Bradley Ogden is the Joe Montana of the food and beverage industry: A San Francisco Bay Area legend, a fearless innovator, a creative genius, and one heck of a nice guy. Your roving food and wine editor, fresh from a two-month sojourn to points West, sat down for an informal chat with Ogden in the relaxed ambience of the bar at “Bradley Ogden.” In a city that never sleeps, this top-of-the-line restaurant has pushed all the other top dining rooms in Vegas to work a little harder to pack in the high rollers, gourmands and other discriminating clientele.

Ogden, for those of you who missed the “American Cuisine” revolution back in the 1980s, turned the San Francisco food scene on its ear during a six-year stint as the top chef at Campton Place Hotel. “The goal was to bring organic, fresh food from the farms of Sonoma, Marin and Napa right to the tables of the top dining room in San Francisco,” said Ogden. “I was working side by side with Charlie Trotter, without a doubt one of the most talented chefs in the world, and we collaborated on a very exciting evolution of a true American style of cooking — as important and as significant as any style of cooking on any Continent."

Ogden left Campton Place in the late ‘80s  to open The Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur —Marin County’s version of Scarsdale in New York or Highland Park in Chicago — and the success of the new definitive American cuisine was as much a lock as betting on the Yankees to win the 2004 World Series (just kidding!)

Now, 15 years later, Ogden is revolutionizing the menus of Vegas with his brash, no-nonsense approach to finesse cooking and the patrons of Caesars Palace are cashing in their culinary chips.

Profiles in Courage — The Blue Cheese Affair

Bradley Ogden Dinner Guests

All this talk about "from farm to the table" sounds good, but what the heck does it mean? The best way to analyze Ogden’s métier for superior American cooking is to analyze two of the most popular appetizers at Bradley Ogden: A trio of blue cheese soufflés and a 5-by-5 fresh oyster plate.

Ogden explains: “The trio of twice-baked blue cheese soufflés has never come off the menu because my regular customers are so stringent about what they demand. When I thought up this dish I started with three different blue cheeses — Maytag and two local cheeses from Northern California — and each distinct twice-baked soufflé would be infused with a unique flavor element such as persimmon, pomegranate or another seasonal fruit or spice that would be complementary. But I discovered that the water content of all blue cheeses is variable, and so I would use Maytag blue cheese for a consistent texture in all three twice-baked soufflés.

"With the 5-by-5 oysters, I infuse the fresh shellfish with a cranberry emulsion or Asian BBQ spice, but nothing is allowed to take away or minimize the flavor of the shellfish. I get all of my oysters from the Pacific Coast — mostly San Francisco and Seattle — because I know the waters and have confidence in the perfect freshness that goes with clean water and proper harvesting. Why would I get oysters from the Atlantic when that means a 12-hour journey and a host of unknowns that could corrupt the purity of the shellfish?"

Ogden as in Oasis Located on the casino level of Caesars — and just a short distance from the packed house where Celene Dion thrills audiences nightly with her amazing ability to interpret any song that pops into her head — Bradley Ogden’s dining room and bar is a calm in the storm that is the manic world of Vegas. Muted lighting, rich wood interiors and excellent acoustics (even when the restaurant is jammed you can still have a meaningful conversation about how much money you have won at the baccarat tables) make this a welcome escape from the other things to do in Sin City.

Bradley Ogden

Since opening in March of 2003, Bradley Ogden has moved into the elite top three of Vegas dining rooms — Picasso Restaurant in the Bellagio (see the upcoming article in November’s edition of nt.com) and Delmonico’s Steakhouse in the Venetian grab the other top spots.

"I put my name and personal mark on this dining room," said Ogden, "and that means being on site in Vegas every day, having my son Brian (an excellent chef in his own right) at my side in the kitchen and making sure that 99.90f what we produce in the kitchen comes from domestic ingredients."

Your humble food writer would be in the wrong to not give you a quick seat-of-the-pants tour of the other restaurants in Ogden’s expanding empire of gourmet properties.



Bradley Ogden at Caesars

The Lark Creek Inn, 234 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, CA; Tel.: 415-924-7766. This is the original shrine to Ogden’s "New" American cooking and as such is an absolute required stop on any restaurant tour of the SF Bay Area.

Yankee Pier (Marin County) 286 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, CA; Tel.: 415-924-7676 "I retooled a shack at the end of the parking lot at the Lark Creek Inn, and transformed it into a traditional New England style seafood shack with lobster rolls, chowder and five types of grilled fresh fish with light sauces."

Yankee Pier (Santa Clara One Market Restaurant, 1 Market St., San Francisco, CA; Tel.: 415-777-5577

Lark Creek Walnut Creek 1360 Locust St., Walnut Creek, CA; Tel.: 925-256-1234

Parcel 104, Santa Clara Marriott, 2700 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, CA; Tel.: 408-970-6104

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