Bonjour, Las Vegas!

Las Vegas — PLACID, calm, the barest hint of a smile playing on his lips, Guy Savoy watched as a waiter placed a small plate that held a simply sauteed Santa Barbara spot prawn on the table before him. He looked around, checking to see whether the rest of us at the table were enjoying ourselves, had everything we needed. Then he picked up his knife and fork and cut into the prawn, looking closely, paying particular attention to the texture. He tasted it. A slight nod of the head told the two chefs standing tableside that it was good.

Savoy, one of the most critically acclaimed Michelin three-star chefs in Paris, was conducting a training lunch at Restaurant Guy Savoy (pronounced Ghee Sah-vwah) Las Vegas, which opens tonight at Caesars Palace. It was the tail end of the lunch session, at which waiters rehearsed, at tables filled with Caesars Palace employees -- some in sleek corporate attire, some wearing name badges -- the proper way to serve Savoy's signature oyster in ice gelee, how to present the artichoke and black truffle soup, where to place the purse stool, how to explain the menu.

Savoy wasn't having lunch; he was sitting with me and my husband as we sampled dish after dish after dish. The meal wasn't planned: My husband and I had just driven up from L.A. so I could spend the afternoon cooking with Savoy.

Instead, Savoy insisted we have lunch. He sat and watched us, and we ate and talked. A busboy poured the chef a glass of Badoit sparkling water. "It's easier if you pour like this," he said to the busboy, who had his hand awkwardly under the bottle. The busboy didn't understand what he meant. Savoy stood and showed him how to grasp the bottle and pour more naturally. "See?" he said. "Easy." And he smiled.

How was it possible for the 52-year-old chef to be so cool? Here he was, with his squinty, laughing eyes and his short, gray almost-beard, about to open in Las Vegas seven months after French chef Joel Robuchon made his high-profile debut here at the MGM Grand. Robuchon was an international superstar chef making a splashy comeback after closing his Michelin three-star Paris restaurant 10 years earlier and retiring; now he had earned four stars from the Los Angeles Times' S. Irene Virbila. But Savoy is much less known in the U.S., though he's regularly cited as one of the top 10 chefs in the world.