Kerry Simon is executive chef at Simon at Palms Place. He previously operated Simon Kitchen and Bar at the Hard Rock Las Vegas.
You've made some serious moves lately. How do new developments keep things fresh for you as a chef and restaurateur?
Kerry Simon: Change is always good, and finding home is also good. It's nice to be moving around a bit, finding the right people to do things with. There have been really big changes in Vegas in general. It’s a breath of fresh air to be working with the Maloofs (at the Palms). George really built me out a great restaurant, and to be so involved in it is spectacular.
How different did you want the Palms restaurant to be from Simon at the Hard Rock?
I just thought it was the next stop. I spent a lot of time looking at plans over and over. I really wanted a green restaurant, but also something that if you look at it, you can see it’s a Kerry Simon restaurant. It has a sushi bar, a fireplace, the pool area, and a lot of stone behind the bar. I couldn’t ask for anything better.
When you're starting over, do you feel pressure to please the following you've built at other restaurants?
I am in a business that is already very challenging. Working with the Maloofs and with all the promotion they do, it’s pretty incredible. But I'm always challenging myself. I can take nothing for granted, and that goes for the client as well. With this restaurant, we wanted to do what Simon was but make it new and improved. In a way, it was like growing up.
As far as the menu, is it tough to pull off the balance of presenting what your audience is calling for while bringing in something new?
Yes. As soon as I pull something off the menu that’s been around for a while, they order it. They complain. But we're ready to do anything. If I take the sea trout tandoori off, I’m still prepared to make it. We have this California pizza with tuna, crab, a wasabi base on it, and it's not on the menu now but people order it so we’re ready for it. At the end of the day, it's not how the menu is. The food has to be great, and we have to be ready to please people.
Your Sunday brunch is developing quite a following and has an attitude all its own. What is the genesis of bringing back such an old tradition?
Well I really thought Vegas needed a brunch, I felt like in all major cities there’s places that do brunch, and what a place for it: in front of the beautiful pool. But it had to be reinvented. We had to figure out how to do it in a unique and interesting way. So we get everybody together and have meetings, really intense meetings, trying to figure out the whole thing. What are the stations? What’s the marketing going to be? We get it perfect and then it's unleashed. People are coming in pajamas, there are nurse's outfit, girls in lingerie, and the bloody mary bar. Now everybody is doing a bloody mary bar. Every time I pick up the paper I see an ad for a new brunch with bloody marys, mimosas. I didn’t invent it. But what we did do is create something fun, an escape for you and your friends. It just clicked. But we didn't just do it. It's busy now, but that's a process, a long process to figure it out and then do all the hard work.
CatHouse is an entirely different experience. How would you describe that scene?
Cathouse started out as more European and it's gone through zillions of changes. It's really just a constant growth there. It's just different, a different kind of mindset. We fooled around with different stuff to see what works and what doesn’t, and at the end of the day it's a lot of steak and potatoes.
You've had multiple experiences on and just off the Strip. Is there a big difference running a restaurant from a place like Luxor to a place like the Palms?
Who is the operator? That's really the question you’re asking. When you work with Steve Wynn, he has this thing in his head already. He has visualized it differently than other people and he knows what he wants. It's much different than what you step into when you're doing your own thing. You have to create a vision for a restaurant that, really, it could be anywhere, but it has to say this is us. What’s the feeling of that? It's me ripping things out of magazines for a bunch of years, gathering all this info then trying to decipher what we’re gonna do with it.
You've been in Vegas long enough to appreciate the unique problems the city and restaurants here are facing today. How do you think the economy will affect the development of Vegas as a great dining destination?
I think it's gonna be pretty solid. First off, it feels like things are springing back a little bit. Casinos can withstand certain things. Certain restaurants will never have a hard time. There are so many talented chefs to continue. Restaurants which are not taken seriously may fall to the wayside. I think people are looking for ... not a deal, but what they’re getting for their money. It seems what they eat and drink tends to be a little more average priced.
Can you predict what the restaurant scene will look like in the next few years?
It's a tricky question. Pricing has changed. Two weeks ago the Palms had one of highest room prices in Vegas. It's hard to predict what will happen next. I'm open to going back to what Vegas was, more approachable for everybody, because it seemed like it was getting up there. Vegas should be more approachable. That’s where I’m at already. I want to be able to have people come and enjoy themselves. That's what it's all about. I never wanted to be in any way in that (higher) price range. But if you buy prime meat in my restaurant, you're still paying for it. Meat is expensive. But I think it's bouncing back. This is going to turn into a positive. Eventually it will stabilize and all move forward. Vegas is the same attraction it always was.
Despite the fact that celebrity chef Kerry Simon is a real easygoing guy and he's been happy to talk to us on several occasions, our much delayed debut at his eponymous Palms Place restaurant was a little flat. Don't get me wrong; he's a very busy dude and we are far from the tourist diner who expects to see every famous chef in the kitchen. It wasn't that. And it wasn't the menu, which looks to be a tasty hodgepodge of steakhouse/sushi/Californian cuisine. And it certainly isn't the decor, since the restaurant is wrapped by a swanky, cabana-laden pool, accented by a neat sushi bar, a fireplace, and a super-mod wooden and white, space lounge. It's a cool room.
