Saturday, September 10, 7:00 pm
Members $100, guests $125

Las Vegas fine dining has long ceased to be an oxymoron. In the past ten years, every chef with a national reputation has staked out his own outsized corner of Sin City and set up shop, often serving faithful reproductions of the dishes that won them their fame. Which is precisely why Bouchon’s sweep of Las Vegas Life’s sixth annual Epicurean Awards is all the more remarkable. Having named the spin-off of the renowned Yountville bistro Best French, Best New Restaurant on the Strip, Best Restaurant on the Strip, and Best Restaurant, Las Vegas Life’s Max Jacobson raved, “I’ve never had a bad dish here. Bouchon has it all, and richly deserves to be our first quadruple award winner.”

Bouchon’s executive chef, Jeffrey Cerciello, has had a strong hand in these victories. An alum of Cal Poly Pomona and the CIA, he cooked in Spain at El Bulli and Totel, and was sous-chef at the Wine Spectator–Greystone Restaurant at the CIA’s West Coast campus. For the last ten years, Cerciello has worked for Bouchon’s esteemed owner, Thomas Keller, beginning in 1995 at the French Laundry.

Also deserving of credit is Josh Crain, executive sous-chef at the original Bouchon in Yountville. Hired as a line cook in 2000, Crain was promoted to sous-chef within three months, and a year later assumed his current title. Also a CIA grad, Crain previously helped open Dean & DeLuca in St. Helena, California, and was a fellow at the Wine Spectator–Greystone restaurant.

Mark Hopper, chef de cuisine at Bouchon in Las Vegas, cooked at the French Laundry for several years in the mid-1990s. He left to work at Paolo’s restaurant in San Jose, but was called back to the celebrated Yountville eatery four years later when Keller offered him a sous-chef position. Hopper has apprenticed with chefs Charlie Trotter, Daniel Boulud, and Traci des Jardins, and has also cooked at the Ritz-Carlton in New York and the Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco.

Whether in Yountville or Las Vegas, diners at Bouchon can appreciate the best of Parisian and Provençal bistro cooking. Bouchon “drops a little piece of Paris right into the Napa Valley,” wrote Michael Bauer in the San Francisco Chronicle. Heidi Knapp Rinella of the Las Vegas Review-Journal similarly raved about the Vegas incarnation: “Bouchon excels not only by elevating the classics, but also by elevating simplicity.”