A feast fit for royalty

STATELINE - Eighty pounds of Maine lobster. One hundred pounds of halibut. Fresh artichoke hearts flown in from Hawaii.

Cooking for about 400 people, celebrities included, Thursday evening is no tough order for Gustav Mauler, a master chef, consultant and owner of several Las Vegas restaurants.

For the third straight year, Mauler is catering the Thursday event at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course for American Century Championship golfers and staff.

The menu is a gastronomical delight. For an hour and half, appetizers such as caramelized eggplant crostini, savory crab meat cheese cakes and lemon chicken and snow peas on a skewer will be passed around.

The buffet has a range of items: tuna carpaccio, pan-seared Alaskan halibut, a lobster cavatappi, Viennese chicken cutlets and boneless braised angus short ribs.

"Short ribs are really in now," Mauler said. "We marinated the short ribs in burgundy wine for 24 hours."

Mauler is a celebrity chef among celebrities. He helped design kitchens at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and caters about 80 events filled with actors, actresses, other celebrity chefs and heads of state per year. He owns two restaurants in Las Vegas -Sazio at the Orleans Hotel and Casino and Spiedini Italian Restaurant at the Marriott. He also runs Gustav Mauler's Gourmet Cigars.

He was also the personal chef to American Century Championship golfer Donald Trump.

When talking of his dishes, Mauler is like a snowball running down a mountain side. He collects momentum. Side dishes are deconstructed. Flavors and freshness are essential. For the listener, it's tough to keep up but with a taste of the crab cakes, one can tell Mauler knows what he's talking about.

"People like, you know, not so much sauce, lighter foods," he said. "People are always health conscious everywhere now these days."

A crew of 10 is helping Mauler with the dinner. On Wednesday, he came in at 6 a.m., the same time he expects to arrive Thursday. In the kitchen, the chicken cutlets were already battered and the lobster being slightly whacked to get the meat out of its shell.

Nicholas Seavey, an employee at Edgewood, was nearing the end of preparing 400 crab cakes.

"It's the mental wear and tear that gets ya," he said. "A little repetitive."