Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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 may leave with a raft of new friends, as this is not only a learning ex-
perience 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 stu-
dents grouped at four marble-topped cooking islands, as glossy and high-tech a
facility as any 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 the 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 ingre-
dients, 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 the standards up (while the white toqued genius is tossing salads on
Good
Morning, America
). If your goal is to be in the presence of one of these cooking
greats in person, head out of Las Vegas proper to Lake Las Vegas where Joseph
Keller, the man behind Aureole and brother of super-chef Thomas Keller (who
many consider to be the greatest chef in the United States), has
created a new restaurant designed specifically to double as a “culinary theater.”
In one area of
Le Zinc
(15 Via del Cantro, MonteLago Village at Lake Las Vegas;
%
702/567
-
9462; www.bistrozincrestaurant.com; advanced reservations required;
ticket
$
75; most Tues, Wed, and Thurs from 9:45-11am; AE, DC, MC, V)
is a cook-
ing stage, surrounded by an audience; all classes are taped, as Keller eventually
hopes to turn the entire shebang into a series for PBS. “It's going to be like the
old galloping gourmet,” says Keller. “It's all about entertainment, and I've been
told I'm an entertaining type of guy. But the main object is to empower the audi-
ence member to do what we do in the kitchen. To show them we're not gods in
