Kerry Simon, who died Friday, wasn’t afraid to cook to entertain

Kerry Simon, who died Friday, was a serious chef who refused to take himself seriously.

Part of the red-hot New York cooking crowd from the 1980s, Simon hung with the likes of chefs Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio and Charlie Palmer when they were all young and on the move. He was Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s right hand at the Lafayette restaurant when it earned four stars, and went on to help his mentor open more than a dozen restaurants around the world.

But when it came time to step out on his own, Simon turned his back on expressing his creative vision through fine dining and concentrated instead on cooking food that made people happy at mass-market places like Simon Kitchen and Bar at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and Simon LA at the Sofitel Hotel in Los Angeles.

Simon died after a two-year battle with the degenerative neurological disorder MSA, or Multiple System Atrophy. He was 60 years old.

While many chefs of his generation focused on serving artistically arranged morsels in hushed surroundings, Simon — famously dubbed the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Chef” by Rolling Stone magazine — found his calling spinning crowd-pleasing turns on familiar comfort foods such as shrimp cocktails and macaroni and cheese.

He was especially well-known for his ode to junk food sweets — a dessert platter that included bright pink cotton candy, Rice Krispy squares, pink coconut snowballs with chocolate inside, miniature Twinkies, a bag of warm chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies and more.

Simon always seemed to be more interested in making sure his customers were having a good time than that they noticed how creative a cook he was. Though of course, it was the fact that he was so good at the second that allowed him to accomplish the first.

In keeping with that populist notion, he was an early adopter to food television. He appeared twice on “Iron Chef,” losing to Todd English in 2001, and beating Cat Cora in a burger battle in 2005.

After years spent in the peripatetic career of a restaurant opener and rock ‘n’ roll tour chef — he catered for Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue and Lenny Kravitz, among others — Las Vegas was a natural home for him.

As Las Vegas Sun columnist John Katsilometes put it, “He was not the first star chef in Las Vegas … but he was the first to bring a genuine rock ’n’ roll attitude to cuisine in Las Vegas.”

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