Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/101724
PHOTO: DEACON TYLER PHOTO: DEACON TYLER Executive Chef Brian Howard. PHOTO: JENNKL PHOTOGRAPHY In this modern brasserie with chalkboardart walls, vintage mirrors and views of Las Vegas Boulevard's Eiffel Tower replica, dining is done differently. Menus change with seasons. Meats and produce are sourced from a sustainable, ive-acre farm in Pahrump, NV. Cocktails are created with precise measurements, hand-chipped ice and Prohibition-style lair, as inluenced by neo-speakeasy bartender Sam Ross of New York City's Milk and Honey. "We're not afraid," Executive Chef Howard says. "We want to expose and educate guests to things that a lot of other restaurants may not do, especially in Las Vegas, because let's face it—we're still a Caesar salad and shrimp cocktail city." To provoke new rules, Comme Ça Las Vegas features "offally good" dining specials in addition to Parisian gastropub fare and famed brasserie classics such as steak tartare with conit egg yolk and lobster Thermidore. Howard, who playfully plated canned ravioli in his youth for his American middleclass family, understands the oft-intimidating introduction to offal. "We can educate a guest," Howard says. "They might like pot roast, but have they had veal tongue? Same texture. Same lavor almost. That's how we turn people on to something that they might not have had ever before." French Sommelier Bonnet was raised eating variety meats, like the buttered veal brain cooked by his mother, with wine provided by his father. This background, paired with his appetite for Comme Ça's creative twists on tradition, empowers Bonnet to guide guests through seasonal wine pairings or selections from Comme Ça's successful 18A cocktail program. Chef David Myers. Named for the 18th Amendment, which instituted Prohibition in the U.S., 18A cocktails utilize American ingenuity. During the Prohibition era, Bonnet notes, "the American drinking crowd found ways of creating new products, distilling in a new way, sourcing out from different areas, then creating underground cocktails." Comme Ça harnesses this initiative, Bonnet says, "by making everything from scratch." Myers afirms this resourcefulness. "You can only be as good as your ingredients," he says, then commends his avant-garde team's commitment to local, natural foods. "If we're going to do food, let's do food like that." At Comme Ça Las Vegas, it's comme ci, comme ça—like this, like that—in a burgeoning culinary scene. "It's about the constant evolution of what we do," Howard says. "We are the future of the brasserie." january 2013 / the tasting panel / 141