Dining with Chefs: Executive Chef Mark LoRusso
Botero (Part 2 of 2)
We were telling Chef LoRusso how much we enjoyed the Loup de Mer when he told us how much he enjoyed it, too -- when he tried it. “Sometimes when you run a restaurant you try it at the beginning then you don’t try it for a while,” he confessed. “Then the other day I ate one and it was really good.”
Having tasted the sea, we moved on to land with the Petite Filet with the pepper style presentation, which is one of several options. ”I got lucky because I’ve got two really good grill cooks,” Chef LoRusso said. “We were thinking that steaks are selling so well -- I think all over the country, but especially in Vegas right now -- so we thought, ‘We’ll sell a lot of steaks.’ Some of these places are charging for sauce and for this and that. We said, ‘Let’s give the clientele an option, some choices of how they want their steak.’ One choice is the pepper style. We came up with three pepper sauces, and then I was at an Asian restaurant where they sent out an amuse of shishito peppers. I was like, ‘Wow, these are really good,’ so I put them under the steak, then added the three pepper sauces. You can also have steak with chimichurri or you can have the traditional preparation. You also can have as add-ons lobster, crab or foie gras. Every steak, except for the pepper style, comes with a little caramelized onion tart.”