Behind the scenes on opening night at new $7M Esther’s Kitchen — PHOTOS
It’s Friday afternoon at Esther’s Kitchen in downtown Las Vegas. A week earlier, the Italian restaurant, one of the most lauded in the city, had moved from its original quarters next door (snug, to put it charitably) into this center-cut, 10,000-square-foot space built out over a year for $7 million.
This afternoon, about three hours remain until the first of 300 diners on the books walk through the doors on South Main Street. Chef-owner James Trees is running through all 42 dishes (including nine new ones) on the opening night menu as a final check on quality.
Sean O’Hara, the chef de cuisine, and his crew place dishes on two passes hung with copper warming lights. A wood-burning hearth with two grills glows behind. Trees calls the servers over for a pre-shift that’s part pep talk, part menu test.
“Walk me through this,” he tells a server, indicating fegatini chicken liver and foie gras for swiping across crusty sourdough. The server pronounces foie as foy; Trees cheerfully corrects her. “Fwah. Fwah. Fwah la la la la.”
The quizzing continues. “Walk me through the carpaccio. Walk me through the crudo. What are these cheeses? Talk to me about the chopped salad. What’s the difference between anchovies and boquerones (anchovies are salted; boquerones are marinated)? What’s special about our guanciale?” (“It’s made in-house,” the servers answer enthusiastically.)
The line comes in for feedback, too.
Of a tagliatelle tangle with clams, prosciutto, smoked butter and oregano: “Don’t overcoil the pasta,” Trees says. “If you twirl it too tight, it pushes all the sauce out. Don’t overplate the dish. Consistency before innovation.”
Trees tastes the pasta. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, boys!”
Design elements
Trees opened the original Esther’s in 2018 with his sister, Amanda Trees, and the new restaurant is still a family affair. Amanda Trees led the interior design, this time with a budget.
“Let’s face it: When we opened the first Esther’s Kitchen, we had no money,” Amanda Trees says, taking a break from climbing up a ladder for last-minute cleaning and polishing.
“With Esther’s growing up and getting bigger, I wanted it to be more sophisticated,” she continues, “without losing the homey feeling of the original Esther’s, which is a huge challenge with the vast amount of space here.”
Trees’ solution? A sumptuous coziness expressed in wood reclaimed from the original Esther’s, vintage serving platters hung like a group of paintings, wainscoting fashioned from three different woods, walls rendered in sage and gunmetal, quilted chairs in the dining room and bar, and wallpaper that invites inspection to spot the hidden animals.
A digitally created mosaic of menus spanning the life of the restaurant — yellow for the first two years, green after the pandemic — lines the back hallway. At the bar, Trees installed a drinks rail along the windows, one topped with the same walnut cutting board pattern as the pass and the bar top.
Metal fixtures resembling giant pasta twirls or miniature whirlwinds are especially striking throughout the restaurant.
“I think we accomplished quite the feat here,” Trees says, surveying the design. “I’m going to get a meatball in the kitchen right now. I haven’t had a thing to eat all day.”
Made to order
The afternoon proceeds. Chef Trees has continual calls on his attention, but he takes the time to show a young cook how to properly form panzotti pasta tinted pink with beet juice and stuffed with beet, ricotta and goat cheese. The panzotti resemble plump cushions with a scalloped collar.
Trees turns to rolling out pasta sheets, golden with egg yolks, for tagliatelle and other strand pasta. Finished sheets are 17 inches long and micron thin. The cutter divides the sheets into ribbons that Trees wraps around his palm to form a loose coil he drops onto a tray. Each coil is an order. “We make them five at a time,” Trees says. “They’re never refrigerated.”
‘A great night’
It’s time for more pre-shift with servers so the chef can go over entrées and wood-fire pizzas. (Justin Ford, co-owner of Yukon Pizza, plays visiting pizzaiolo this opening night.)
In the kitchen, staff are polishing cutlery; a cook chops greens for the chopped salad. A call goes out for barbacks and bartenders to ready the bar. A server primps in the bathroom. A manager swaps his T-shirt for a collared shirt and jacket.
“We have a lot of VIPs and a lot of regulars. Most of our reservations are going to be regulars,” assistant general manager Gatsby Darwin tells the servers. “Let’s be on it. We’re going to have a great night.”
Trees takes a moment just before 5 p.m. “I could not have done any of this alone. As a team, we are unstoppable,” he says. At 5:01 p.m., Darwin opens the doors, and the first diners enter. Three hundred were on the books at the start of service; by the end of the evening, more than 400 will have been served.
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram and @ItsJLW on X.
