Gustav Mauler: betting everything he's got on the future of fine dining in Las Vegas

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan, 1997 by Amy Zuber

Ten years ago, when Gustav Mauler decided to join the Mirage Resorts as the new foodservice director, people told him Las Vegas was a slum.

But after catering Clint Eastwood's wedding, collaborating on a dinner menu with Martha Stewart and, on several occasions, cooking for former President George Bush, Mauler would argue otherwise.

"l have done more and seen more than ever before in my life," Mauler says. "This spring I prepared a dinner for George Bush. When I brought out the hors d'oeuvre, I said, Good evening, Mr. President., Then he said, Gustav, how are you doing?' I was so taken that he said my name."

At Treasure Island at the Mirage, a 36-story, pirate-themed resort that generated food-and-beverage sales of about $62 million in 1996, Mauler is in charge of eight restaurants, four lounges and more than 1,600 employees serving roughly 15,000 meals each day.

"This is a man with such amazing people skills," says Muriel Stevens, food editor and restaurant writer at the Las Vegas Sun. "He can manage to keep everyone, from the man on the street to the royalty that comes to the hotel, happy. He has that gift."

Stevens says when she attended a dinner recently at Treasure Island, Mauler stepped in to serve the food because he was concerned his staff was not moving quickly enough.

"He is not above rolling up his sleeves and showing people how things should work," Stevens says. "There is not a task that he thinks is menial. He is a rare human being."

Chuck Becker, the gourmet room chef at Treasure Island's Buccaneer Bay Club, says Mauler taught him to always give the customer the best possible product.

"He takes pride in his work, and that trickles down to the rest of the employees and the guests," Becker says.

When Treasure Island opened in 1993, Mauler designed and developed the resort's eight restaurants, which range from buffets to fine dining. The resort bakes its own pastries and breads, ages its meats, bones its own salmon and makes its soup stocks from scratch. Mauler says when visitors tour the operations, they are surprised to find homemade foods on a grand scale.

"People expect a factory, but that doesn't mean you can't do the big things with quality," Mauler says. "It is possible. You just need a commitment to it."

Several of Treasure Island's restaurants have been praised by local restaurant critics for the quality of their food and service.

"I think [Mauler] has set a standard for upgrading hotel file dining," says Tom Kaplan, a partner in Wolfgang Puck's Spago Restaurants, which has a Las Vegas Offshoot. "No one does it as well as an individual fine-dining restaurant. I still think there is room for improvement, but if anyone has set a standard, it is the Mirage Resort restaurants. They have led the way in hotel fine dining. [Mauler] has helped to push Las Vegas into the 21st century of fine dining."

As the millennium approaches, Mauler will continue to have a major influence on the ongoing transformation of the Strip's restaurant scene, which has become a stomping ground for such famed restaurateurs as Puck, Mark Miller and Emeril Lagasse.

Mauler is in the midst of developing 13 foodservice concepts for Mirage's newest and most ambitious endeavor to date, a $1.3 billion resort that is called Bellagio and modeled after an Italian village of the same name. Mirage officials describe the project as a "world-class resort built to cater to the high-end customer."

Kaplan says Mauler's challenge is to create restaurants that have standards equal to those of the upscale resort. "He has to take it to the next level," he says. "If anyone is capable of it. Gustav can do it."

After teaming up with Sirio Maccioni, the widely respected New York restaurateur who embodies sophisticated food, Mauler has proved himself worthy of the challenge. The fine-dining flagship of Bellagio, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 1998 will be an offshoot of Maccioni's famed Le Cirque. The partnership also includes a clone of Osteria del Circo, the Maccioni family's more casual restaurant.

"l am 100-percent sure that Maccioni's philosophy, his following of customers and his style of service is the same as ours," Mauler says.

Architect Jordan Mozer, who has made his mark on the restaurant industry by creating the distinctive styles of such projects as chicago's Cheesecake Factory aid San Francisco's Cypress Club, is designing an American grill with an expansive open kitchen. The resort also will feature a Japanese restaurant and a Southwestern concept.

"Gustav is always out there looking for new ideas," says his wife, Denise Mauler. "He has never gotten stuck in a time warp. No matter where we travel, no matter what country we are in, he is always in the bookstore, looking through cookbooks, just trying to get new ideas."

Mauler remarks that he is searching for the highest caliber of employees to carry out his vision. "We try to get the best possible chefs and managers and then tell them, This is your restaurant, and if you handle it right and create an unbelievable facility, we'll reward you,'" he says.