ah damn, rosemary's?

Before I started writing about food, I wrote about music. I wrote reviews of concerts and new albums and interviewed whoever was coming through town, people like Morris Day and Rob Halford and John Legend, and guitar players or bass players from rock bands whose lead singers didn't want to talk. It was fun, but my favorite part was listening to the music and then writing about it. (This was back in the old days when there were things called CDs.) Just as in writing about restaurants, I did not particularly enjoy being a critic of music, of someone's self-expression, of their art. But that's the job.

Listening to lots of new CDs created a clear-cut divide for me. There were only two kinds of records: those intended to be art and those intended to make money. The age-old struggle. And of course, the real truth is that most were a blend of both.

The music critic days are long gone and now that I've been doing this food thing for a few years, I see those same classifications in the Vegas restaurant world. Some joints, you can tell as soon as you walk in that it's all about pushing out product, satisfying customers, turning over tables and stacking cash. This is the case with the vast majority of restaurants on the Strip, franchises, and pretty much everybody else. Nothing wrong with that; this is business. But a few of our city's eateries exist for something more, or at least they inject enough affection into the experience to make it feel like they love what they're doing, they love to cook your food, they love to send you off with delicious memories. Once upon a time there was one of these in every casino, a loss-leading, mind-blowing dining room selling tourists a once-in-a-lifetime epicurean experience. There's a few left. Alex at Wynn was one. It's probably more likely you'll find art-over-commerce eats off the Strip, in the neighborhoods, where the pressure to make a million dollars isn't weighing on the kitchen every day. This phenomenon occurs most commonly when a talented chef moves in from another town to work the Strip, decides to make his or her home in Vegas, and ends up opening a great neighborhood restaurant where he or she can really cook his or her own food. This is how we got Firefly. This is how we got Todd's Unique Dining. This is how we got Rosemary's.

Earlier this week, it was announced Rosemary's had closed for good. It opened in the spring of 1999 on the west side of the valley, near the Lakes and Summerlin neighborhoods. That was the same time I came back home to Vegas after college. It took me a while to make my first trip to Rosemary's, even though it was nearby, because it seemed too fancy and too expensive for a 20-something. But over the last 12 years I've had some truly great meals there, and even more stops at the bar for a light dinner, incredible snacks and lots of cocktails. Chefs and owners Michael and Wendy Jordan have been as beloved in the local dining community as their jewel of a restaurant, mostly because their cuisine -- warm, modern American with a kiss of Southern influence, nodding to Emeril Lagasse who brought them to Las Vegas -- was reliable and delicious and really set a new standard for neighborhood dining in the area. I don't think it's a stretch to say that for its entire tenure, Rosemary's was considered the best restaurant in Las Vegas off the Strip. If you believe food can be art, this was the place.

rosemary's.

Update: Rosemary's has closed.

Rosemary's has been tagged with that condescending Best Restaurant Off the Strip label forever, and chefs Michael and Wendy Jordan (pic'd) are fine with that because they are really nice people. Rosemary's actually is one of the best restaurants in Vegas no matter the location. I hadn't been there for probably a couple years until a few nights ago, when we stopped for an impromptu dinner at the bar.

The service from our somewhat hyper bartender was fine, and the food and drink was terrific. We guzzled a few Duvels, smart considering Rosemary's has an outstanding selection of beers and the menu even lists pairings for each dish with beer and wine. Potato rolls and honey-glazed, white chocolate bread greeted us up front, along with an amuse bouche of whitefish salad on a crisp little cracker. The wifey couldn't decide what to eat so she picked an interesting assortment of small plates (parmesan risotto cakes and mozzarella stuffed eggplant), a wilted spinach salad with a monstrous goat cheese cake and a side of (oh baby) white cheddar grits. She loved the grits the most. The risotto cakes were pleasing, reminiscent of deep fried mac and cheese, while the eggplant was a little undercooked and overkilled with the smoky mozzarella cheese.

I stuck with my standard appetizer order here, Hugo's Texas BBQ Shrimp with Maytag blue cheese slaw. This has been one of my all-time favorite dishes in Vegas, but it was off a little this time. The shrimp seemed smaller than I remember, and the barbecue sauce -- in my mind a rich, almost mole-ish substance, a little sweet, a little spicy -- wasn't barbecuey at all. It was more peanut-chocolate, a little thick and syrupy, not really sweet or hot. Weird. It was still a great dish, just tuned differently. Any skittering feeling of disappointment was washed away by a perfectly moist roasted tomato and bacon-crusted swordfish, served atop mushroom and wax bean salad. The tang of the tomato rode the fish well; it was a completely new taste. Also, those grits are really, really good. More restaurants need to serve grits.

Dessert: espresso, a tiny espresso cup full of creme brulee, and an unordered gift from the kitchen -- bourbon balls, peanut butter buckeyes, and lemon squares. Awesome across the board, as things go at Rosemary's.

INTERVIEW: Michael Jordan

Update: Rosemary's has closed.


Michael Jordan and his wife Wendy are chef/owners of the acclaimed Rosemary's Restaurant.

What's new at Rosemary's?

Michael Jordan: Well, we just got new ratings from Zagat, a 28 in food and a 26 in service, so we're pretty proud of that. Also, we recently opened up our catering division. We used to do all catering in house, but it got bigger and bigger and so we had to get another kitchen. We had always done private parties and special event dining in our private room at the restaurant, which we call the West Wing. But our outside catering jobs just kept growing and growing and so we had to bite the bullet, and now we have a brand new facility to handle those needs.


There are many fine dining restaurants off the Strip these days, but that wasn't necessarily true when you opened Rosemary's. What do you think about the growth and competition among restaurants like that?
I think fine dining in our neighborhood, Summerlin, and other Las Vegas neighborhoods away from the Strip is moving along at a snail's pace. Casual dining is doing much better, and there is certainly the clientele that seeks that. I think there's really just a lot of room for everybody right now. New places open all the time but they haven't made much of an impact on us. We continue to grow each year, year after year. We want to see growth but we really just try to focus on what we do.


You started out in Vegas working at Emeril's restaurant at the MGM Grand on the Strip, so you've had plenty of experience catering to both tourists and the local diners.
We walk such a fine line at Rosemary's. People are surprised to find out just how much tourist business we do. But the meat and potatoes for us is locals. They're not on vacation, they're just out to get something to eat or maybe they're celebrating a birthday or anniversary with us. We're most proud of what we do because we don't have to charge Strip prices, because we have more control of our overhead. We certainly see those tourists who want to go crazy, have a great meal and order wine and do it all, but it's a nice mix with our local customers who just want to have a quiet dinner, a little salad and a nice piece of
halibut. The tricky part is that we have to gauge what each table wants. We have to be aware of our guests and the kind of experience they're seeking, and I think being used to seeing different guests has heightened our ability to get to know them and give them what they're looking for.



Rosemary's is known for having a very friendly, versatile menu, stocked with plenty of favorites like the great Hugo's BBQ Shrimp dish. That's one of our favorite dishes in Vegas. How do you go about making additions or changes to the menu?
I'm not the type that says we have to change things every so often just to do something new. I'm really just watching the market, talking to our purveyors, seeing what's new and what's missing and what's coming up and then making adjustments based on those factors. Our products are driving our menu. I try to take a pretty flexible approach. The BBQ shrimp, that's not going anywhere. Same with the halibut because that's another of the dishes people love, but we only buy wild Alaskan so we have to make adjustments based on what's available and what's in season. We have daily specials and we try to do a lot with those, really check on what's getting people excited. We've had to add some things to the menu that started out as specials. Honestly, it's not really about me or my ego or what can I do. We're just trying to make them happy. If there's something our regulars want to see back on the menu, we're bringing it back. A perfect example of that would be the parmesan soufflé. This is just something I was playing around with. We baked it twice to get it real crispy and crunchy, and every time that thing comes out into the dining room people are just blown out of the water. There's another dish we're doing now that will probably make its way to the menu. We take a brioche roll and hollow it out, fill it up with grilled wild mushrooms, crack a fresh egg over it and then bake it. It's unbelievable. That's probably going to come out soon.


It sounds like you're very easily influenced by your regular customers, which I'm sure has become a large group.
We have quite a few regulars. We call them family. Actually, we have a lot of regulars from here and from out of town. We try to stay in contact with as many of them as possible, send e-mails and stuff like that so they know what we're doing. We just had a group come in from California just to come to a wine dinner. I'm still blown away by things like that, that people would do that, go out of their way to be with us.


What's coming up for Rosemary's? Any plans for further growth, expansion or anything like that?
There's always talk about potential future projects but talk is cheap. We're always listening. We're consistently hosting special events and we have a beer pairing dinner coming up, but as far as bigger plans, we'll see. It would be great to be able to make an announcement before the year is out. We'll let you know.