Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/577402
move away from brand-name restaurants to something smaller and more personal? Krohmer: I serve a lot of people who work on the Strip—people who know good food and want it in a nonpretentious environment. They want to be able to relax, kick back, and enjoy themselves. Folks who work for Robuchon and other Michelin-starred restaurants, who know all the details of great dining, come to my restaurant but don't need all the rhetoric in order to have a good time. Clawson: I knew [from my Colorado restaurant] they didn't want to pay $60 for composed plates, and that really drove my small-plate concept. With that, I could still use quality products and charge under $20 per plate for my food. By reducing the portion, I could afford to sell the plates for less. My recipes and plates were ones that had been signature dishes in other places I had worked, and I quickly found that people loved them here as well. Manchester: From the outset, we decided to cook good raw materials and put our spin and creativity on them, and so far it's been well-received. Downtown is starting a new revolution in dining out in Las Vegas, and for us it's all about doing the food we want to do. Are customers more sophisticated now than they were fve years ago? Choi: Yes. Everyone's using a smartphone, which makes it easier to locate new restaurants and good food. Seventy-fve percent of my customers are under 40 years old; they're younger families with one or two children. With so many other sushi restaurants, you don't taste any rice, you don't taste any Br adley Manchester Chef-owner, Glutton (616 E. Carson Ave., 702-366- 0623; gluttonlv.com) Former gig: Ran Red Rock Resorts' and Cosmopolitan's many food venues Specialty: Wood-fred proteins, a better burger Fun fact: Can make sweetbreads taste like Bufalo wings Strip, every day you have tourists who come in and out, and you never see the same people again. Here we have people who come in three, four times a week and shake my hand and ask, "How's it going?" I wanted to create that feel of what other cities have in Las Vegas and wanted to bring that to my restaurant. Even the two chefs who hadn't worked for one of Vegas's mega-hotel-casinos knew that change was in the wind and wanted to be part of it. David Clawson: I had been cooking in Vail, Colorado, for seven years at my own restaurant and was semiretired. We would go out to eat in Henderson two to three times a week and generally be very unhappy with the choices and how we were spending our money. This went on for about a year before I decided to open my own place. From my time in Colorado, I could defnitely see that people were looking for quality products they weren't getting here. Daniel Krohmer: I had never worked on the Strip and never really had any interest in working on the Strip and serving tourists—not that I have anything against tourists, but I wanted to get to know my customers, learn their faces, and teach them about new products, fsh, and seafood, and get them to try something new, and get them to know me. That's one of the reasons we have an open kitchen. It sounds like all of you were ready for a career change, but how did you know there were customers out there ready to make the