The strawberries for pastry chef Hughes Pouget's "textures and flavors of strawberries" aren't \o7Marat des bois \f7-- the intensely flavorful cross between wild and domestic strawberries you find all over France -- but Seascapes from Harry's Berries, the favorite of L.A. pastry chefs.
But clearly there's still a lot for Savoy and his staff to discover. Savoy says that one of the caviars used in the "colors of caviar" is American (the sevruga and osetra are from the Baltic). Turns out it's paddlefish roe; Savoy and his staff aren't familiar with the terrific Transmontanus "American sevruga" sturgeon roe coming out of Sacramento. Nor have they discovered American beluga lentils; so far, only the A.O.C. French lentils from Puy en Velay will do.
Savoy hasn't found lamb that he's happy with, so it's not on the menu. On the other hand, in Paris he doesn't serve beef because the French beef doesn't do it for him, but he loves American beef. Here in Vegas he serves prime beef tenderloin from Four Story Hill Farm in Pennsylvania, garnished with seared cubes of marrow and accompanied by \o7paleron a la francaise\f7 -- batons of flat iron steak cooked for 10 hours alternating with batons of carrot simmered in beef stock, all striped with three types of mustard.
All of this comes at a price, of course. That beef dish will be priced at $70 when the restaurant opens tonight; the caviar appetizer will be $90. A 10-course "menu prestige" will be $290 per person. The steep prices are just one of the reasons that these days, for chefs such as Savoy or Robuchon who offer elaborate cooking with recherche ingredients and highly formal, choreographed service, Las Vegas is the place to open. It's where the bucks are.
This is the place
BUT of all the places in the world to open his only place outside of Paris, where he has five restaurants, including the Restaurant Guy Savoy, is the middle of the Nevada desert really where he wants to be?
"Every year 40 million people visit Las Vegas," Savoy explains. "If just one out of every thousand of them is interested in gastronomy, that's 40,000 people a year."
