As far as we can tell, there are four culinary-school restaurants in Las Vegas. Three serve lunch, or lunch and dinner, on a regular basis, while two others open when students pass through the restaurant portion of their training.
The first is Café Bleu, at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Las Vegas. The school itself was founded in Paris in 1895, but didn't make it to Las Vegas till early 2003. The café opened in spring 2004.
It's the school's full-service dining room. At 10,000 square feet, Café Bleu has two demonstration kitchens and seating for 125 people. It's run and staffed by students who spend six weeks out of the 15-month curriculum working in the restaurant. They do everything, manning the four kitchen stations (prep, pantry, pastry, and hot line) and one dining room station (waiting and bussing tables). That's why Le Cordon Bleu students spend six weeks working in Café Bleu -- three weeks in the front of the house, three weeks in the back. Rotates students through schedule weekly. Cafe Bleu draws heavily from the employees of the office parks in Summerlin and Sun City.
A recent Café Bleu dinner menu lists such dishes as chilled English pea soup with mint crème fraiche ($4), oven-roasted North Coast halibut ($13) and veal Cordon Bleu ($10), while lunch presents many of the same offerings plus pizzas and sandwiches. Cafe Bleu also has a full bar, where students get exposure to beverage service.
Cafe Bleu caters mostly to in-the-know locals with an emphasis on American, French, and Italian cuisines. Most of the reviews we’ve seen have been from people who live in Summerlin and go for lunch on occasion. Average prices are $7-$9 for appetizers, $8-$17 for entrees, and $6 for desserts. Reservations are strongly recommended. The Café is open Tuesday-Friday, 11 am-12:30 pm for lunch, and 6-7:30 pm for dinner. The school and restaurant are located at 1451 Center Crossing Rd., off N. Town Square near W. Summerlin Pkwy.; 702/365-7690.
The second is called Opus Too, located at the Culinary Institute of Las Vegas, a division of the Art Institute of Las Vegas, which offers diplomas in the cooking and culinary arts, culinary management, and baking and pastry.
Opus Too accommodates 50 guests in a stylish setting on the Art Institute’s campus in Henderson. There’s a good view outside of the Strip and inside of the fully equipped exhibition kitchen; a baby-grand player piano provides the background music.
Students at the Culinary Institute work in every position, from washing dishes to exploring cuisine themes for specialty dinners. For example, the "Last Dinner on the Titanic" was a nine-course re-creation of one dinner served to first-class passengers ($150 per person).
The typical menu is prix-fixe and comes with a choice of appetizer, entrée, and dessert. Opus Too charges $9.95 for lunch (11 am to 1 pm, Tues.-Thur.) and $12.95 for dinner (6 pm to 8 pm, Tues.-Thur.) Beer and wine are also available.
Opus Too is located at 2350 Corporate Circle, Henderson; reservations recommended, 702/992-8500.
Russell's Restaurant is the service outlet for culinary-arts and in the food-and-beverage-management students at the Community College of Southern Nevada. Russell’s is typically open only when school is in session, roughly eight weeks, or a total of 40 meals, per semester; the menu changes for every meal. They serve 80-90 diners per meal and sometimes you can find a real bargain there -- for example, a half Maine lobster for $6.95. All the lunches cost $6.95 for soup or salad, entrée, rolls, dessert, and beverage.
The students spend the first five weeks of the semester training in the restaurant; one class works in the kitchen, while another runs the "front of the house."
Russell’s is open for four meals each week, two lunches and two dinners for seven weeks per semester. Lunch is served 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, dinner 5:45 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, though the days depend on enrollment numbers and semester; last semester enrollment was up for the program, so they ran lunch on Monday as well.
All meals are $6.95 and what’s served depends on the day, the class running, and the semester. You get a choice of two soups for lunch, three entrees and three desserts for dinner.
Russell’s is at the Community College of Southern Nevada’s Cheyenne campus, 3200 E. Cheyenne Avenue, in North Las Vegas.
The University of Nevada-Las Vegas’ student-run restaurant is called the Desert Vineyard and it’s located in the Boyd Dining Room on the second floor of Beam Hall on campus. The restaurant opens for lunch or dinner at various times during the semester; it’s hit or miss, since there’s no regular schedule. Lunches run around $15, while dinners can cost as much as $50. For a schedule, call 702/895-3503 and leave a message; you might or might not get a return call, so we wouldn’t count on this meal.
However, the Stan Fulton Bistro, located in the Southern Wine Lounge in the Stan Fulton building, 801 E. Flamingo, is operated by 30 students in a 400-level Quantity Food Management course. It’s open to the public on Mondays from 5 to 8:30 p.m. It offers a different variety of menu items each week. Prices range from $2 for appetizers up to $10 for entrees; all the food, both hot and cold, comes in small "bistro" portions; also served are coffee, juice, specialty non-alcoholic drinks, and beer and wine.
Finally, the Culinary Training Academy (CTA), a "labor-management partnership between the Culinary Union and 30 unionized hotel-casinos," has a student-operated restaurant on the campus of Nevada Partners. A $3 million training kitchen opened in October 2004, and a $5.5 million expansion was completed in early 2006 that includes a full-service restaurant and a 12,000-square-foot banquet facility.
The program runs around 5,000 students each year through the program, from food-service hopefuls with no experience to experienced employees developing their skills. Courses are free to members of the union, while the unemployed can take courses with federal or state grants.
CTA is primarily funded -- and designed -- by the casinos, which contribute 3.5 cents per hour for every Culinary worker they employ; the Academy also receives an occasional grant from the federal government. The training is directly targeted at the specific jobs graduates will assume in the casino restaurants, with 20 classifications covered by agreements between the Culinary Union Local 226 and area employers.
CTA runs a free-meal program, which began in 2003, for children one to 18 years of age and people with disabilities; each is entitled to one breakfast and one dinner daily. The meals are delivered to 11 Boys and Girls Clubs and community centers in Las Vegas.
The restaurant, located at 710 W. Lake Mead Blvd. in North Las Vegas, is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s closed through mid-December for reconstruction. Call to see if the hours have changed after it reopens. CTA also offers catering services. Call 702/924-2100 for more information.
