Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/498649
photography by sabin orr In fact, explains Roger Thomas, Executive Vice President of Design for Wynn Design and Development, the restaurant has evolved into the playful room diners experience today. And the new décor demanded dishes that are as colorful and effervescent as the space itself. "The original had a more formal feeling. It was the exclusive enclave of the cognoscenti at Wynn, tucked away and made exclusively for them." While the pool view of the terrace hinted at gar- den informality, the materials—a carpeted floor in a large floral grid and wood finished with a textured paint—gave it a patina of age and dignity. The Louis XVI dining chairs were upholstered with a heavy fringe, and the windows were formally draped. "That vocabulary reminds us more of French formality than fun," Thomas says. By the time Steve Wynn decided to perk up the room—open for breakfast, lunch, and week- end brunch—in the summer of 2012, the habits of Las Vegas diners had changed. Comfort was now the priority. Always a proponent of keeping the best things in the room, Wynn and the design team retained the bones of the place—the architecture, the bar with its rope-textured front. But off came the heavy drapes and out went the carpet, replaced by a translucent bronze solar shade that disappears into the ceiling when not in use and a checkerboard marble floor, its slightly more live acoustics creating just the right amount of convivial buzz in the room—for all the resorts' guests. The original color of the windows would stay, however. Years earlier, Thomas sampled the green of the outdoor treillage at Petit Trianon, on the grounds of the palace of Versailles, and that is the very particular green you will see today. The ceiling was livened up with a saturated bumblebee yellow. What guests take away is a rich but open escape that feels as if they're dining right by the pool—which one can actually do on the terrace immediately outside—but with all the niceties of an indoor space. And before guests could fall into a Louis XVI period piece, Thomas wiped away the formal- ity of those chairs with a masked face on the back of each one, painted by Kazumi Yoshida and printed on Clarence House fabric that he had been saving for just such an occasion. "It's a bit of comic relief in the room, provided as a foil for formality and classic architecture," Thomas says. Now filled with Chef Zlatos's lively dishes, restaurant and cuisine work in colorful concert to give you a sense of endless summer. n clockwise from top left: Sweet pea soup around a dome of blue crab, lemon crème, fresh mint, and baby carrots; creamy Burrata—which appears for spring with smoked prosciutto, sugar snap peas, candied pecans, arugula, and aged balsamic; the new Açai Booster, with berries, banana, homemade granola, and orange blossom honey. 46 Wynn FooD FoR THougHT