Dave Racicot
Chef de Cuisine, Lautrec

For Chef Dave Racicot, it’s all about presentation without boundaries. His is a no holds barred approach to ingredient-driven dishes; a flat-out passion for food.

“If you’re in this profession, and you’re serious about it, it becomes who you are, it becomes you completely” says Racicot, Chef de Cuisine at Nemacolin’s Lautrec restaurant. “I have a hard time separating it from anything else. And that’s because I love it.”

The self-taught chef didn’t always think cooking was cool. His career got its start in an Indiana, Pa., Holiday Inn. He cooked breakfast. He hated it.

“It was terrible,” Racicot says. “I couldn’t understand why anybody wanted to do it.”

Soon, though, he was offered the job as executive chef. Again, he hated the job.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Racicot says. “I was ordering most of my stuff frozen. I didn’t have respect for anything. It was ‘Just get it done.’”

It wasn’t until Racicot moved to Las Vegas, and worked for Spanish and French chefs from whom he learned respect – for food, for the finest ingredients, for locally-grown meat and produce.

“Food just tasting good is not enough. It has to make you think,” he says. “Anybody can make food that tastes good.”

Perhaps, but Racicot just happens to be better at it than most. He and his staff have taken Aqueous from progressive idea to AAA Four-Diamond status in less than 1 year. Now, Racicot has taken over a Four-Diamond restaurant in Lautrec and taken it to AAA Five-Diamond status for 2008. Did Chef Dave choose to leave a good thing unchanged?

“Not even close,” he says. “I’ve pretty much changed everything, from the menu to the thought process.”

Those familiar to Lautrec will recognize the 7-course tasting menu and will be ecstatic over the 17-course Grand Tasting Menu concept. Still, the selections on the menu change. Frequently.

“I’m always working on it,” Racicot says, smiling. “It may change because of something I’ve seen on the way there, or something I’ve heard one of my kids say. It just depends on my mood.”

Food is a family affair. Wife Kelly works as a Restaurant Manager in the resort’s Autumn. The couple has three children. And plenty of hobbies. Right, Dave? You know, the stuff you’re interested in doing outside Lautrec.

He laughs.

"Hobbies? I don’t have any,” Racicot says. “I’m a cook, and that is my hobby.”