Steve Friess

From Long Island New York to Chicago to Beijing to Las Vegas

That has been Steve Friess’ route in life, more or less. Born and raised on Long Island New York, Steve moved to Chicago and matriculated at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. With a stopover in Rockford Illinois Steve came to Las Vegas in 1996, to cover county government for The Las Vegas Review-Journal. Then came Florida and Beijing, and finally back to Las Vegas in 2002. You can read more about Steve’s experience in China on his The China Chronicles . The following excerpt will explain why Steve prefers to eat the food at Ping Pang Pong rather than in Chinese Canteens in Beijing.

Next to my elbow fell a large, half-chewed bit of beef and bone ejected by the mouth of the Chinese dude sitting next to me. A moment later, the gal across from him would spit up some fishbones, dripping them right there onto the table surface next to some discarded bits of rice and chicken left behind by her seat’s previous occupant.

It is something of a Chinese custom to discard food refuse on the table, although in local restaurants it is done with a bit more discretion and is always removed before the next group inherits the table. This is, in fact, why the canteen food is repetitive to me despite the dozen or so dishes offered for any given lunch or dinner: I refuse to choose food with bones in it. As immersed as I want to be in the Chinese way of life, spitting all over the place is just one thing that goes too far. Steve Friess China Chronicles

Is Steve Friess the Model of the New Journalist?

Steve’s Journalism career has been shadowed by the rise of the internet, having graduated from Medill in 1994, when the internet was in its infancy. As already noted his career started out on a typical path, start at a small newspaper, and work your way up to a larger paper.

Then the the internet took off. The Internet has had a profound impact on society at large, and perhaps no part of society has been more affected than print media, and by extension, journalists. Newspapers and magazines, both large and small are shuting down or are on the verge of doing so. The question of how or under what circumstances jounalism will survive, is a hot topic at conferences around the world.

The following link is to video from a DLD conference in Munich Germany. A Panel Discusssion at Digital, Life, Design Munich Germany 2009 gives a great overview of new media models. Panelists include:Jeff Jarvis (Buzzmachine), Carolyn McCall (Guardian), Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), and Tyler Brule (Monocle) discuss the evolving world of online publication, debating whether or not print media can survive in this era of digital media.

Steve’s freelance career in Las Vegas points to a possible model for future journalists, or at least a transitional model. Steve writes for national publications, The New York Times and Newsweek. (click the links for the archives of Steve’s articles) he also has a column in “Las Vegas Weekly” a free alternative newspaper.  Then there are the internet components to his work, his  blog VegasHappensHere.com and his podcast The Strip.

When Old School Journalist Collides with Unschooled Blogger

In January 2007 Steve arranged for celebrity blogger Perez Hilton (Mario Lavandeira) to be on a Panel at the Palms Casino. An excerpt of Steve’s account from Las Vegas Weekly:

in January 2007 when I arranged the first public appearance in Las Vegas for uber-gossip blogger Perez Hilton, aka Mario Lavandeira. He appeared on a panel of celebrity journalists at the Palms that included the Review-Journal’s Norm Clarke, LuxeLife blogger Robin Leach andVegas magazine’s Kate Bennett. His overall demeanor was so condescending, so arrogant, so rude that it just made me sorry I was helping glorify him. Las Vegas Weekly May 29, 2008

Moving forward to April 2008, we have the impetus for the brouhaha between Steve and Perez:

In late April, I attended a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show featuring Cher and Tina Turner at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The news out of that event, which I would go on to write for USA Today, was that Turner would be going back on tour starting this October.

Journalists take sources and attribution seriously, it’s really the coin of the realm. As Steve forcefully explains in the above mentioned Las Vegas Weekly piece and again in his blog, he feels that  Perez Hilton used the following line, without proper attribution to Steve: “The 68-year-old legend (Tina Turner) says that Sophia Loren told her to stop ‘lolling about her Swiss home and get back to work.’” Evidently Perez only responds to emails from LA Times writers, because he ignored Steve’s emails, but did  respond to Richard Abowitz’, a writer at the LA Times and a friend of Steve’s. If all this sounds like Inside Baseball, it is to some extent, but these things really matter to real journalists. Steve describes why it matters, in the same Las Vegas Weekly piece, thusly:

Why does any of this matter? Because Lavandeira’s audience is frighteningly, influentially large. And when I attempted to get other gossip websites to pick up the story, I learned that they were afraid of being blacklisted by Lavandeira. The mainstream media couldn’t be bothered much, because, as one editor wrote me, “it’s not a surprise that Perez Hilton operates with substandard journalistic principles.”

So here we have a Journalist that writes for the New York Times, and just last month wrote the cover story in Newsweek, being frustrated and stymied by a blogger with a laptop and url. Of course, Steve also has a blog and a blogspot url, go figure. However,  Perez Hilton’s blog gets huge traffic, per perezhilton.com, Perez Hilton averages 200 Million Impressions and 10.5 Million unique readers per month. With numbers like that , comes a great deal of power. Internet power that is comparable to Big Media, too bad David Halberstam is not around to update his classic “The Powers That Be”

Of course, Perez Hilton covers a small but avidly consumed part of the media world, entertainment, and celebrity gossip in particular. And, while Gambling is the core activity in the Vegas economy, entertainment is taking an ever increasing role, so much so, that was really the thrust of Steve”s recent piece in Newsweek: Rich Vegas, Poor Vegas. The piece describes how much the city’s business elite are pinning their hopes for recovery on Celine Dion’s return to Caesars Palace.

The Podcast: “The Strip“

Miles Smith; Unidentified Person; Steve Friess; Meg Tilly

According to Steve, the origin of the show, “The Strip” was that he would do these long interviews with celebrities for his freelance work, and most of the material in the interview would not be used in the print stories. It seemed a shame, not to have an outlet for these recorded interviews. Thus, in 2006 “The Strip” was born, a two person affair with Steve and his co-host Miles Smith, who by day is an  executive producer for KVBC, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas.

Miles has a sonorous, perhaps even mellifluous voice which is contrasted by Steve’s almost puppy-dog like cadence on the show. Miles is the show’s announcer, with a secondary role of keeping Steve on a short leash if he tries to wander too far afield. The fact that Miles and Steve have a genuine affection for one another underscores that all the barbs exchanged in the show are meant in good fun.

The shows generally runs over an hour in length, with the format of roughly fifteen minutes of kibitzing about Las Vegas news, then the interview segment, and then closing with The Top Secret Tourist Tip of The Week and The Las Vegas Trivia Question of the Week, the winner of which gets to pick gift from Miles and Steve’s prize bag.

“Dance For Me Monkey”

As previously mentioned, through his freelance career with major National Publications, Steve has incredible access to both celebrities and the Las Vegas power elite. Having access is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for having interesting and informative interviews, as witnessed by much of the drivel and pap that passes for celebrity coverage on television and in print. In fact, that many of the celebrities that Steve interviews are used to these fluff, sound bite driven short format interviews, he has to condition the interviewees that the road ahead is going to be different than what they are used to.

We do an audio program, and typically when a celebrity is doing any kind of electronic media, it is usually for a sound bite, and if it’s radio they figure it’s going to be some sort of morning drive time perky, happy thing, and so they feel they have to be “on”, so frequently I find I have to break-in my interview subjects for the show, I have to get them past the notion that they have to be “on” I’m not there to say “Dance for me Monkey” I’m there to ask them questions that I would like to know the answers to and might shed some light onto any number of things.

Steve does his homework for these interviews, including reading any biographies or memoirs written about or by the guests. Combining Steve’s interview skills, his research on his guests with the show’s longer format greatly increases the chance that an otherwise bland and uninteresting celebrity, might actually have an interesting interview. Steve is particularly heartened when program listeners write in that they enjoyed an interview with a guest that prior to the interview they had little interest in.

“You Have The Power”

In addition to the research Steve does, he brings his journalist’s sensibility to the interviews which includes the ability to ask  tough or awkward questions. If it is possible to see someone squirm in a non-visual medium like a podcast, then that was certainly the case when Steve asked one of the owners of  Tao Nightclub Rich Wolf the following:

I’m sure you’ve heard it, that the way that people look at those people that are willing to stand in those lines with their Ed Hardy shirts, the word “Douche Bags” is often thrown around. Do you get offended on behalf of your clientele?  April 4, 2011 Podcast

In talking about the above interview segment, and asking tough questions in general, Steve offered the following comment:

Sometimes you ask an uncomfortable question and you’re trying to find a way to make it less uncomfortable, when in fact as the interviewer, You Have The Power. You have to be Okay with the discomfort, the discomfort is part of the conversation.

Please don’t get the wrong impression about the style of interviews that Steve does, these are not Gotcha or Attack interviews, but the fact that Steve is not shy about asking a tough or uncomfortable question when required, is part of the reason the interviews are so interesting, and worth listening to. Alas, some interviews are mostly just light and perky, like the morning drive-time radio ones that Steve dislikes.

“I’m A Blonde Bombshell”

Steve Friess and Holly Madison

Behind closed doors, what was your relationship with Hugh Hefner, were you really intimate with him?

And the answer: Well, I would never answer that…the audience can read into it whatever they want, and that’s why the show works. Holly doesn’t watch much television, she does read, she was reading “Harry Potter”, which seems about right, although she is reading it in French, something about wanting to raise her kids bilingual. Steve seemed impressed by this feat during the interview, I would have been impressed if she was reading Marcel Proust in French.

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me About The Vdara Death Ray

The cast of the NPR show “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” a humorous, in a NPR sort of way, News Quiz show came to Las Vegas. Steve, a big fan of the show, enjoys the show even more when they use his news stories. A recent example was Steve’s story for AOL News: “Las Vegas ‘Death Ray’ Singes Tourists”

Despite what Vdara’s bartenders, pool attendants and visitors mockingly call it, the problem is technically known as “solar convergence.” The sun’s heat is amplified as it reflects off the curved building    Steve Friess AOL News 9-28-10

Steve gets the chance to tell Peter Sagal in person about their use of his story in the following: Interview with Wait Wait Host Peter Sagal.

Sometimes Steve’s older stories come back to bite him. When the Newsweek reporter that Steve was working with on the “Rich Vegas, Poor Vegas” story tried to get tickets to Criss Angel’s show from its publicist, the publicist asked that the Newsweek reporter not see the show with Steve. Poor Criss Angel, a man imbued with seemingly unlimited magical powers, and yet he seems powerless to make those dreadful show reviews disappear.

From Holly Madison to Wayne Newton to Pete Rose to Steve Wynn to …

Steve and Miles have been recording The Strip Podcast since 2006, on a  weekly basis, and each show has an interview segment. Steve seems to have interviewed every famous or interesting person that has stepped off a plane at McCarran. Just a sampling of past interview guests:

(Perhaps Tom Lehrer (Not a Guest, Yet) could sing the following, a la The Elements Song)

Andy Williams, Louie Anderson, Peter Sagal from the NPR show “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, Brian Dewhurst, who was artistic coordinator for Mystere when it opened in 1993 and in 2000 began performing as a clown in the show, Choreographer Twyla Tharp, Rita Rudner, Don Rickles, child star Corey Feldman, Pete Rose, Tony Curtis, Stephen Hopcraft, executive chef at Seablue at MGM Grand, Tim Gunn, the mentor of TV’s Project Runway, Cloris Leachman, Jerry Lewis, Magician Rick Thomas, Poker Player Johnny Chan, George Wallace, Rick Moonen of RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay, Donny Osmond, Vinnie Favorito, Paul Rodriguez, Vince Neil, Tom Smothers, Gloria Estefan, Frank Gehry’, George Maloof, Franco Dragone, Wolfgang Puck, Jim Murren. The CEO of MGM Mirage, Doyle Brunson, Norm Clarke, Frank Caliendo, William S. Boyd, Lily Tomlin, Legendary Broadway producer-director Hal Prince, Joan Rivers, Poker Player Daniel Negreanu, Anthony Cools, Bob Saget, Charo, Kenny G, Andrew Dice Clay, Patti Lupone, Engelbert Humperdinck, Jon Voight, Carlos Santana, Dennis Miller, Jeff Foxworthy, Tom Colicchio, Shecky Greene, Dee Snider, Marie Osmond, Donald Trump, Terry Fator, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ruffin, Cheech Marin, Brian Wilson, Guy Laliberte, Tony Curtis, Jerry Springer, Bobby Slayton, Dominick Dunne, Mickey Hart, Carrot Top, Nathan Burton, David Spade, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Wanda Sykes, Jay Leno, James Caan…

And that list is incomplete.  The shows are all free and archived at stevefriess.com/podcast plus they are available at Zune and iTunes

I would like to thank Steve Friess for patiently allowing me to interview him not once, but twice for this profile.

Steve Friess with Mr. Las Vegas (Wayne Newton)

P.S. Steve announced on the May 4, 2011 Podcast that he had been awarded a Knight-Wallace Fellowship, which begins September 2011 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. As part of the terms of the Fellowship, Steve is not allowed to work during its duration, and his blog and Podcast are considered work by the Fellowship. Hence, The Strip podcast will cease sometime in August 2011.

In Steve’s final column for Las Vegas Weekly he gives a nice recap of his life in Las Vegas and what he will miss about Las Vegas.

Ellis Island Casino and Brewery

Joe Pickett’s official title at Ellis Island is Executive Director of Brewery Operations. Joe actually set-up the Brewery at Ellis Island thirteen years ago, prior to that he traveled the world setting up Breweries, from Australia to China.

Joe Pickett Brewmaster at Ellis Island Brewery

A Chicago native Joe was educated at the Illinois Institute of Technology and then went to the  Siebel Institute of Technology for advance training in Brewing. Joe has been able to make use of his training from both institutions, in that he has recently received a patent on a device to clean the long delivery lines used in most pubs.

Herman Berghoff , owner of the famous Berhoff restaurant in Chicago, was the person that was instrumental in bringing Joe to Ellis Island.

Joe’s philosophy in designing the beers he brews is simple: “Brew beers that people want to drink”, which may seem rather obvious, but in the Microbrew world that is not necessarily the case. Many Microbreweries focus on making the most exotic and unusual beers, which turn out to be unpalatable to most patrons. Patrons at Ellis Island obviously like the beer Joe brews, as this one small location serves about one million glasses a year.

“When I’m in Vegas, I always make sure to stop in at the #1 Brewery for the best micro brewed beer in town.  Hand crafted by Master Brewmaster, Joe Pickett at Ellis Island Casino & Brewery!” – Doug Jones, Brewmaster, Anheuser Busch

Ellis Island Brewery Brews Six Styles of Beer Plus Rootbeer

1. Amber- with nice balanced Hops.
2. Light- brewed directly, not watered down.
3. Weiss Bavarian
4. Stout
5. India Pale Ale- British style
6. Octoberfest- think Carmel Malt
7. Root beer 12 secret herbs and spices, make that 11 secret ones plus pure vanilla extract.

Ellis Island Brewery Root Beer is a must try for Root Beer Lovers

If you like Root beer, then a visit to Ellis island is a must. The root beer you get at the supermarket is at best a vague reminder of what root beer should taste like. Joe models his root beer after the original A&W root beer, and has twelve secret herbs and spices, just like the Colonel’s I guess. Joe did reveal that  pure vanilla extract was one of the twelve secret ingredients. Brett Ottolenghi was planning on joining me for my meeting with Joe, perhaps we could have sold some of Manuata’s Tahitian Vanilla to Joe.

View of Ellis Island Brewery from Casino

While many a Microbrewery might turn up their noses at light beer, in keeping with Joe’s philosophy of  brewing what customers prefer to drink, Joe’s produces a distinguished light beer. Unlike many American breweries that brew a regular brew and then water it down, Joe brews the light beer directly, which makes for a much more flavorful light beer.

In case you were wondering where they store all the grain used in the brewery, you walked right past the storage area when you entered the building. The grain is stored in the sign for Ellis Island. Take a closer look at the first photo in this article, notice the tubing under the horizontal sign, that supplies  the grain to the Brewery from the grain bin.

Ellis Island Brewery and Casino serves some Great Beer Food

The restaurant serves their famous, off-menu, steak special $7.99 for a 10 oz center-cut sirloin steak, with a beer. Metro Pizza, which is adjacent to the Brewery, inside the casino serves some of the best thin crust pizza in Vegas, the locals have voted it best pizza. The toppings are generous, good and fresh, no canned mushrooms here.

Metro Pizza inside Ellis Island

Note the sign in the picture: two for one slices and pizzas on Thursdays

Ellis Island serves a BBQ daily from 4pm-10pm, in the Brewery area with outdoor seating. The BBQ is very popular with the locals, lines start forming about one half hour before opening, hour waits are not unusual. For a nice review of the food served at the restaurant inside Ellis Island check out this Food Channel post. The Ellis Island eggnog available only during the Christmas season, also generates a fair amount of favorable internet buzz.

Ellis Island BBQ Grill

Ellis Island BBQ Menu

Note the $3 discount for club member, just go to the club booth and sign-up for a card, no gambling required.

Ellis Island Brewery is located behind Ballys

The name Brett Ottolenghi should be familiar to Vegas Mavens readers from the essay “White Truffles, Beluga Caviar , Bellota Pigs” . Brett is the proprietor of Artisanal Foods in Las Vegas and the subject of the New Yorker article: “The Truffle Kid: Supplying fine food in a town where money is no object”

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day with Brett, as he whisked around the Vegas Strip. The day started with a seemingly full itinerary of visits, to which Brett tried to squeeze in, “Just One More Restaurant”, throughout the day.  Part of the impetus for over-stuffing the itinerary was that Manuata Martin, Brett’s Tahitian Vanilla supplier, was in town and joining us on the restaurant rounds. The whole itinerary has to fit into a relatively short time frame, since Chefs work late into the evening, not many arrive at their kitchens before noon and by late afternoon they’re too busy preparing for diners to meet with Brett.

One of our first visits was with Chef Gary FX LaMorte the Chef de Cuisine at Andre’s at the Monte Carlo, and since Gary lives on Vegas Chef  Time, an afternoon visit coincides with his morning coffee time. Gary used Manuata’s Tahitian Vanilla to prepared hands down the best latte I’ve ever tasted. The Vanilla, besides adding great flavor to the latte, also serves to amplify the sweetness of the sugar. I don’t usually wax poetic about beverages, but this is one of those times you could pull out all the cliches and still fall short of the mark. If you dine at Andres be sure to ask for a Vanilla Latte, make that a Tahitian Vanilla Latte.

Brett Ottolenghi, Manuata Martin and Chef Gary FX LaMorte of Andre's Restaurant at Monte Carlo

Brett views these visits more as educational opportunities for the Chefs rather than mere sales calls. The Chefs are so busy, they really don’t have time for sales pitches, they need to learn something about the ingredient to make it worth their time.

Manuata describes to Gary the two species of Vanilla Beans that he sells, Planifolia and the highly sought Tahitensis, which as the name suggests is native to Tahiti and has a more floral and fruity flavor profile. Manuata sells the familiar alcohol based Vanilla extracts, but the form that garnered the most attention was his Vanilla Bean Paste.

Jar of Vanilla Bean Paste

Manuata has developed a  12-day proprietary method to capture and retain fresh whole bean flavor, which are not only has a more concentrated flavor than non-prepared Vanilla beans, the paste can be stored for a longer period of time without a reduction in quality.

Manuata's Vanilla Samples

The Chefs that we met with were all at the pinnacle of the Vegas restaurant scene, and were accustomed to starting with the most basic ingredients, and doing all preparations in-house, such as grinding Vanilla Beans on-site to create their own Vanilla paste. So, while Manuata sells his own Tahitian Vanilla Sugar and Vanilla Fleur de Sel, which combines the highly prized sea salt from Guerande France with Tahitian Vanilla, the Paste was the focus for all the Chefs we met. One surprising use of the Vanilla, which both Gary at Andre’s and Chef Drew Terp at Shaboo and Bar Masa discussed was in high-end cocktails. Andre’s makes a Foie Gras Martini that has become famous among internet foodies. Now you have two beverages to sample at your next meal at Andre’s, The Foie Gras Martini and the Vanilla Latte.

Manuata describes his Vanilla Bean Paste as Gary examines a sample.

Brett Ottolenghi and Bill Clinton

Brett Ottolenghi and Bill Clinton may seem like an unusual juxtaposition, but in Las Vegas the unusual is usual. Brett met Bill Clinton in a very Vegas way. Bill Clinton was in town to help Harry Reid, the Nevada Senator that was in a very tight reelection campaign. Brett has a friend that is a VIP host at Tao Nightclub, a high-end Nightclub at the Venetian. VIP Hosts in Vegas seem to have  access everywhere and when you’re hosting a team of Professional athletes, nothing is out of bounds, even the former President of the United States.

As Brett was retelling his meeting President Bill Clinton, he said how he regretted not mentioning to the President his concern that children are not taught about food and proper nutrition in school. Obviously, Brett takes his role as Food Educator seriously, whether you’re a top Vegas Chef, The President of the United States, or a person that writes essays about Las Vegas, Brett wants you to be more interested and informed about the food you consume.

Brett enters a Vegas Kitchen the way a masterful politician enters a room, perhaps even Clintonian’esque, he greets everyone, as if he were asking for their vote. He’s careful to include the Chef’s key assistants on his product discussions, todays Sous-Chef could be tomorrows Celebrity Chef.   That is not to say that Brett comes off as Slick or Disingenuous, Earnest would be more accurate.

The New Yorker Profile of Brett

I asked Brett for his reaction to the New Yorker profile of him, and he mentioned two aspects of the article that he thought were misleading. First, he thought the article made light of his relationships with Las Vegas Chefs. I think the part of the article that best demonstrates this is the following:

He often says that he is on a first-name basis with three hundred and seventy  chefs in Vegas-the executive chefs and sous-chefs and chefs de cuisine at Jean Georges Steakhouse, Daniel Boulud,  BarMasa and dozens more- by which he means he has forgotten their last names, or is not sure of the pronunciation. (Many are French)

I think Brett feels this passage belittles the true relationship even friendship he has with many of the Chefs in Las Vegas. The other aspect of the article that Brett was less than pleased with was the whole discussion of the clothes he wears when making restaurant calls: The unfashionable brown suits and brown shoes with fake eyeglasses, of which he is quoted in the article as having twenty pairs. As a side note: The New Yorker which  is notorious for their fastidious fact checking, actually fact checked this with Brett, and wrongly quoted him, he’s never had twenty pair of fake glasses. The whole point of his outfit, was to appear a few years older, and perhaps more mature, a rarity these days. Brett is only twenty five years old, and is often dealing with customers decades older.

Brett Ottolenghi Television Star

The readership of the New Yorker may be small in Las Vegas, but some important people there have taken note. The executives at CityCenter have sent a copy of the article to every restaurant in the complex, inviting them to source products through Brett.

Reality Television producers have also taken note, over thirty production companies have contacted Brett about doing a Reality Television Show. Brett has chosen to work with the producers of  the Travel Channel show “Man versus Food”  It sounds like the show may be similar to Gordon Elliot’s show “Follow That Food” on the Food Network. Brett is insistent that he doesn’t want a hyped-up phony reality show.

While the title of the New Yorker article is “The Truffle Kid”, Brett has shifted his focus away from truffles, its a difficult item to sell profitably without undue risk. When he takes a basket of truffles around the Strip, he finds that the chefs want to hand select each individual truffle they buy, hence by the end of his rounds he is left with the least desirable ones, which may not be salable at a profitable price.

Brett is always looking for new Artisanal Food products to add to his inventory. He told me about a small farm in Pennsylvania that raises free-range chickens akin to the way the Japanese raise their Kobe Beef  Cattle. He is known in Vegas as the go to person for exotic hard to find unique food items. When Phil Ruffin’s wife wanted special honey to serve with tea in her high-end spa at TI she reached out to Brett. Bellagio restaurants and bars often contact Brett with special requests, such as recently a high-end Bellagio bar, aren’t they all high-end at Bellagio, asked him to source gourmet large green pitted olives with which they could hand stuff with blue cheese. While most of the items Brett sells are pricey compared to their lower grade alternatives, the profit margins are small in relation to the effort involved. Bellagio compensates Brett for all his hard work in sourcing small order specialty items by giving him the contract to supply Duck Breasts to their buffet. Even on the Duck Breasts, Brett is able to offer the Bellagio Buffet a good price, since as he notes, these are Foie Gras Ducks, and hence to the supplier “the real money” has already been made on the foie gras, the Duck Breasts are just extra cash.

If you’ve eaten at one of the Michelin Star restaurants in Vegas, or the Bellagio Buffet you have a had a chance to sample some of Brett’s products. However, if you wish to purchase items directly from Brett you have tow options.

One: You purchase items from his website: Artisanal Foods

Two: You can visit his store, which is located adjacent to McCarran Airport at 2275 E. Sunset Rd.

I’ll close by posting the message I sent to Brett after spending a day with him:

Brett thanks again for letting me tag along on your visits on Wednesday, it was interesting, educational, enjoyable, and exhausting!

Related Posts:

White Truffles, Beluga Caviar, Bellota Pigs…

The Michelin Stars of Las Vegas

How To Buy Vanilla and Vanilla FAQs