Behind The Scenes — Battling Over The Bradley Ogden Story

(*** UPDATE — At the time this story first appeared, it was correct and confirmed by the Caesars Palace P.R. team.  Things have since changed, as I reported in this post in November.  Recently, another site began linking to this piece again.  To make matters worse, it confused Bradley Ogden with Guy Savoy.  For the record, I have NEVER reported that Guy Savoy was closing!  And as Ogden told me in November, he now expects to remain in Caesars through late 2012 ***)

As anyone who was following me on Facebook or Twitter on Friday knows, I announced that Bradley Ogden would be closing its doors on January 2. If you were following John Curtas, you probably saw his announcements go out at almost exactly the same moment. The background on how that happened is actually pretty funny, and demonstrates just what a small, incestuous world the Las Vegas dining scene is. So I figured what the hell, I’ll share it with you.

If you recall, John recently predicted that Bradley Ogden would close in mid-October. Announcing that the restaurant wasn’t long for this world was not, in my opinion, news. Everyone in the industry has been talking about it for months. (And predicting it would be replaced by a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.) What would have made John’s story newsworthy was if he had gotten the date correct. Sadly, he didn’t – and I said as much a few days later in this post.

Now while John and I disagree on just about everything, we do collaborate on projects from time to time – including our book with Max Jacobson, Eating Las Vegas: The 50 Essential Restaurants. And on Friday, we were out with a potential business partner discussing another possible collaboration. Needless to say, we spent much of the day arguing over when Bradley Ogden will be closing, as we hopped from restaurant to restaurant introducing our guest to the town’s best bartenders, chefs, waiters and managers.

At one point we bumped into a mutual friend who has a family member working at Bradley Ogden, and this friend assured John that he was correct and I was wrong. But I still trusted my sources more than theirs, and I offered to bet either of them $20 that I was right. They declined. Then, 15 minutes later, our friend got a text from that family member at Bradley saying the employees been informed of the Jan 2 closing date just a few minutes earlier. Not wanting to get anyone in trouble by leaking confidential information, I called Caesars Palace’s P.R. team, and they confirmed the date – a little shocked that John and I had gotten the information so quickly. And the two rival journalists proceeded to tweet it to the world.

As I’ve often said, the grapevine in this town is very small. And your best information rarely comes from celebrity chefs or public relations specialists. It comes from bartenders, waiters, bar-backs, busboys and line cooks. And to all of those people who have helped me land good stories over the years – THANKS! (In all fairness, I happen to know who John’s source was, and at the time he received his information it was extremely reliable. But things change quickly.)

To my friends at Bradley Ogden, the restaurant will be sadly missed. But I look forward to working with you in the future at other great restaurants.