Robert Wiedmaier, Marc Forgione, Jose Garces and Alain Allegretti, Iron Chefs among them, prepare for their respective restaurants to open at Revel.
ATLANTIC CITY — To the casual observer, chef and restaurateur Robert Wiedmaier is simply opening a branch of his popular Mussel Bar in Bethesda, Md. next month when Revel debuts Atlantic City’s first new casino in nine years.
Close, but not entirely accurate. Think bigger, the chef says.
“The Mussel Bar [at Revel] is gonna be on steroids,” he tells Atlantic City Weekly. “It isn’t going to be like the one we have in [Bethesda]. It’s going to be a whole stimulation package when you go there.”
Wiedmaier, who owns four restaurants in and around Washington, D.C., is just one of an all-star team of chefs Revel has recruited to operate 14 food outlets in the $2.4 billion resort. He joined four of his culinary colleagues recently at a restaurant preview party presented by Revel in New York City.
The Mussel Bar at Revel will be the first dining room Wiedmaier’s opened outside his home base, and it will be like nothing he’s tackled in the past.
Entertainment will be a key ingredient in the restaurant, he explains, and the room will feature a live stage. Beer will also hold a place of honor in the Mussel Bar.
“We have a beer wall that’s going to house 200 Belgian beers,” he says. Not to worry, beer fans; American brands will also be offered.
Wiedmaier, 51, exudes a vibrant and animated personality when talking about his newest challenge. He admitts he was initially skeptical about opening an Atlantic City dining room when Revel’s restaurant recruiters approached him four years ago.
“I was like, ‘Atlantic City? I haven’t been there in years,’” he says. But then he visited the town and saw that things had changed since his last visit.
And when he saw the plans for Revel, described by CEO Kevin DeSanctis as a luxury cruise ship that never leaves the dock, he quickly booked passage.
Wiedmaier, whose father is from Belgium, describes his newest restaurant as a “Belgian roadhouse” where the food and entertainment — plus an open kitchen loaded with video cameras so guests can see chefs preparing their meals — combine to form a complete entertainment experience.
Although the menu offers nine different mussel dishes — the spicy Thai curry mussels are Wiedmaier’s favorite — the room will offer everything from roasted whole sea bass to oysters to prime rib and porterhouse steak.
Wiedmaier’s room won’t be the only place to grab a steak at Revel. Chef Marc Forgione, one of Revel’s two TV Food Network “Iron Chefs” (Philly-based Jose Garces is the other) will be opening American Cut, which he described as his spin on a “classic steakhouse.”
Just 33, Forgione has helped open many restaurants since launching his kitchen career, but this will be his first venture into the gaming world.
“I’ve never opened a restaurant inside of a casino or a resort that’s opening at the same time,” says Forgione, the 2010 winner of the Next Iron Chef reality series. “It’s insane. I can’t even wrap my head around it.”
Music will also be an important part of his dining room. The same DJ who programs the play lists for his New York City restaurant will create the soundtrack for his Revel dining room.
Since opening just over a year ago, Revel has certainly faced more than its fair share of hardship. One undeniable fact though, the shimmering building with the globe on top has brought a dazzling collection of gastronomic options to the area, including star chef concepts from the likes of Marc Forgione, Jose Garces, Luke Palladino, Alain Allegretti and Robert Wiedmaier.
Jose Garces’ Distrito Cantina brings his Philly-based Guapos Tacos food truck concept to Revel
A plethora of women willing to take their shirts off was not what local artist Kevin McCarty was anticipating when he was approached to participate in an art show benefiting breast cancer.
Tis the season to be drinking seasonal beers and enjoying hearty fare, and Revel is on board with its “Oktoberfeast 2012” scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19-21.
"Each night when we do live music we turn the lights down around 10pm and it turns into a really fun rock ‘n’ roll vibe. It’s a great interactive environment.”
Although designed with chic, urbane sensibility, One is decidedly not a triumph of form over function. Our meal supplied sophisticated, upscale New American, emphasizing grilled fare.
Atlantic City’s newest casino may have ranked eighth out of the 12 in terms of gaming revenue in May and June, but gaming was from the start only part of the total package the property proposed to bring to an Atlantic City entertainment environment yearning to become more diversified.
Amazingly, Atlantic City’s golden age of dining just keeps getting better.
“The club is built vertically, which, from all my years of experience and all the nightclubs I’ve viewed globally, I’ve never seen such a vertical build. "
Plus Clam-A-Rama in Cape May, Drew Toonz and the Album of the Week (Willie Nelson)
On this evening, Azure offered East Coast varietal Wellfleet and another from Washington state. The Wellfleet’s were dense, meaty and creamy while their Pacific relatives, smaller but deeply cupped in shells, offered a smooth, salty hint of their briny home.
An entertainment classic never goes out of style — especially with casinos and the people they attract. That seems to be the booking strategy at several Atlantic City casinos as they scramble to complete their spring and summer lineups. What had already been shaping up to be a strong season for shows is now on the verge of becoming the biggest and most diverse collection of attractions the city has seen since the dice began rolling down the Boardwalk 34 years ago.
Mitch Gorshin’s arrival in Atlantic City nearly two years ago could probably be summed up with the most quoted line from author Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“When I look at Atlantic City, maybe I just see something different,” says DeSanctis. “What I see, when you go out on our Sky Garden or you go out on our deck, that’s sort of the Atlantic City that I think about. We have this incredible geographic location. We have 47 million people within a six-hour drive of this place, and when we think about options from a resort perspective in the Northeast, there really aren’t any. "
To usher in the historic first day for Revel, the property has booked the band The Raveonettes to perform a free show at 9pm at The Social, located near Revel's imaginative casino floor.
From a casual lunch-truck approach to modern Mexican to the finest in French-inspired cuisine, Revel will have the entire dining spectrum covered.
Akron, Ohio rockers The Black Keys have been booked for Revel.
When Revel Entertainment opens Atlantic City’s first new casino resort in nine years on April 2, CEO Kevin DeSanctis will be borrowing an entertainment page right out of his old Mohegan Sun playbook. Revel’s guests can expect to find free entertainment in a venue known as The Social, an open, 700-capacity room smack in the center of the gaming floor.
"It was a little bit of a culture shock coming from Las Vegas, as you can imagine. But then when I actually spent some time [in Atlantic City] and spent some time in competitors' casinos, I was pleasantly surprised and I feel that, you know, being involved in Revel is a very exciting piece of history for Atlantic City and I think will change how people look and perceive the market."
Monday, April 2, was announced as the starting date of an eight-week preview to Atlantic City’s forthcoming $2.4-billion beachfront destination, Revel
Revel reportedly outbid another Atlantic City Casino to book the popular pop rock band, but it’s unlikely they’ll actually christen the new showroom.
As most of America is now already undoubtedly aware, NYC-based Chef Geoffrey Zakarian — culinary lifestyle consultant of Borgata’s sister property The Water Club — was recently named the winner of Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs competition. Beating out a field of cheftestants that included a Murderer’s Row of prestigious personas like Michael Chiarello, Marcus Samuelsson, Zakarian’s Chopped co-host Alex Guarnaschelli and eventually, Elizabeth Faulkner, Zakarian becomes the fourth Iron Chef installed by virtue of an arduous, trial-by-fire system of judgment. (Previous winners were Michael Symon, Marc...
Kevin DeSanctis, Revel CEO: "Clearly we want to go after the type of artist that can draw 5,500 people, and when you get into that genre, if you will, there’s probably only about 20 acts that can do that."
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