Martha Stewart plays bartender at her Strip restaurant

What becomes a legend most?

If you’re Martha Stewart, in spring in Las Vegas, what becomes you is a tall gleaming cocktail shaker, bottles of Belvedere Vodka and Cointreau orange liqueur, Meyer lemons (for juicing and simple syrup) still just in season, and wide wide coupe glasses (rimmed in sugar) that are to those mingy cocktail-bro coupes what an ocean liner is to a dinghy. Exactly.

The other afternoon, Stewart deployed these becoming essentials to free pour and shake up a round of signature Meyer Lemon Drops for a small lunch she threw at The Bedford by Martha Stewart, the restaurant (modeled after her Bedford, New York, country house) she opened last August in Paris Las Vegas.

“No mixes allowed. I don’t care what Skinnygirl tells you,” Stewart said, drawing laughs with her reference to the line of pre-mixed cocktails founded by a reality TV star.

Stewart’s go-to vodka is Belvedere: It’s Polish; she’s Polish. The Meyer lemon syrup uses pulp and rind for optimal flavor. Each Lemon Drop requires 60 shakes. A giant ice cube — an orb the size of a golf ball — rises halfway from the drink to finish it.

“I like a good cocktail, but I only have one,” Stewart said. But customers, especially in Vegas, should not exercise such restraint. “You have as much as you want.”

The best dish on the menu

Lunch was intimate, about 20 people. Endive spears, miniature crab cakes, steak tartare and spring chopped salad were passed on trays as guests sipped Lemon Drops.

They sat down to honey-mustard glazed salmon, with glancing notes of char and sweet at just the right moments, and to plates of Big Martha’s potato pierogies wetting their bottoms in brown butter.

The dumplings, named for Stewart’s mother, Martha Kostyra, are light yet substantial, gently sturdy wrappers enclosing a creamy filling, and they’re arguably the best dish on The Bedford menu.

“Family food is important to all of us,” Stewart said. “You should know all your grandmother’s recipes. If you haven’t, write them down now.

Just like Martha’s

Stewart was in town for one of her frequent check-ins at the restaurant.

“I love this city,” Stewart said. “Las Vegas is a master at creation and re-creation, as you know, so I couldn’t have picked a better place.”

And a central theme of The Bedford, of course, is to conjure Stewart’s Bedford pile, from the lustrous faux bois paneling to the elegant glassware in cabinets, from the dining room tables to the Hepplewhite sideboard to an image of the pasture where her glossy Friesian horses graze.

‘I’m a modern woman’

Stewart was warm and chatty the other afternoon. She recalled helping decorate the Bellagio for its opening 25 years ago this fall, and dining with JFK Jr. before his death in a plane crash 24 summers ago. Stewart went to Madagascar with her grandchildren for Christmas. She’s working on her 100th book.

She has a weekly podcast (“The Martha Stewart Podcast”) and a new Amazon storefront, just two parts of a thriving digital operation. “I’m a modern woman,” Steward said, “even thought I was born in 1941.”

Stewart relaxes, she said, by working in her gardens and going for long horseback rides. She is strikingly ageless and no stranger to a sultry selfie.

In about two weeks, Stewart said she was having a Kentucky Derby party. You just know the mint juleps will be perfect — and potent.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ItsJLW on Twitter.