Las Vegas’ Most Iconic 24-hour Restaurant is on a Casino Floor
“The Oyster Bar is an 18-seat bar in the middle of the casino. It’s located right next to the pit so you’re literally 6 feet away from the machines.” Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Paul Sanchez, Specialty Room Chef at Oyster Bar in Palace Station Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas. Located in the middle of the casino floor and serving 24 hours a day, a constant prep rotation is required to keep the operation running smoothly.
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00:00The Oyster Bar is an 18-seat bar in the middle of the casino.
00:04It's located right next to the pit,
00:06so you're literally six feet away from machines.
00:09It's outside on the casino floor.
00:11You get to cook and interact with the guests.
00:14Definitely dinner and a show.
00:16We have a line 24 hours a day.
00:18The bar is constantly full.
00:20The expectations are high.
00:22We're such a popular place.
00:23The prep to keep up with the 24-hour operation
00:25is really difficult.
00:27That's really where my role comes in.
00:28My biggest thing is we cannot run out of anything.
00:31Gumbo, pan roast, bouillabaisse,
00:33and a thousand oysters every day.
00:40Hey, guys. My name is Paul Sanchez.
00:42I'm the specialty room chef here at The Oyster Bar
00:44at Palace Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
00:47It's 7.30 in the morning.
00:48First thing I do is I check on my team,
00:50see how the graveyard shift went.
00:51Let's go.
00:57This is The Oyster Bar.
00:58Right now in the morning,
00:59we're on the back end of the graveyard shift.
01:01My cook back here has been here since 11 o'clock last night.
01:04He'll be out of here about 9 o'clock in the morning.
01:07First thing I do when I get on property,
01:09I come here, I check in with these guys,
01:11see how the night went.
01:12I'm the room chef of this place,
01:13which is why I'm the one that makes sure everything's good.
01:16Good morning, Miss Dina.
01:17Good morning.
01:18Morning, Miss Margie.
01:19Morning.
01:20Joel.
01:21How are you?
01:22I'm good. Good morning.
01:23Good morning. How was your night?
01:24Good, good, good.
01:25Everything good?
01:26We have a very unique style of cooking here.
01:28We have six small kettles in which we cook each dish in to order.
01:32It usually takes about eight minutes per dish
01:34because it cooks at 600 degrees,
01:36and it really does help with the speed and timing
01:38so that we can really get people in, get people out,
01:40given that there's a line.
01:41One of the main things I do come in and check,
01:43making sure my tags are with my oysters,
01:45my shellfish tags in every shellfish.
01:48Given that it's livestock, by health department rules,
01:50I have to make sure these tags stay with every live shellfish
01:53until we sell the last one.
01:55It has the lot number so they have exactly when it was harvested,
01:58when it was pulled, and it has a harvest date.
02:00Given I can only keep it for 17 days per health department,
02:03but here I go through eight to ten cases of oysters a day,
02:07so I have them coming in fresh every day.
02:09From here, I'm going to go around the back.
02:10We're right behind the oyster bar line.
02:12If you can see, the casino floor and all the guests are right out there.
02:15Make sure my shrimp cocktail's good.
02:17We go through about 25 pounds of shrimp cocktail a day.
02:20Our lobster tails as well.
02:22So basically, my guys come in the morning,
02:24and they go into the main walk-in.
02:26They grab all their bases, all their portioned seafood.
02:30They stock up this reach-in to try to make minimal movements off of this line.
02:34Everything's all about efficiency and rhythm.
02:37So having everything you need here and stockpiled here
02:40so that you're literally coming around the corner,
02:42just grabbing what you need, taking it to the front.
02:44I'll give you a little sneak peek of how our oysters are right here.
02:47These are Louisiana gold-banded oysters.
02:50They're banded and they're pressured so that they cannot open,
02:52they cannot breathe, they're still alive.
02:54So as soon as you pop this band,
02:56it'll literally open up just a little bit to try to breathe,
02:58and it makes it so much easier to shuck.
03:00Look at the size of this bad boy.
03:02Most likely, if you're eating oysters here,
03:04it came in that morning.
03:05These shellfish, they're alive.
03:07So now I'm going to go check and make sure they have enough inventory
03:09to get through the next five, six hours
03:12till my prep guys finish their day out and bring all their stuff down.
03:15This is the kitchen here.
03:16Here in Palace Station, we have six different restaurants here.
03:19So because the oyster bar is so small, we have limited space.
03:22When you have those places together,
03:24it's a lot easier and ideal to be able to share spaces,
03:26whether it be dry storages, walk-ins, and stuff like that.
03:29I have all my sauces here, rolled pasta,
03:31trinity, portion crab, sliced lemons, romaine,
03:34two, four, six, eight, ten, eleven cases of my house oyster.
03:38So that's about 1,100.
03:40That'll probably get me through till tomorrow at about one o'clock.
03:44I've been working at Palace Station for about 13 years,
03:47so I'm very in tune.
03:48I can look and I know, okay, I'm going to have to order this,
03:51I'm going to have to order that.
03:52That's a lot of what this is,
03:53making sure they have enough to get through the day.
03:55I think I got what I need to get my orders down.
03:57Let's head upstairs so I can change.
04:08So we're in my office.
04:10I'm going to look at the forecast,
04:11see what it's looking like in the hotel,
04:13see if I've got to order a little heavier or less.
04:15We are just a casino.
04:16We're a hotel as well.
04:17We have over 550 rooms.
04:19I think there's 575 to be exact.
04:21So I get an email basically telling me the basics of
04:24how many people are coming in for the day in the hotel,
04:26and I try to use that to kind of forecast
04:29how much foot traffic we're going to have here on property.
04:31That way, if there's an abundance
04:32or there's a special event or a convention or something,
04:34I can make sure that I overorder.
04:36They usually send it out every four hours.
04:38Today's Wednesday, midweek.
04:40It's not too crazy, but we're still about half capacity.
04:43But looking at the forecast,
04:44most likely we'll go up by another 100 by the end of the day.
04:47But going into the weekend,
04:48we're definitely going to be sold out for the weekend.
04:50A lot of restaurants probably wish they had a tool like this
04:53to really help them, because it really is.
04:55It really helps me control my food cost.
04:58I'm pretty much prepared for what's going to go on.
05:00It's about 10, 10.15.
05:01I got to get back and get some prep done.
05:07We're in the Oyster Bar prep kitchen.
05:09These are my prep cooks.
05:10Without these guys, none of the stuff goes down downstairs.
05:13These guys, literally, this is where the magic happens.
05:16Without the hard work these guys do,
05:17without the sauces they make,
05:19without the diligence they do
05:20to make sure they have everything they do,
05:22that Oyster Bar would be nothing.
05:24Right now, Julian's peeling U15 shrimp,
05:26which goes in about three or four dishes.
05:28Tasha's over here portioning lobster.
05:30Bernardo over here, he's dicing chicken up for chicken gumbo.
05:34These are the only part that's not 24 hours.
05:36What they take down today at about 2 or 3 o'clock
05:39will last until tomorrow, 2 or 3 o'clock.
05:41I'm going to actually make a bouillabaisse sauce,
05:43which is a tomato saffron stew with onion and celery.
05:47It comes with fish, crab legs,
05:49mussels, clams, lobsters, and big U15 shrimp.
05:53It's the one dish that really has
05:54pretty much everything we have to offer.
05:56Prep is the most important thing to any kitchen, right?
05:59Being there's only one cook,
06:00if they run out of something at 2 o'clock in the morning
06:03and I got a line of 25 people over there,
06:05it's going to make a big difference.
06:07So while that cooks a little bit,
06:08we're going to make what we call the bouillabaisse bags.
06:10So in any kitchen, portion control is key, right?
06:13So if I have guys who are going to give away
06:16a pound of crab legs and something
06:17that should only be 8 ounces,
06:19what's that going to do after they do it 50 times?
06:21That's going to bring your food cost up, up, up, up.
06:23So we bag these things out to make it, one,
06:25easier for the cook to make each dish
06:27so it's quick grab-and-go,
06:29and also to help make sure that
06:31every dish is exactly the same.
06:32They'll take this down at 3 o'clock.
06:34That's just going to get them to 3 o'clock tomorrow.
06:37This is about halfway cooked.
06:39We're going to deglaze with about 2 gallons of white wine.
06:42Got some diced tomatoes.
06:43Clam base is basically like a clam flavoring, right?
06:46They take clams and they cook it and reduce it
06:49and they make a base, which makes it easier for us
06:52because we don't have the time to make stocks like that.
06:54We add about 32 gallons of water.
06:58The great thing about kettle cooking
07:00is that things really don't burn
07:02because there's no direct heat.
07:03The bubbling out of this right here,
07:05there's a space about this big
07:07all the way around the side.
07:09That water is constantly going around
07:11and the water is so hot.
07:13That's what's making it cook.
07:14And when you do that steam style,
07:16it keeps the kettle from burning.
07:18You just get a deep caramelization on things.
07:20So we got our final bouillabaisse sauce already done.
07:23Now it's time to pull it out.
07:25We drain them in these 400 pans.
07:27It just makes it so much easier
07:28when you have this much sauce.
07:29It's impossible to tilt the skillet
07:32or to reach in there to be able to scoop it out.
07:34We'll label it up.
07:36We're going to pull this back over to the blast chiller
07:38if you want to follow me.
07:39This thing chills down all the sauces
07:41down to where it needs to be.
07:42Everything needs to drop down below 40 within four hours.
07:45It has to be down to 70 within one.
07:48It's starting to get crazy down at the oyster bar
07:50so I'm going to take a couple of prepped items downstairs.
07:55How are you, man?
07:56I'm good.
07:57Dulce!
07:58What's up?
07:59What's up?
08:01Everything that gets made up here
08:03has to travel downstairs
08:04so we can get it into our big production walk-in.
08:06It's all about making things efficient,
08:09easy, quick for the cooks.
08:11They have a long day, hard stuff,
08:13so the easier it is, the better it is for them.
08:15All right, got some prep down here.
08:17Oyster bar lines get a little crazy.
08:19It's 12 o'clock.
08:20I'm going to go see if I can go help them out.
08:27Well, we're in the middle of lunch rush now.
08:30Came up to give my man Bob a break for a minute.
08:33So we have two servers and one cook.
08:35The cook cooks all the food and serves it.
08:37And then the servers do the checks,
08:39they take the orders,
08:40they shuck all the oysters and appetizers.
08:42The cook basically, he stays banging on the kettles all day.
08:45We have no room back here, but it's pushing it with three.
08:48Are we in the way right now?
08:50No, not at all.
08:53We have our oyster bay over here.
08:54Under here, we have pretty much all of our sauces.
08:57Up top, we have a big ice bay
08:58that we keep full of ice at all times.
09:00This is where we keep all our items we put in each dish.
09:03It is very strategic.
09:04Basically, how you're going to build your dishes
09:06is in the order you go from, right?
09:08You go right to left based off of proteins, vegetables on top.
09:10That way, everything mixes
09:12when you get it into the kettle properly.
09:14Right now, I'm going to make a combo pan roast, add sausage,
09:17and then I'm going to make a bouillabaisse.
09:19So our combo pan roast, that's our best seller.
09:21It's like a tomato bisque.
09:23You got shrimp, crab, and lobster.
09:24It has a thickness, a richness.
09:26It's very creamy.
09:27We're doing lobster.
09:31Shrimp.
09:32The holy trinity is onions, celery, green pepper, and red pepper.
09:37Now, just a little bit of our special seasoning.
09:39Get a portion of crab.
09:42Add a couple scoops of this andouille sausage.
09:45They're going to go to spice number five.
09:47Our spices go from a level of one to ten, right?
09:49A full spoon is a ten.
09:51Half the spoon is a five.
09:52And we just go based off that.
09:54It's crushed red pepper.
09:55It gives you the spice, but it doesn't have a strong flavor.
09:59Next, I'm going to get together the bouillabaisse.
10:02Grab one of these bouillabaisse bags like we made earlier.
10:04We're going to do some big U15 shrimp here.
10:07We'll do lobster.
10:08So with that, we come over to the kettle.
10:10I'm going to go ahead and throw these in like this.
10:13So in a hidden compartment somewhere on this property,
10:16there's a humongous boiler.
10:17That boiler has steam lines that come up to over here.
10:20You got 600 degrees steam pushing through one side,
10:23which goes through the kettle and back down the other side.
10:25It's very unique.
10:26It would have a total different profile
10:28if we used straight fire.
10:30It just wouldn't have the same richness and flavor
10:33because of the reduction and the temperature
10:34that it really cooks at.
10:36We keep clams and mussels in these bigger ones.
10:38Being that clams sometimes have dirt on the inside,
10:41same with mussels,
10:42we don't want to throw it directly in with the dish.
10:45So we cook it over here on the side
10:47and then we can add it later.
10:48That way it's not, you don't get that grittiness.
10:50So now that I get those to a certain point,
10:52I'm going to come back here.
10:54I got brandy.
10:55I got white wine.
10:56And then after we add the sauce,
10:57we'll hit it with a little bit of Pernod,
10:59which is like a fennel liqueur.
11:01And then I'll add the bases.
11:03Start with my pan roast.
11:05Ideally being what this place is and how busy it is,
11:08we have to keep everything close quarters.
11:10You can literally just turn right back around and boom.
11:14Minimal movements means food goes out quicker,
11:17means happier customers.
11:19Here's the bouillabaisse,
11:21which you guys see me make earlier upstairs.
11:23And as you see how quick that was,
11:25it's already starting to boil and produce.
11:27I tell anybody that I hire or any cook,
11:29there's no place like this.
11:31Like most cooks, they're in the back of the house.
11:33Your servers go into the front of the house,
11:34have to deal with the customers.
11:36Like here, it's in your face.
11:38You always feel like you're being watched.
11:40There's 18 eyes on you.
11:42Not just that, people will stop and look
11:44just to watch the show to see how everything's going.
11:46But this place is definitely, definitely
11:48always have eyes on you type of place.
11:50We're going to top off the bouillabaisse
11:52with our clams and our mussels.
11:54And we're done. So I'm ready to serve.
11:55On the top of each tank, it'll have a number.
11:57Each seat is numbered from 1 to 18,
11:59starting here, going all the way around.
12:01Combo pan roast that sausage,
12:02and a bouillabaisse, and that's it.
12:04It's painful cleaning these pots.
12:06They're super hot.
12:07That's why we run straight cold water.
12:09Trying to clean it without the cold water
12:11is very, very, very dangerous
12:13and almost impossible.
12:15You really don't get a chance to stop.
12:17You got to keep going and going and going
12:19and keep pushing.
12:20I have two house gumbos
12:23and I have three bouillabaisse
12:25working right now.
12:27It's always about your next move.
12:29Your first move, what you're doing
12:31should be automated.
12:33Your next move is really what
12:35you should be thinking about.
12:36You shouldn't be thinking about
12:38what you're doing in the moment.
12:39It's about what you're doing next.
12:43Always.
12:45You got to be confused or lost to come up here
12:47and want to work 10 hours without a break
12:49and with these lovely people.
12:51Two house gumbos, bouillabaisse four,
12:53bouillabaisse five.
12:55So, this is how it goes
12:57all night, non-stop.
12:59Beginning to end, kettle after kettle after kettle,
13:01dish after dish after dish.
13:03Now I got to get back to doing my job,
13:05making sure these guys have the stuff they need to run this place.