For a guy who hated his first taste of salmon, Michael Mina has done all right for himself with the undersea world. He gained national fame as chef de cuisine of Aqua in San Francisco. That high-end fish house was followed by Bellagio's Aqua, MGM Grand's Nobhill, and now the just-opened Seablue, also in the MGM. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, was named Rising Star Chef of '97 by the James Beard Foundation and best California chef in 2002. Oh, and he's over that whole salmon thing now.
You've just opened up a new restaurant called Seablue. That's an odd name for a chop house.
It's a fish restaurant. What I wanted to create was a modern-day, more casual-feeling restaurant. It's got a lot of Mediterranean influence. Everything is either grilled or done in these little Moroccan clay ovens, these tangines.
Tangines?
They look like tents. They're little, round, about 12 inches around, and they're clay, and have a dome on top. They're really good for fish. You cook right on the stove with them, and they keep the fish really moist.
I'm going to show off my scant knowledge of haute cuisine and say that sounds like the papiotte style. Is the fish served in the tangines?
We move it into a bowl, but we bring it to the table with the tangine lids on them.
Gotcha. So Seablue will be a lot different than Aqua?
I did Aqua in '91, and at that time, where food was going was really contemporary, real composed food. But what I wanted to do with this one was to do something that was a lot more casual, real fun. Just kind of focusing on grilling fish on the bone, throwing a great piece of fish, a whole fish, on a wood-burning grill with vinaigrettes and things like that. And what we do here is cook with no butter and no cream.
No butter or cream? How do you stop the fish from becoming jerky?
Olive oil. We make really intense oils; we make all different flavored oils. Say we're doing the cod tangine; we make a real intense mushroom oil and a lot of vegetable juices, real strong mushroom juice and vinegar and different things to sweeten it. So we use all the dimensions: acidity, sweet, spice, and then a lot of oils for the fat content.
OK, so the fish won't be dry. But how do you get fresh fish in the desert?
I get just as good, if not better, fish here than I do in San Francisco. It's all about the market. With Las Vegas, there's a market because there are people here. Purveyors find markets. It's all flown in. Vegas is a market where people are bringing high-quality ingredients here daily now.
With all your awards and talk of you being a wunderkind, you could be the next Emeril. Is this whole idea of celeb chefs a good thing?
I remember when I wanted to go to cooking school and my father said, "Absolutely not, you go to college." Nowadays, you say you're going to cooking school, everybody says it's great, and it's because of the awareness of what's going on with chefs. People have become aware that it can actually be a really good career. So what's happening is that we're getting a better level of people. We're getting well-educated kids coming out of cooking schools, and I think a lot of that has to do with Wolfgang Puck and Emeril.
Look into your crystal ball and tell me what the future holds.
I think simplicity is back in. The restaurants and the chefs that have been able to do the very upscale, contemporary composed food will continue to do well. But I think that nowadays people affiliate with simplicity, with a more casual approach. A little bit less expensive, even if they end up spending the same. My feeling is that things are getting back to the idea of making sure that something is grilled perfectly, has great flavor, is great product and is presented pretty simply.
Seablue opened Oct. 27 in the MGM Grand. Entrees start at $35; open daily, 5:30-10 p.m. 891-3486. Reservations suggested.