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Clay Conley, executive chef of Olives at Bellagio, threatens to toss a Chilean sea bass into the Bellagio lake, because he thinks the fish is too trendy. Photo by Craig L. Moran. Chef Jorge Lopez "attacks" an artichoke in the Lut�ce restaurant at The Venetian, because he dislikes the amount of waste the vegetable produces. Photo by John Gurzinski. The work environment for the Aladdin's executive pastry chef Manfred Schmidhuber is tempting but nutritionally hazardous, because Schmidhuber is diabetic. Photo by Gary Thompson

Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MATTER OF TASTE: Chefs Fess Up

There are ingredients, colors and foods they'd rather not face

The question was posed to many Las Vegas professional chefs. Only a handful stepped up to the plate, brave enough to respond.

What is your least favorite cooking ingredient?

We can, and do, cook enthusiastically with any cooking ingredient at all, was the gist of the first wave of cautious, nonconfessional answers.

Finally, after emphasizing participating chefs wouldn't be tarred and feathered for admitting a personal prejudice, several chefs agreed to bare their biases. Most of the "least faves" arise from purely subjective judgments of the palate. But some are caused by health conditions -- such as diabetes or a food allergy -- or a personal conviction such as vegetarianism.

Here's what the chefs revealed.

• For many years, blue food coloring was ingredient non grata for the Aladdin's executive pastry chef, Manfred Schmidhuber, who received a classical food education in his native Austria.

It does not exist in nature, so it should not exist in artificially colored desserts was the mantra his mentors drummed into him about blue food. When Schmidhuber arrived in the United States in the 1960s, he was shocked that Americans sometimes requested blue icing or frosting for their cakes. With time, he's learned to tolerate such requests.

Today, Schmidhuber says pistachios are one of his least favorite pastry elements, calling them "bitter." But regardless of his own preference, he uses them regularly when making such delights as baklava and truffles because, "that's what makes a professional. There are lots of things you don't (personally) like, but you know what the right taste is."

Schmidhuber also is unusual in that he's a diabetic whose livelihood depends on making foods that are sugar- and carbohydrate-packed, which wreak havoc on a diabetic's blood-sugar levels. Diagnosed about 30 years ago, Schmidhuber has learned to fit on-the-job tasting into his overall diet.

Part of his solution: Think small. "I'd rather eat the real stuff and just take a smaller piece."

• Clay Conley is executive chef at Olives at Bellagio, which he helped open for Boston-based celebrity chef Todd English, the Olives founder.

Olives specializes in giving a new spin to traditional rustic Italian foods.

"When I grew up I didn't like vegetables. They were mushy," recalls Conley. But he outgrew those childhood prejudices as he discovered veggies taste good if they aren't boiled or steamed to a pulp. Today, he even enjoys beets, he says with a chuckle.

The broader principle Conley identified from his vegetable experience is that any ingredient can be maligned by poor preparation. To help Olives' guests broaden their palates, he often designs an entree to be what he calls a duet or trio.

That is, he'll take one food element and then present two or three different preparations on the same plate. A lamb duet might include lamb Wellington and grilled chops. One of his trios featured two preparations of quail meat plus a quail-egg concoction.

As much as he likes to play with any food ingredient's possibilities, Conley admits to a personal dislike for Chilean sea bass even though it rapidly sells out whenever he makes it a special at Olives.

First, the fish is not technically a sea bass. But Conley believes American consumers might not be as attracted if restaurants used its original name, which is Patagonian razor fish.

Next, Conley doesn't care for the fish's soft texture. He compensates by adding a crunchy crust or a zingy maple-and-soy marinade. When broiled, the sugar content in the marinade "gets nice and almost crunchy," he notes.

Most of all, Conley disagrees with the high price the trendy fish commands. "I don't see the reason (for) flying fresh fish all the way from South America, when you have good fish" alternatives from closer waters, he says.

• Don't get Jorge Lopez wrong. He loves the taste and texture of artichokes. He just can't stand how much labor it takes to liberate an artichoke heart from its casing of thick, fibrous leaves.

Nor does he care for the amount of vegetable waste created when cutting out artichoke hearts.

While he's at it, Lopez also dislikes the way his hands turn black after handling large quantities of raw artichokes.

And beware of those pointy and painful tips on the leaves, too, he warns.

Lopez is chef de cuisine at Lut�ce at The Venetian. His suggestion for preparing artichoke hearts is to sauté them lightly in olive oil with lemon juice, sea salt and fresh rosemary.

Lopez has no food allergies, but has supervised kitchen personnel with seafood allergies. If their allergy manifests even when they touch raw seafood, Lopez says such cooks have to briefly trade tasks with a nonallergic co-worker.

• In addition to running its own dining room, the Pasta Shop & Ristorante supplies an array of local restaurants and hotels with fresh pastas.

Spinach, jalapeño, black squid ink, tomato and lemon pepper are some of the flavors of pasta it sells. Perhaps the most unusual is chocolate pasta, which is used in a dessert, not an entree.

Surprisingly, the Pasta Shop's chef, David Alenik, doesn't care much personally for pasta made with white flour, which is the business' main product line.

For himself, Alenik prefers pastas made of whole-wheat flour. He finds the flavor superior as well as the nutritional content.

White flour, he says disparagingly, "has no germ. It has no endosperm," which are nutritionally valuable parts of an intact grain. "Any nutrition and minerals have had to be reintroduced. It's highly processed."

• Chuck Becker has cooked French, Asian and multiple cuisines during his culinary career. He is now executive chef at Tenaya Creek Restaurant & Brewery, which specializes in contemporary American cuisine.

One of his favorite dinners is lamb. But one of his least favorite edibles is a lamb accompaniment: namely, mint jelly. As a result, Becker does not stock mint jelly at the restaurant.

He's had a request for it "once in the two years we've been here," he says. Which must mean that many diners belong to his school of thought.

Becker guesses mint jelly became popular in the days when mutton -- the meat of adult sheep -- was more common than lamb. The pungent jelly was probably effective at offsetting the strong taste of mutton.

Because lamb has a milder taste, Becker thinks mint jelly is overkill. He'd rather team up lamb with a sauce of red-wine reduction and caramelized onions.

Becker thinks his bias against the jelly arises from his philosophy that mint should be used in its raw form, and sparingly. Exceptions would be certain cuisines such as Indian, Greek or Moroccan, which use mint extensively.

"I'm not a big fan of mint in hot cooking," he admits. But it is appropriate in certain chutneys or salsas, where it can lend a "cooling effect."

The Tenaya Creek menu is strong on meats and fish. Yet some of its servers have been vegetarians. To make sure private bias doesn't affect how they answer menu questions from carnivorous customers, Becker trains vegetarian servers to share positive feedback from others when they can't deliver a ringing personal endorsement.

"It doesn't matter what your personal beliefs are. A server has to be able to sell the guest what (the guest) wants," Becker says.

Back in the kitchen, Becker also has encountered people whose personal beliefs have affected their performance.

One co-worker at a prior job, for example, couldn't bear to split a live lobster in half, to prepare it for broiling.

"He hated to kill the lobster," Becker recalls, laughing. "He had a hard time ... (with) the live lobster crawling on his cutting board."

The lobster-sympathizing cook used to fob off the responsibility on co-workers. They would oblige, but tease him mercilessly. "We'd act like (the lobsters) were his pets, and we were going to kill them," Becker says.