VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Celebrity Chefs Work in Their Own Restaurants
Posted on: June 17, 2024, 08:21h.
Last updated on: June 17, 2024, 10:41h.
One myth we busted a few Mondays ago — that Gordon Ramsay booted Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce from his Hell’s Kitchen restaurant for being too drunk — encompassed a second myth that we saved for this edition: that celebrity chefs actually work in their restaurants.
It’s not too difficult to figure out who started this myth and why. According to an old menu at Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill at Caesars Palace: “If you think the guy sitting at the end of the bar looks a lot like Gordon, well, it just might be.”
Booking the Cooks
Caesars Entertainment wants you to think you can meet or see Ramsay by dining at one of the six Las Vegas restaurants they operate for him — so much so that the casino company requires him to visit each one at least once a year, for at least 24 consecutive hours.
During each visit, Ramsay is contractually obligated to allow himself to be photographed as though his being there is a perfectly normal occurrence and not just a requirement for him to earn his $340K annual name-licensing fee per restaurant, along with 5%-6% of Caesars’ gross profits from it.
This suggests what we all kind of know intuitively — that once someone earns millions from TV shows and passive licensing deals, they don’t want to have to cook your Crispy Skin Salmon over a hot stove after you arrive famished from seeing Mat Franco’s 7 p.m. show at the LINQ.
Celebrity chefs may sometimes help design the menus at their Las Vegas restaurants — that’s both may and sometimes. But they never cook in them. Doing so may actually be illegal if they don’t possess a Nevada health card.
Instead, they rely on their hotel partners’ food and beverage departments to manage the restaurants.
How We Know For Sure
We only know about Caesars’ deal with Ramsay because it was among the financial relationships exposed by the Wall Street Journal during the company’s 2016 bankruptcy proceedings.
We assume that Caesars, and other casino companies, have similar deals with Guy Fieri, José Andrés, Guy Savoy, Giada De Laurentis, Michael Mina, and David Chang, though those deals have never been made public.
The only time celebrity chefs can be counted on to be at their restaurants is for their grand openings.
Unfortunately, that’s one of the only times?you?can’t be because those are invite-only affairs open exclusively to celebrities and other casino VIPs.
Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email [email protected].
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Last Comment ( 1 )
Good article once again Corey. I worked several years at Las Vega Uniforms and serviced the Caesars/Harrah properties which includes some of these chefs and restaurants. We did most of the embroidery for them...some of whom were shooting a tv promo or special episode. Chefs would generally supply 2 hand-picked chef's jackets to be embroidered with their restaurants logos and sometimes their names when they were shootingin Las Vegas..all very picky about the finished product, huge egos of course. My embroiderer was engaged to be married and wasn't paying close enough attention to the colorful Hells Kitchen logo being embroidered front through back of the $300 French-made chef's jacket. Thank God for 2nd chances. Guy Fieri's place on the strip had us do 4 sets of embroidered nick-name patches for their servers so nobody had to use their own name. 1000s of patches.