By Steve Friess, Photographs: Tomas Muscionico

ost foodies have no trouble identifying Wolfgang Puck as the most prolific Las Vegas restaurateur, but who comes next? That would be Michael Mina, the 39-year-old Cairo-born celebrity chef who late last year added the chophouse Stripsteak at Mandalay Bay to a Sin City roster that already included Nobhill and Seablue at the MGM Grand and Michael Mina at Bellagio. Mina, raised in rural Washington state, shot to prominence immediately after his graduation from the Culinary Institute of America in New York when he helped open the landmark Aqua in San Francisco in 1991 and reigned there for nine years as executive chef. Just over a decade after that debut, Mina had earned himself prestigious accolades, including a James Beard Foundation award for best California chef, Bon AppétitChef of the Year, and Restaurateur of the Year from the International Food and Beverage Forum.

And the married father of two is not done expanding. He currently owns eight restaurants—four in Vegas, three in California, and one in Atlantic City—and by year's end he plans to open two more at the MGM Grand Detroit. His first book, Michael Mina: The Cookbook (Bulfinch), was published last fall. Mina recently spoke with us about becoming a big-name chef and how he feels about culinary excellence becoming more mainstream and operating restaurants in Las Vegas. And, perhaps most importantly, he divulges one of his greatest recipes.

VEGAS: You appeared on the finale of the third season of Bravo's Top Chef. What do you think about trying to find a great talent through a television program? Do you watch these shows?

MICHAEL MINA: I don't get to watch too much television. But anything that exposes our industry—and exposes the talented people within it—is a good thing. When I told my father I wanted to go to cooking school in 1986, he thought I was out of my mind; the thing these shows have really added to our industry is that people who dream of becoming a chef are aspiring for a much more accepted profession. And the shows that are done properly—which Top Chefis—may discover a great talent, or someone who is watching may push themselves to become a great talent.

When chefs like Emeril Lagasse become huge stars on the Food Network, do they stop paying as much attention to detail?

Everyone is going to do what they think is right in their restaurants. What Emeril has done for our industry is just incredible. People like that have given a lot of us opportunities we wouldn't have gotten otherwise ...

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