Guillermo Tellez: educating Las Vegas' palates

Nation's Restaurant News, June 19, 1995 by Richard Martin

Guillermo Tellez immigrated by himself to the United States from his native Mexico at the age of 13, and he worked as a carpenter, house painter and dishwasher before turning to cooking. After his culinary training in Chicago be became a line cook at the acclaimed Carlos' restaurant in Highland Park, Ill. Tellez, whose name is pronounced "Gwee-yermo Tay-yez," began working at Chicago's renowned Charlie Trotter's in 1989, and be was its sous-chef for four years before Trotter appointed him to his current position last year, when the restaurant's Las Vegas branch opened in the MGM Grand Hotel. Tellez now runs the kitchen of the luxurious, 68-seat operation, which serves about 105 dinners nightly and boasts a $150-per-person check average.

Title: Chef de cuisine, Charlie Trotter's MGM Grand, Las Vegas. Birthday: May 5, 1963. Hometown: Ciudad Hidalgo, Michoacan, Mexico. Formal education: Kendall College for Culinary Arts, Chicago; Madeleine Kammen's Professional Cooking School at Beringer Vineyards in Napa Valley, Calif. Career highlights: Being named chef de cuisine for the Las Vegas Charlie Trotter's; winning the James Beard Foundation's first Felipe Rojas-Lombardi award of achievement for Hispanic chefs, in 1993. Top-selling dishes: Daily, five-course degustation menus, including such specialties as potato soup with Perigord truffles, leeks and artichokes; Maine day-boat lobster, razor clams and caviar with pickled papaya and spicy herb sauce; seared squab breast with foie gras, Sauternes mustard sauce and 50-year-old balsamic vinegar. Grand menu: $85; vegetable menu, $65.

How do you create daily menus with Charlie Trotter in Chicago? It's not difficult at all. I've learned Charlie's style by working with him for so many years, and he trusts me in what I do. We fax the menus, and he might make only a minor change in an ingredient once in a while.

What kind of foodstuffs do you specify that aren't available from local suppliers? I do not use any local suppliers. All my produce comes from L.A. From Chicago I get specialty things like smoked, nitrate-free bacon. Our restaurant is almost 100-percent organic and pesticide-free. There is fresh phyllo made in Chicago that I can not get anywhere else, which I use for pastry and some savory dishes. We like to use a lot of organ meats, and sometimes they're hard to get. I've heard of a couple that grows stone fruits about an hour away from here, and I'm going to visit them. I met a family that is raising quails, and they're doing pretty well for us so far. Most of my seafood comes from Maine.

What is your impression of Las Vegas as a "gourmet" destination? Do diners there fully appreciate Charlie Trotter-style cuisine? We're trying to educate the palate of our customers. Certainly, they're not used to this type of dining experience. I truly believe that in five to 10 years Las Vegas definitely will be a restaurant destination. It's changing a lot. Our customers from out of town say Vegas needed something like Charlie Trotter's. And little by little we've been having more local people here, and they love it.

Aren't there risks in trying to educate consumers' palates? We try to please the customers. If they really want to have something other than what we have on the menu, I go out of my way. In some cases we do baked potatoes if that's what the customer wants, or we will do mashed potatoes. We have a wonderful staff that explains to the guests what we are, and that we are not just another restaurant. But we can do our own version of "surf and turf," with grilled Kobe beef and medallions of lobster.

Charlie Trotter says the MGM Grand wants your restaurant to become known as the finest in the country. Does his mission to have it surpass the Chicago flagship put a lot of pressure on you? Yes, it does. Here in Vegas it's a little harder now, because they expect so much. It took Charlie Trotter seven or eight years to get to where he is, but here we're starting already at the top. That means we have to keep up with that big reputation. It's all about "class." It's all about details. That's our job, the three of us who came from Chicago - Mitchell Schmieding, our general manager, and Mark Signorio, who is the restaurant's designer and manager.

Have you made it a point to dine at high-end restaurants elsewhere? Have any Western trends influenced your cooking style? I have dined in San Francisco. I like to dine out a lot and get a feel for what is happening. And I read a lot.

How do you spend your time at the restaurant when you're not cooking? Personally, I hate being in the office. It's just not me. I like to play with the food, and I'm always thinking about what I can do with other products. One of the great challenges for me is to try to find some exotic products that nobody else has and learn how to use them and work with them. I have been remembering some of the exotic fruits that I used to eat with my family in Mexico, and I'm trying to get some of that stuff here, like the heart of the agave cactus, which is so sweet and will end up with foie gras or as a sauce or a sorbet. Or other exotic fruits like mamey, cherimoya, pink guavas and pineapple.