Las Vegas Weekly

December 29, 2008 · 2:35 PM

Larry King interview with Criss Angel airs tonight; debut of Sirio Maccioni documentary is shuffled

By Robin Leach

Holly Madison and Criss Angel at LAX.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

The mighty CNN reshuffled its holiday week schedule at the last moment and pulled the Larry King interview with Criss Angel forward from New Year’s Eve. It will now air tonight and feature gal pal Holly Madison in the final 15-minute segment. If you haven’t seen Believe at the Luxor, then you should know that Larry has a cameo appearance announcing the “disappearance of the missing magician.”

At the same time, MGM’s documentary division shuffled its HBO debut of A Table in Heaven, which features world-famous restaurateur Sirio Maccioni and his three sons, the eldest of whom is Mario, who runs both their Cirque and Circo restaurants at the Bellagio. It almost comes across as a reality show as the three brothers are measured up by their 76-year-old father to see who will take over Le Cirque’s legacy.

I stood for Sirio when he and his family received their U.S. citizenship and have known them all for the past 30 years. He’s played host to everybody from the Pope to Sophia Loren to Frank Sinatra, and one night in his Manhattan headquarters played host to three U.S. presidents at once: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan with wife Nancy and Gerald Ford. And Henry Kissinger was at another table. Barbara Walters is still a regular to this day.

Sirio arrived here in Las Vegas over the weekend and will hold court at the Bellagio today. When Steve Wynn recruited him for the first two restaurants of his then Bellagio under construction, Sirio dispatched Elizabeth Blau from the New York restaurant to oversee the Vegas expansion. Elizabeth went on to become our city’s leading restaurant consultant, and in addition to partnering with Iron Chef Kerry Simon at his Luxor and Palms Place restaurants, her husband chef Kim Canteenwalla is the new chef of Steve Wynn’s new Cafe Society restaurant at the just-opened Encore.

The documentary doesn’t hide the behind-the-scenes power struggle between father and sons. Vegas resident Mario, 43, even admits: “It’s totally the Shakespearean struggle -- father and son successor. In order to depose the king, you either have to banish him or assassinate him.” He also admitted that even though the brothers are united in the bid to take over the father’s family empire one day, they now war among themselves jockeying for the position of power over the kingdom. Mario admits, “We step on each other’s toes a lot.” The other two sons are Marco, 40, and 36-year-old Mauro.

Mario, who lives here with wine consultant wife Lauren, their 14-year-old daughter Olivia and twin 11-year-old sons Luca and Nicola, “makes no bones about the fact he’d like to make the Cirque and Circo brands global.” He added: “Now that we have East and West Coast locations, it would be a good idea to go overseas to Asia, Europe and the mid-Orient. There’s a lot of space in this world. Expansion isn’t only the best way for Le Cirque to survive; it’s also the best way for the relationships between the brothers to remain intact. If we opened up another restaurant or two, there would be enough things to do, so we wouldn’t be stepping on each other.”

In the documentary, Sirio comments: “I always told my sons not to go into the restaurant business. My father swore that I was never, ever to go into restaurants or hotels, unless it was with a beautiful woman and I was staying they’re as a guest.”

But when his father was killed during the Second World War, young Sirio was left to take care of his grandmother and younger sister. He was 12 years old, an orphan and needed a job. He started out as a humble potato scrubber and dishwasher by hand and worked his way to the very top of the U.S. social restaurant scene -- and now realizes that time is running out on his control of what’s been widely regarded as America’s No. 1 restaurant for three-plus-decades.

— From Vegas Deluxe

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