Las Vegas Weekly

January 28, 2009 · 1:59 PM

The ultimate rich and famous lifestyle awaits at Steve Wynn’s Encore

By Robin Leach

The hallway to The Spa at the Encore.

Photo: Russell MacMasters

It’s easy to see how casino mogul Steve Wynn spent more than $2 billion on his newest Las Vegas creation the 2,034-room the Encore! It positively purrs with no-limits luxury and lavishness. I feel as if I am writing a script for an episode of my old TV show Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous.

It is a palace of platinum pleasures. It is a resort of royal riches. It is a modern-day wonder of wealth and over-the-top opulence. I toured the restaurants, the spa and back stage at Le Reve just days before the adjoining parent resort the Wynn won a slew of prized Michelin Five-Star awards! If it’s any indication, then the Encore should sweep a new category of 10-Stars next year!

The most breathtaking experience is at the sensational 61,000-square-foot spa. This must be what the entryway to heaven looks like! Two long, softly lit hallowed hallways with Buddha statues at each end set the marvelous mood of incredible inspiration and extraordinary elegance. It truly is an out-of-this-world experience into another time and space -- and the moment a visitor sets out on the jeweled journey, to the 37 treatment rooms, 14 garden suites and four oversized couples suites for massages, body treatments and facials, a unique feeling of calm, relaxation and restoration washes over you.

The pools, jacuzzis, baths and showers are carved from magnificent marble as if Caesar himself was about to arrive for therapy. This truly is the place you need to check in and never leave! Little wonder, then, that nightclub impresario Victor Drai wanted to turn its magnificence into a unique after-hours nighterie! To say it is unlike any other spa in the world would still be an understatement about the highest of quality, and I’ve seen them all! The experience simply transforms any broken-down body into a new work of art!

The Encore also excels in excellence when it comes to fine dining, and Steve Wynn, who had the creative concepts himself, has turned it all into a theatrical experience complete with Frank Sinatra as the background deejay in one of the five new, exciting, star chef restaurants! Before we get to Ol’ Blue Eyes, though, we must note the only restaurant in the world where the shifting walls and ceilings transform every 20 minutes with outside scenic changes to provide the sense of dining in an entirely different place: hence, Switch!

The king of Switch

Marc Poidevin, my longtime friend from our Le Cirque days in New York, is king of the kitchen at Switch, a unique French-inspired steakhouse and seafood restaurant. The meals are truly memorable, even without the amazing decor changes. Absolutely order a chilled seafood tower to start. This is a work of art as seasonal oysters, Alaskan king crab legs, bay scallop ceviche and royal Osetra caviar are presented on crushed ice in a beautifully designed tower topped with carved sea horses. Yes, those are real pearls in between the shells!

A rising star at Wazuzu

One of the rising star experts in Asian cuisine is Jet Tila, and his vibrant, modern Asian bistro Wazuzu serves up the hip foods of Thailand, Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan, plus the tank-to-table specialties of sushi chef Masaru Matsuura. Many of the ancient traditions of his imaginative take on classical Asian cuisines come from when he grew up cooking with his Chinese-Thai grandmother. He’s even serving up nine flavored sakes and nine flavored cocktails. Wazuzu’s name comes from a 16th century painting of nine young dragons, and Wynn designer Roger Thomas built a 27-foot-long 3D crystal dragon comprised of 90,000 Swarovski crystals with 2,400 flickering lights into the decor!

A high Society Cafe

A four-pack of food fanatics has teamed up to run the near round-the-clock Society Cafe. Nightlife king Sean Christie and hospitality impresario Oliver Wharton have partnered with Chef Kim Canteenwalla and his restaurant consultant wife, Elizabeth Blau, for their casual, fun and dynamic approach to the hotspot of hip meals from breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night. Roger Thomas was inspired by Victorian era London and the days of Oscar Wilde for the decor of vibrant colors, fabrics and furnishings with limestone walls and columns with flooring of black, white and lime green linked-chain mosaics. Those outrageous booths and chairs are covered in black crocodile skin! Be it sticky buns or caramelized bananas for breakfast, charred yellowfin tuna sliders and lobster club sandwiches for lunch or double truffle potatoes or creme brulee cheesecake at dinner, be sure to check out the cocktail list of reinvented classics. It’ll start a cocktail craze all over again!

Botero: artistry and theatrics

The flair for art and theater continues at Victor Drai’s Botero. It’s a salute to Colombian artist Fernando Botero and includes two of his humorous larger-than-life sculptures paying homage to “outsized” women and three paintings from the “Circus” series. Victor teamed with chef Mark LoRusso from the private Tableau at the Wynn for this unique seafood and steak restaurant. When good weather arrives, Botero will be an indoor-outdoor attraction that opens onto a 360-degree view of the pools and play area of Victor’s XS nightclub. Mark’s signature entree is Steak Your Way, three different styles of traditional, pepper or chimchurri for the 12-ounce filet, 18-ounce New York strip and 20-ounce bone-in rib eye. Victor has ensured that his favorite whole roasted European loup de mer and olive oil-poached halibut are always available.

Ol’ Blue Eyes’ eatery

Remember how we started this restaurant rundown mentioning the Chairman of the Board? Well, you can hear Frank Sinatra for yourself in Sinatra. Chef Theo Schoenegger, from the famed Four-Star Patina in Los Angeles, has created modern versions of the classic Italian meals that the star-singer always ordered! Said Steve: “For several glorious years, I was associated with Frank Sinatra in both Vegas and Atlantic City. Those moments and memories light up my life even today. This restaurant gives me a delicious opportunity to share Frank with my friends once more. I think he would dig this place.”

It is the only restaurant in the world sanctioned by remaining members of the Sinatra family to bear his name! I go back to New York days with chef Theo when he was at Tony May San Domenico, and he told me that Sinatra’s own grandchildren will be working there as restaurant interns this summer! The Sinatra family worked with Steve on a number of awards on display at the entrance behind a shatterproof glass cabinet. You can check out Sinatra’s Oscar for From Here to Eternity, his Grammy for “Strangers in the Night” and his Emmy for A Man and His Music.

The highlight, though, was actually listening to Frank! Steve and Frank Sinatra Jr. miraculously hunted down an old recording session where, in between takes, Sinatra chatted candidly about all the great composers he’d worked with in his career and why he loved his favorite songs. Steve had the tracks edited, and they now serve as the introductions to the music that plays in the restaurant! It’s deliciously wonderful to close your eyes and it’s as if he’s right in the room telling you about the famous songs!

Check out the antique crystal ship that floats above the bar flanked by two 9-feet-tall obelisks made in Sicily in the 1920s. It’s there as a tribute to Frank’s father, who immigrated to the United States way back then! The wine room, with its 500-bottle collection, can seat 10 for private dinner parties, and, when spring arrives, there’s an outdoor patio that re-creates a Tuscan garden!

It’s not just spas, restaurants and nightclubs that are getting all the attention at the Encore. On the new shopping esplanade, there is the world’s first Rock & Republic boutique, and Beyonce, Rihanna and Cameron Diaz are among its fans, along with John Legend, Steven Tyler and Chace Crawford.

R&R’s biggest fan, though, is Steve Wynn himself. He’d originally put the hip denim brand into his regular hotel clothing store, but phenomenal sales -- including his own purchases -- persuaded him and owner Michael Ball to open the first store right in the Encore. Steve even wore the jeans when he shot the TV commercial atop the Encore! Rock & Republic, which has 1,500 outlets in 86 countries, opens its second store in Los Angeles on Feb. 15.

My Encore tour wouldn’t have been complete without looking in on the new theater where Danny Gans will start his run Feb. 6. We’ll have that report and our advance interview with Danny next week right before his premiere!

I also got caught up with a new behind-the-scenes tour of Le Reve and discovered that the $170 million water spectacular is all literally held together by a $1.99 can of spray adhesive! The show, which is in its fourth year and hitting the 1,500-performance mark, has always undergone tweaks and changes. The latest are the contributions of Dancing With the Stars pro dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy. It was exactly two years ago next month that he started adding incredible dance elements to the mind-blowing spectacle. He added a dramatic paso doble routine, a swan workshop and layered the routines with new dance elements.

Artistic director Brian Burke, who staged Celine Dion’s “A New Day” at Caesars Palace, explained: “Maksim’s work for now is done. We never say finished because we always go on trying to make a show better. We always experiment to make it better. He worked in the flavor of movement for the wedding cake finale and even brought dance direction to the synchronized swimming. Call it water-assisted ballroom dancing!

“Steve has always strived to keep on making it better. It is a constant living piece of breathing art, and we never stop moving forward with new ideas. With a show like this, there is no other way but to try something and see if it works. Sometimes it can take from nine months to one year to add one new element. It’s a long journey but very gratifying.

“It was a great privilege working with Maksim and for all of us at Le Reve to chalk up four years and 1,500 performances. We are thriving more than ever. The redesigned theater renovation with added light and sound that we completed in December ’07 was a technical masterpiece and started a whole new birth of the production. The opening to the show is now where we wanted it for a really long time. People keep returning to see it over and over again, and that is the mark of a success.”

More than 80 athletes and entertainers make up the cast, and everything from the daredevil 82-feet-high dives to the swimming tango performed in red high heels underwater is a pure marvel. The 1.1 million gallons of water in the 26-feet-deep pools is kept at 89 degrees for the swimmers who get their breathing from 422 air outlets. It takes three miles of control tubing under water for them, along with 16 scuba divers using 32 air tanks, to support the swimmers. Additionally, there are 20 miles of underwater cable for the lights.

The underwater work creates special stress for the athletes and their costumes. They use waterproof makeup to ensure that it doesn’t wash off, and the costumes, which take four hours to inspect before every performance, last two weeks before being replaced. The performers go through 1,600 towels a day, and 95 loads of laundry are done nightly using 2,000 ounces of soap a week!

To stay pain free, the performers go through 12,000 ibuprofen pills and sooth aching muscles with 20,000 pounds of ice every 300 shows. They even calculated the amount of adhesive tape and bandages used for every 200 shows: nearly 4 miles worth!

And the $1.99 can of adhesive spray? I asked Brian a silly question as we finished. How the heck do those artists hold on to each other and never seem to slip and slide? He showed me a can of QDA! It was a U.S. military bandaging invention called Tough Skin, a skin adhesive to hold wounded torn skin together. The Le Reve performers spray it on their arms and legs, and the grip holds firm despite the water.

“Yes, you can say our mega-million-dollar show is dependent on a $1.99 can of spray,” Brian laughed. “In the old days, we used sticky Coca-Cola, but thankfully technology has improved now!”

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