Actual email:
4:00pm: Meet with Executive Pastry Chef Lynn Mansel inside the Convention Center. He’ll meet you on the downstairs level next to the sample wedding cakes.
What I read:
4:00pm: Meet with Executive Pastry Chef Lynn Mansel inside the Convention Center. He’ll meet you on the downstairs level next to the sample wedding cakes.
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As you can see, the “cake tasting” that I was extremely excited about was just a figment of my imagination and not something that was actually planned for me to participate in. I swear, when you get the words “sample” and “cake” together in the same sentence, I can’t think straight!
Even though, I didn’t get to try any cake, I was fortunate to meet “Chef Lynn,” the Executive Pastry Chef, who gave Mal and me a fascinating and thorough tour of the Mohegan-owned dining facilities.
A couple of Chef Lynn’s beautiful creations…
Interesting facts about Mohegan Sun’s dining facilities:
- The ballroom serves up to 3,200 people at once.
- 800 meals can be plated in just 35 minutes.
- The Uncas’ Mile is where all of the magic happens! It’s the “behind the scenes” area where food is prepared. It’s a mile long and connects all of the different dining spaces at the casino.
- Mohegan employs about 800 culinary workers.
- Chef Lynn was born and raised in Wales, but has cooked in London and Boston as well as many other cities. He has worked for Mohegan for almost 13 years. Chef Lynn has created multiple piano cakes for Billy Joel and a “Crocodile Rock” cake (crocodile playing a piano) for Elton John. Rumor has it that Elton John still travels with his huge platform shoes (even though he no longer wears them)!
- Fruits and veggies (among other foods) are prepared daily throughout the Uncas Mile.
- Restaurants place orders via computerized system.
- Eek!
- All of the soups are prepared via computerized system as well. A “disk” determines how much of each ingredient, herb, spice, etc. is added to the batch. It’s rather high-tech, huh?
- Each year during the holidays, Chef Lynn and his team build a 28-foot, life-size gingerbread house. He uses a harness and ropes to put around 5,000 gingerbread shingles on the roof! Needless to say, Mal and I will likely visit around the holidays to see this thing in person!
- Mohegan’s Earth Bakery makes 200 dozen bagels per day!
- Pompeii & Caesar, The Longhouse Steaks & Seafood, and Bamboo Forest are three separate restaurants with their own identities and themed-cuisines, but their kitchens are all interconnected for efficiency.
- The busiest restaurant at Mohegan is open 24 hours and serves about 4,000 people per day.
- The Wolf Den is has live music most nights of the week.
- Surrounding the Wolf Den are realistic mechanical wolves created by Disney. The wolves were once so realistic-looking, Mohegan sent them back to Disney to make them look more friendly! Now, the wolves wag their tails, don’t show teeth, and sort of “smile.”
- Behind the huge waterfall at Todd English’s Tuscany is the Mohegan Sun Arena.
- The Mohegan Sun Arena seats up to 10,000 people. Past performers include Billy Joel, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Britney Spears, and Kenny Chesney.
All in all it was a wonderful tour of Mohegan’s facilities. In 90 minutes, I truly felt like I saw it all! It was neat seeing how things work behind the scenes, especially since I don’t always consider how my food gets to my plate.
Many thanks, Chef Lynn! Mal and I really enjoyed meeting you and learning about Mohegan! 
