewhat semi-private. We just call it “The Speakeasy.” It’s got a sign on it that says, “the utility room.” It’s very, very quaint and seats about 18 people. The food though: this is the real deal. The standout feature of the restaurant is the jamón bar. Thirty-five years ago, I started the food bar. I can’t take credit for the original idea, because I actually got it from Mark Miller, who had Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe. I implemented it because I wanted to encourage single people from the Warehouse District to eat in a white tablecloth restaurant. We have a master carver doing three different types of jamón: a Spanish, a Portuguese, and an American. There’s a snack menu that has items like jamón tomato toast, and a jamón plate with mostly Portuguese cheeses. The big menu has everything from homemade masala — Portuguese blood sausage — to chorizo to piripiri chicken, to Cataplana.

The team, EJ, and I did a lot of research in Portugal — in Porto and Lisbon — and then, we did a lot of research in my hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts, as well as in Westport, New Bedford, and Providence, RI. And believe it or not, we gathered a lot of incredible reviews. The reaction from the locals was actually pretty overwhelming: it’s been really well received because there’s nothing like it in the South. Actually, I don’t think there’s anything like it in America. It feels very, very Portuguese. We’re open very late on the weekends purposely, trying to cater to the hospitality people who don’t really get to go out other than to a typical bar. On Fridays and Saturdays, we offer food service until one in the morning. They can get the national Portuguese sandwich and patatas brava (fried potatoes). We have salmon croquettes. We’re having a lot of fun educating people about what modern Portuguese food really is.

Photo Credit: Andreas Branch

I remember hearing something about a karaoke bar in Fall River being part of your research.

I took the team out; there were seven of us. I had my director of operations, but everybody else was on the culinary side. I took them to every bakery in Fall River to try pasteis de nata. For almost four days, we had lunch and dinner every day in Portuguese restaurants. We did wine tastings with purveyors. We probably tasted 140 wines on that trip, and it gave the team a really great sense of not only my hometown, but what Portuguese people in America are really eating. [What’s great about 34 is that] we make the morcela in-house; we don’t ship it. It’s a process: you have to poach it, and then you have to cure it for at least a day, so it doesn’t break open. But it’s delicious and, for me, it’s instructing people about how to eat morcela. They’re like, ‘Homemade blood sausage? I don’t know.’ And I’m like, ‘Try it; you’ll be surprised.’

Why did you decide to do something that was so close to home?

It’s a tribute not only to my mom, but also to my home: a tribute to Portugal. I think that outside of Fall River, the Portuguese food that you have [in America] is kind of bastardized; it’s not the real truth. I wanted this to be the real truth. EJ is a stickler for that as well; he’s very particular. He works primarily at Emeril’s, but as soon as Emeril’s starts winding down around 10 p.m., he’s over at 34. The staff is starting to figure it out, too. It’s one thing, training a cook to cook, but it’s another thing training a cook how to cook Portuguese food. The sauces, although seemingly simple, are extremely complex.

Also, our bread program is off the chain. The Portuguese people take tremendous pride in their bread-making and pastry-making. We have a fairly good-sized bakery in the back of the restaurants, with five or six people working on breads daily. The bread service isn’t free. We charge for it, unlike many restaurants, but at ours, it’s incredibly top-notch. We do four different, authentic Portuguese breads that are really awesome, served with three different butters. It’s a big tradition in Lisbon. We use a little bit of charcoal to make one of the butters, as well as a sea salt butter and a piripiri-style butter. It’s the real deal, my friend.

You’ve done a lot for the New Orleans culinary scene. Was it important for you to marry New Orleans and Portugal?

When we were creating 34, I had a lot of thoughts about where it should be. A lot of people thought it should be in Las Vegas, others thought it should be in New York, others in Miami. And I just said, “You know what? I want to do it in New Orleans because it would be even more of a challenge.” People here are stuck in their po’ boy frame of mind, which is okay, but to think beyond the box, that’s another story. I think we’ve gotten people to really start thinking out of the box. I think that they’re like, “Wow, we have a real Portuguese restaurant in New Orleans — who would have thought?” We have Creole, we have Cajun — but Portuguese? I mean, come on now.

Photo Credit: Randy Schmidt

Photo Credit: James Collier

Photo Credit: James Collier

You turned down a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music to cook. Have you ever regretted that?

I still play a little bit. I was a percussion major, but I also played a lot of other instruments and composed music for the high school band. It was one of those things where, when I started cooking, I realized that those [two jobs] sort of interfered with each other. So, I thought long and hard about it, and I turned down a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music to pay for cooking school. My dad encouraged me, but my mom was completely heartbroken. She was like, “How can you do this?” And I said, “Well, I just want to cook.” I still play a little music every now and then, but that’s the real story.

Is that why you love New Orleans so much? Because there’s so much music everywhere?

Yes, there is music everywhere. I love the architecture, the music of course, and obviously, the food. New Orleans is a very special place.

To you, what is the greatest luxury in life and why?

Probably being on a boat. I like the ocean. I used to do a lot of fishing. I’m not doing so much fishing these days, but I do love the water; it just kind of puts me in a different spiritual place. And then, of course, there are luxuries like caviar, truffles, and good wine. I wouldn’t want to live without those.

Photo Credit: Andreas Branch