Casinos’ culinary focus grows

By Liz Benston

Friday, June 20, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

The restaurant business is taking a cue from casinos in remaking itself as an industry that can cater to a customer's every dining and entertainment whim, panelists said at a hotel and restaurant conference in Las Vegas Thursday.

While casinos have long mastered the art of revamping their image to accommodate customer tastes, restaurants in recent years have been undergoing similar makeovers to meet accelerated expectations of quality, variety and ambience, said Michael Weinstein, chief executive of ARK Restaurant Corp. of New York City.

"They want better products, fresher products," said Weinstein, whose company owns restaurants in New York, Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, including locations at the Venetian, New York-New York and Caesars Palace resorts.

Restaurants vie for tourists' attention with brand-name chefs and sumptuous surroundings, redefining the experience of eating out, panelists said. As Las Vegas continues to upgrade its image, the competition is heating up.

"You have to keep reinventing yourself," said Brad Brennan, owner of the Commander's Palace restaurant at the Aladdin resort and the famed Commander's Palace in New Orleans.

Despite international awards and other accolades, Las Vegas still struggles against the perception that it's an unsophisticated dining market, Brennan said. It's also tougher to compete in than gourmet food centers such as New York and San Francisco because restaurants on the Strip are so closely clustered together and are undergoing continuous upgrades, he added.

"The bar is being raised faster than in other cities," he said.

Restaurants have become a "marketable and profitable presence in Las Vegas" rather than just another hotel amenity, said Gamal Aziz, MGM Grand president and chief operating officer.

The growing importance of quality food and beverage outlets in recent years has been underestimated by some hotel operators who have "paid dearly for it," said Aziz, who has held food and beverage positions at Bellagio and Caesars Palace and formerly worked for the Westin hotel chain.

In Las Vegas, Steve Wynn's Bellagio resort set a new standard for restaurants when it opened in 1998 by establishing a cluster of dining options with well-known chefs and designers, he said.

The Bellagio, bought by MGM Grand Inc. in 2000 along with other Mirage Resorts Inc. properties, features 10 fine dining restaurants, including Le Cirque and Picasso, as well as six casual dining outlets.

Properties also are continually revamping their restaurants, he said.

At MGM Grand, two respectable restaurants were pulled and replaced with more appealing offerings, NOBHILL and Craftsteak, he said. Business doubled at NOBHILL, run by San Francisco chef Michael Mina, after it opened in July 2001, he said. Craftsteak saw a 20 percent jump from the previous restaurant, after its debut last year by New York chef Tom Coliccio, he added.

Seven years ago, if a hotel restaurant was breaking even, it was "doing a good job," he said. Now, if it isn't generating a 20 percent return, operators question whether it's doing as well as it could, he said.

Keeping up with the competition involves attracting and retaining chefs with a distinctive style who can push the envelope, panelists said.

That can be difficult because culinary trailblazers will likely leave for something new, Brennan said.

"They won't stay," he said. "You want a leader who will reinvent" the experience of dining out, he said.

MGM MIRAGE challenges its food and beverage talent by relocating them to new casino openings and other new opportunities nationwide, Aziz said.

Restaurants reflect the maturing taste of consumers who now have access to a greater variety of quality raw ingredients at grocery stores, Weinstein said.

Ambience also is much more important than in years past, he said.

Two decades ago restaurateurs could design spaces themselves or hire traditional architecture firms, as opposed to the array of restaurant designers available today, he said.

Customers nowadays are looking for more than just good food, added Aziz.

"They're not eating as much," he said. "They're having a few drinks with something to eat rather than something to eat with a drink."

Customers also are dining more quickly and may only take about 90 minutes to finish a meal, he said.

"During those 90 minutes ... they want to be entertained as well."