Las Vegas Weekly

April 22, 2010 · 1:12 PM

Photos: Rick Moonen jumps for joy over Top Chef Masters win

By Robin Leach

Rick Moonen celebrates his victory on Top Chef Masters during his viewing party at RM Seafood in Mandalay Bay on April 21, 2010.

Photo: TVT

After an onscreen verbal fight that nearly came to blows, celebrity chef Rick Moonen of RM Seafood in Mandalay Bay walked away a winner on last night’s Top Chef Masters on Bravo. Fans and guests at the jam-packed restaurant erupted in applause when the judges voted him onto the champions round.

Rick told me: “It was a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun. Very exhausting because we’d finish shopping, prepping, cooking and taping at 2 a.m. and be back up by 7 a.m. to start the process all over again. I was so pleased to have been in the company of five other super chefs over three generations, and the other winner of the night, Johnathan Waxman, was my mentor in New York years ago.”

Next week in Episode 4 of Season 2, six more chefs will compete to continue into the Champions contests. In Episode 5, Rick will be among the super six that includes fellow Mandalay Bay chef Susan Feniger of Border Grill. Rick has pledged his winnings to our Three Square food bank.

In Season 1 of Top Chef Masters, a small slip cost Rick the competition. He told me: “I had to return to redeem myself. I came back to show I could cook and prove the point in a room where there were a lot of egos. It paid off this time.”

Rick battled not just in two cooking competitions, but also against feisty Frenchman Ludo Lefebvre, who was the original chef at the opening of Lavo in the Palazzo. In the first contest last night, the chefs cooked a dish that would complement a flavored Russian vodka drink. Rick chose to make a strawberry shortcake dessert to go with the Forest Fruit cocktail he was given, and after the segment aired, every guest in his Mandalay Bay restaurant last night was served a tasting of it.

Ludo’s first complaint was that The Real Housewives of Orange County would be among the judges in the first challenge voting on their dishes. “They don’t know from good food,” he winced as he prepared a pork dish to go with his sweet vodka cocktail. But he totally lost it in a verbal onslaught when he learned that Rick would get to cook “authentic fish and chips pub fare” in the second challenge, and he had to cook the gourmet version of Irish stew.

Ludo lambasted English pub food, even though it was to have a gourmet interpretation. “It is not French,” he sneered. He railed against the pub judges, although his verbal outbursts, which nearly led to a fistfight, made for great television -- and his eventual loss.

Celebrity chef Mark Peel, a 2010 James Beard Award nominee who worked alongside Wolfgang Puck for the openings of the original Spago restaurant in L.A. and here in Las Vegas at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, also came a cropper (translation: failed) with his Yorkshire Pudding because, as Rick told me, the pub kitchen they all worked in was not only minuscule but also worn down, and Mark could never get his oven to 500 degrees for the batter to rise and brown delicately. The result, as the judges lectured, was a mess!

Rick, who celebrated the screening of the show with the official grand reopening of his upstairs prix-fixe gourmet dining experience, summed up for me: “It was a fantastic and amazing experience. I was honored to be able to return. I am honored to now move on to the Champions. I’m sworn to secrecy about what will happen in the next few weeks, but for now I’m very happy I redeemed myself from the first season’s problem.”

Vegas DeLuxe will be back, as the series continues, to track the future challenges of our two Las Vegas celebrity chefs.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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