CELEBRITY JUDGE

Rick Giffen

• 26 years of hotel restaurant culinary management experience
• Opened in excess of forty restaurants world wide
• Trained at the Hotel Intercontinental San Diego while going to culinary school
• Opened the U.S. Grant Hotel as Saucier for Grant Grill which was written up in multiple culinary magazines including Food and Wine
• Youngest Executive Chef in the Sheraton Hotel Chain at Steamboat Springs Colorado by the age of twenty four where I ran five restaurants as well as a banquet center capable of doing sit down dinners up to twelve hundred people
• Served as Western Regional Corporate Chef for Planet Hollywood as well as Culinary Training Director in which I opened thirty seven units and over saw daily operations of the fourteen properties west of the Rockies as well as Marvel Mania and the Official All Star Cafe 
• Executive Chef of the Maxim hotel before it sold to Westin and was renovated
• Regional Corporate Chef for China Grill Properties at Mandalay Bay (Rum Jungle, Red Square, Rock Lobster and China Grill)
• Chef Partner of Café Wasabi which operated on West Sahara as well as inside the Las Vegas Convention Center
• Chef de Cuisine of Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris and oversaw operations of Café Baba Reba as well as opened Strip Burger
• Opened Trader Vic’s at Planet Hollywood Hotel as the Corporate Chef for DW Enterprise

Now I serve as the Executive Chef of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino, BOH staff in excess of 150. 6-8 full service food & beverage outlets seasonally