Hollywood Casino’s million-dollar kitchens
The restaurants at the Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway don’t open until February 3, but the shiny, state-of-the-art kitchen facilities are already operating at full speed. The culinary staff — including executive chef James White and his staff, featuring such well-known names as Marshall Roth (last seen at Dog Nuvo), Victor Luna, pastry chef David Rodriguez, Nick Estell (formerly of Julian and Michael Smith), Justin Spencer, Adam Artzer, Russell Bollhoeser and Thomas Mangos, among others — have been working long shifts for weeks. They’re not just getting geared up for opening day, when the casino officially opens its doors, but also training on equipment that a lot of these professional cooks have never seen before.
James White, who admits that all of the culinary equipment in the casino kitchens is very expensive and very technically advanced (including the top-of-the-line, German-made Meiko dishwashing machines, which conserve energy, water and chemicals), has never worked in such a magnificently outfitted kitchen facility in his career. White calls the machines in the kitchen of the casino’s upscale steakhouse, the Final Cut, “Marshall’s toys” because the wildly creative Roth — former executive chef of the Phillips Hotel — is entranced by devices like the searing-hot Plancha grill (“It’s like a flattop on steroids,” says White) or the PolyScience Anti-Griddle, which freezes anything put on top of its surface to minus-30 degrees Fahrenheit. I still can’t understand what practical uses it has, but Roth says he has dozens of ideas.
