So, yeah: In the manic run-up to this issue, one of the restaurants we were bandying about as a prospective Restaurant Awards winner — just as our collective excitement was needling into overdrive about its inspiring underdog story — closed. It was a small but bold, uncompromisingly food-forward place in Henderson called David Clawson Restaurant. (Our feature about it, “ Quiet storm,” ran in the February issue.) Yes, it closed. And? Sure, a restaurant shutting its doors in Las Vegas has all the headline wattage of a traffic jam on the 95, but this one felt a bit different: Run by a four-decade fine-dining veteran, David Clawson Restaurant was adored by foodies and critics — even the brooding, primitive hive mind that is Yelp approached something like unanimous acclaim. So, besides the perfunctory rain of sadface emoji this should and did evoke, its closure also felt, on some astral level, unfair, a violation of what we thought was the cosmic law that dictates if you’re good enough, the world can’t ignore you — that excellence generates its own irresistible magnetism, right? Uh, turns out, maybe not so much when there’s a Pizza Hut next door.
You can chalk up the closure of David Clawson as a lesson about running a business (pick the right location, know your audience, study the market), or civic immaturity (sigh, our fast-food palates and pocketbooks just weren’t ready for suburban fine dining), but I’m not dropping the anecdote to pull down a teachable moment or to jury-rig a quick editorial soapbox — or even because I necessarily want to make any kind of point about how challenging and uncertain and fraught it is to run an independent restaurant in a city whose culinary capital is Olive Garden. And yet! I feel compelled to mention it, because that reality rang repeatedly like a bell as we put this issue together — particularly “ Food for thought” (p. 70). In this feature, we profile five chefs with stellar, Strip-rich resumes who decided to go their own way, daring to launch solo businesses and careers far from the lights of Las Vegas Boulevard. If you think it’s just a process of turning a Strip culinary resume into a dog whistle for starry-eyed investors, think again. Don’t let these chefs’ easygoing smiles fool you. Many tell sturm und drang stories about risk, failure, doubt, false starts and drastic moves. No one is self-congratulatory or complacent, no one feels he or she’s “made it” beyond another day of full, happy customers. Cooking is an art, but feeding people professionally lies somewhere on this side of science and craft — and I suspect beneath the chef’s crisp whites, the collar is blue. Let our 19th annual Restaurant Awards be a celebration of culinary excellence, but also a recognition of the main activity behind every great restaurant: not chopping or frying or plating, but grinding.
Grinding. Maybe you know the feeling — all work, no play in a city spinning like a centrifuge, particularly around the holidays. It’s easy to forget we live in one of the most fun, fascinating cities in the world. Well, before you flatline from exhaustion, be sure to read “ The Bucket List” (p. 51), our answer to the numberless “Vegas must-do” clickbait flotsam clogging up the Internet. Our list (I intone with superciliousness rightfully earned) features our unapologetically (and in some cases, perhaps, disturbingly) enthusiastic expert gotta-do picks from sampling the Strip’s wildness to venturing into the desert wild. And no bucket-kicking at the end, either: If anything, we guarantee ticking off the boxes on this list will make you feel more alive.