INTERVIEW: Jet Tila

Jet Tila is was executive chef at Encore's Wazuzu.

How did you become part of the Wynn-Encore stable of restaurants? Were you recruited, or how did it happen?
Jet Tila: I think it was 2007 and I was just doing my thing in L.A., teaching, moonlighting at different restaurants there, and I was doing a lot of consulting in those days. I got a cold call from Elizabeth Blau, and she was telling me I was on their radar. They wanted to do Pan-Asian at Encore. It was such a cold call that I really thought someone was messing with me. But I played it cool, I was going along with it. I wrote a menu concept and sent my resume and they called back and said, "Let's do a tasting." So now I know this is for real, so let's do it. The whole time I knew in my bones they were not going to hire me. I don't have the normal pedigree. I didn't spend 20 years at any restaurant. I've had a varied career so far: I was at the L.A. Times, I've been in management, I was at Bon Appetit. I've really kinda tailored my career to have fun and do these different things. I'm not a restaurant dog. So we did the tasting. It was like nine courses in 45 minutes, and everybody was there. I came in for two days with one day for prep, and I cooked my ass off. I was working out of Richard Chen's kitchen at Wing Lei and he was just an amazing resource and inspiration. So they told me to stay a little longer and I thought this might be for real. And I flew back to L.A. with a contract in hand. In my opinion, I think coming into it, I was not necessarily what they were looking for. It was more a matter of just leaving it all here. This was my one shot, and I wasn't really nervous because I didn't think they would hire me. I was able to just relax and cook.


Before that, what was your previous Vegas experience like?
It was from being a child and coming here with my family. I was one of the arcade kids who would get dropped off while the parents go to the casino. My dad was a big player in the '80s. Later on, like everyone else, I came out a couple times a year to party my ass off. As far as restaurants go, like most people, I think you see a lot of big names but never really felt like it was the exact same experience you'd get from those names in other cities, like in New York. Very few people really cook their asses off all the time, and now I understand more why. The numbers here are just crushing. Sometimes you have to tailor your approach in fine dining, and this is one of those places. You can be working in a great Michelin restaurant doing 80 a night, and then here you're doing 200 to 300. It's crazy. And you don't really understand it, the different approach, until you see it.


Traditionally, Asian restaurants on the Strip have been Chinese or sushi, and then more recently we've seen this all-encompassing Pan-Asian label a lot. With that in mind, how did you develop the menu and concept for Wazuzu?
I cook like what I lived in L.A. I'm a Chinese kid by blood, growing up in Thai restaurants, and I'm a total blend of the San Gabriel valley where I was born. There you've got Chinatown in the west, Thai-town, where I really grew up, and Little Tokyo. All of them are inspirations and part of my life experience. My angle on Pan-Asian is a little different. I've got these three cores that I'm super comfortable doing, and that has translated into some dishes you're not going to see anywhere on the Strip. Where are you going to see Nasi Goreng (a Malaysian fried rice dish) on the Strip? At the end of the day, I feel like I know Asian people and they want it hot and dirty, and they want it authentic and clean. This is not the place for fusion. I think that approach is dead or dying.


You've blogged about restaurant critics and would-be critics, and one of the reactions to Wazuzu and other ethnic restaurants on the Strip is that there is a certain amount of watering down that has to be done to the cuisine in order to appeal to the masses. Yet you seem like a purist. Do you feel like you have to compromise your cooking?
I think my heart is pure. But you really have to respect guys like Mr. Wynn who are going to give a kid a few million dollars to play with in terms of restaurants. It's a bigger problem I have with reviewers sometimes. At the end of the day, our bosses know their market. If I cook the first menu I wrote for this restaurant, 40 percent of the dishes are going to get returned. It's a little too foreign, a little too weird. I think I'm one of the few white coats who has seen it from both sides, and I sympathize with both sides of this ballgame. Chefs need to understand that writers need something to write about. Writers need to understand it's not easy to build a restaurant. We spend all that money, and we have to recoup that. Now, we see it's coming to a point in time where we, the chefs and restaurants, have a voice, and that's on the internet. Back in the day, critics would throw something out there, and the restaurants would never have the chance to respond.  But going back to the food, I think I'm as authentic as I can be for my property. I'm definitely somebody who fights for my food. There is integrity in my food, and if you're an honest and traveled diner, you can pick apart my menu and say, "I get it." If you're just going to do a snapshot review, you can pick apart anybody. And as far as working with managers, there's always this line where you're going to push and pull with each other. They're giving me a voice so even when they reign me in, I can understand why. I wanted to do stuff like little suckling pigs here. Everyone raves about Momofuku, and I naively wanted to create something like that. But that doesn't work here. That can't work when you have more of a captive audience instead of regulars. 

You still write, you blog, you pop up in a lot of articles and at events, and you have become pretty active in the restaurant community in Las Vegas in a short time. How important is that to developing your restaurant and your brand?
There is some calculation there. I feel like anyone who is good at what they do understands that it's important in this day and age to embrace technology and good marketing and public relations. It is genuine, for me, but I'm not going to lie and say I'm cool like that. I'll take advantage of any outlet possible to get my food out there, but I'm not going to be a jerk about it. I want to know who's who in my community and I try to stay plugged in to what's going on.


You've written a little about local places you like. Do you get to eat out a lot? And what are your Vegas favorites so far?
I'm like you. Most writers are genuine adventurers. Unfortunately I live in the culinary wasteland of Las Vegas known as Henderson. I mean, I love it where I live, but outside of Grimaldi's, Settebello and a few others, there's not a lot. Chinatown is amazing. In some ways it's bigger than the area I grew up in. It's vast, and it's going to take a long time to really get through it. My short list is Krung Thai, Raku is another one, KJ Kitchen for Cantonese, HK Harbor is another one. For Indian, I do Origin India. The naan bread there is some of the best I've had. It's always such a personal thing, what's good or bad. Pho So 1 is dope. I really don't get to eat on the Strip so much. Like so many in the corporate chef world, I'm taking a cut and eating on the Strip is so expensive. So that's my short list for now.

all i can eat.

If you are interested in the idea of eating three meals in one day at the Rio's Carnival World Buffet, then you are in luck, because you can read this and you can watch this.

INTERVIEW: Jean Paul Labadie

Jean Paul Labadie iswas executive chef at Marche Bacchus in Summerlin.

You were born and raised in Puerto Rico. You have a Spanish and Italian background, but you're known for cooking French food. How does that diversity influence your style?

Jean Paul Labadie: I was born in Puerto Rico and spent my first 19 years there on the island. My grandparents on my mom's side are Spanish, and then my great grandparents, one is French and one is Italian. They all cooked a lot, but especially the French side of the family, and that's how I got stuck with a French name. But of course I studied French technique in school, and then when you're in America, nothing is sacred. You take it and turn it and put your own twist on it. But there is a lot of diversity in my background and even though we are a French bistro, we offer these different things. There are some Asian items on the menu, because those tend to be a little lighter. Sometimes the French menu can get a little heavy, especially these days when so many are trying to eat healthy. But all the chefs here grew up differently, and we have those influences on the menu.

You spent many years working for Emeril Lagasse's company, under him in New Orleans and then here in Las Vegas at Emeril's in MGM Grand and Table 10 at Palazzo. What was it like working with such a big name?

Most of my family has been in New Orleans for forty years, so I was always in and out of the city. After I went to school and started cooking, I figured, my family is there, I've got a spare bedroom there and it would be a great place to work. I was lucky to get hired at Emeril's right away. This was before he was on TV. He was still in the restaurant, in the kitchen all the time, and I learned a lot from him. Then when it was time to open in Vegas, because I am bilingual in English and Spanish, they took me. But yes, I was with Emeril before he became what he is now, and that was a cool thing for us. We saw this chef that was so great, to come from Commander's (Palace) and opening his own places, and then doing all this other stuff, TV and more. We saw it all happen before our eyes. He went to just this awesome chef to an owner of an empire he created all on his own. Him and his partners, they did it from the ground up, and he's still one of the hardest working people ever. He always led by example. He was always in the kitchen, always telling us what he was doing. He was a great teacher.

What made you want to leave the big restaurant scene on the Strip to come to Marche Bacchus?
When you work with someone like Emeril, you have to agree, it's the Emeril show. No matter how good you are, it's still his show. And I agreed with it. I enjoyed running his restaurant. That was great at that point and I was able to develop my own system under his. After 14 years -- and I'm not comparing myself to Emeril in any way -- I thought I have the skills now and it's time to do something myself, to market my own name. It was just time for me to do my own thing. This allows me that focus, to focus on Jean Paul.


What are the differences between running a restaurant on the Strip and doing it in the neighborhood?
People tell me all the time, "Oh you must be so relaxed now than on the Strip, it must be so much easier." But really, it's not. On the Strip you have so much volume, and you are just taking care of your name, but there you don't see the same people every week or even every month. At a local restaurant, you really have to bring your A game every single day. On the Strip, a high roller might come in and spend a bunch of money and you'll never see him again. You don't have that luxury in a neighborhood restaurant. The kitchen is much larger there and it's easier to work, and you're staff is much larger. Here, it's just you and your sous chef, really. You can't delegate too much. The buck stops with you. And you don't have the luxuries of the Strip, you don't have an office. You're doing your paperwork on the kitchen counter. There are just a lot of things you have to do on the fly and be more hands on. Sometimes on the strip, as an executive chef, you become more of a manager and you're not on the line so often. Here I'm on the line four or five nights a week, on top of doing all that other cool stuff.


Marche Bacchus always has been known for its lakeside views and wine program, and now in the last year since you've been there, the cuisine is earning a reputation of its own. What was your strategy in enhancing this restaurant?
It was a challenge, especially with the lunch menu. It has been very popular over the years and everyone knows it. They said, the regulars just want to come in and have a lobster croissant. People said don't touch that sandwich. It was just, let's have a bottle of Riesling by the lake with a lobster croissant. But on the other hand, you have to give something new a chance, be patient with me. Some things we kept, and others not. But the main thing was going back to the basics. Now we are roasting our own bones, makeing our own stocks, soups and sauces. That wasn't done here before, and it's a tough challenge to take on. Sometimes you don't want to mess with the equation. If it worked well, why change it, right? But why would I want to come in and do the same thing that was done before? Everyone here understood that, and now the menu is more complicated. You know, our tuna dish takes four pans to complete it. Our salmon, before it took three and now it takes six different spacs on the line to work on. These are the little details, but that's what we are doing: coming in and breaking it down, the traditional French style, and rebuilding it. One thing we completely re-did was the onion soup. We're just taking more time with it, really caramelizing the onions, cooking it down 45 minutes to an hour. I guess, with things like that, we really complicated our lives a lot. But it's definitely better for our guests.


You've been cooking in Las Vegas for quite some time now. How have you seen the restaurant scene change over the years?
It's funny because when I first came here, it was just Emeril and Wolfgang (Puck). We were the only two celebrity restaurants in the city so we were always busy. Now you have all the Food Network names here and the competition on the Strip went nuts in just two or three years. We really had to re-invent the wheel every year just to compete. And that translated into the neighborhoods. In Summerlin, it used to be just Rosemary's. When that place opened, people went crazy because now you have a Strip-quality restaurant in the neighborhood, and then other places started popping up. Now we have places like Vintner Grill, Nora's and others and the competition in our neighborhood is almost as strong as it is on the Strip. And we've got that locals factor so you have to do all you can because when people have extra money to spend, they want to know they're spending it well when they go out to eat. They want to know the food will come well prepared and it's not going to be a crapshoot. We are still a little off the beaten path, and I think people still think of chains first when they decide to go out. But there are a lot of people coming back to us now because they forgot about Marche for a while and they are curious about visiting again.


You have lived in the area for a few years. Where do you and your family like to eat?
It varies a lot. If I'm not cooking for or taking care of the family, or eating at home after work, we like to go to the late night places. You know, you are tasting all through work, all night, but you never sit down to have dinner or a glass of wine. We eat sushi often after hours. Sushi Mon is one of my favorites. For something different we might go to Sedona. They have a nice bar area and a nice menu. And then of course you have places like Kona Grill with its crazy happy hours.


What is coming up at Marche Bacchus?
Well we are about to change a lot in the next week or so, the first week of March, for spring. We won't change the whole menu, but we'll do about three items in each category, appetizers, salads and entrees. The weather is going to nice very soon and of course we have that great view of the lake. Those tables are going to fill up fast so it's definitely time to start making reservations.

archi's thai.

"Here's the thing you need to know about Thai food in Las Vegas: Even at its most middling, it beats the hell out of most of the junk they're serving up on Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue. Archi’s isn't the best Thai joint in town, but it's one of the most pleasant."

This is from the New York Post last week. Not that we need out-of-towners to tell us there is terrific Thai food in Vegas, but at the very least, this is proof that our city's reputation for southeast Asian fare has grown beyond our physical borders. And I agree that Archi's isn't the best Thai joint in town, but it might be top five, so far.

I write "so far" because I eat a lot of Thai food, but not necessarily because I want to. I love it, but not more than I enjoy Vietnamese food or a great deli or a perfect slice of pizza. It's wifey. It is difficult to be an ever-wandering, culinarily curious restaurant writer when your first pick of dining companions only ever wants to get Thai food. Though it is delicious, we eat at our neighborhood joint twice as much as we go anywhere else. This woman actually came home one day and complained to me, like it was my fault, that her co-worker had tasted the goods at Aria's Lemongrass (the first Thai restaurant on the Strip) before she did. So yeah, it's something of an obsession.

That same co-worker helped wifey discover Archi's, a casual restaurant with three locations in Las Vegas. Other local eateries specializing in this cuisine often have extensive menus with a lot of Chinese dishes leaking in, but Archi's is a bit more authentic, sticking to its own style and flavors. My first go-round included Tom Kha soup with a refreshing lime flavor balancing the smoothness of coconut milk, a mild but tasty yellow curry with potatoes, onions and carrots, and the big winner: a forehead-sweat inducing Pad Kapow, spicy basil ground chicken with zucchini, bell peppers, garlic and chili. I actually ate most of it, even though wifey placed the order. That should teach her.