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, six feet away from machines.

It's outside on the casino floor.

You get to cook and interact with the guests,

definitely, dinner in a show.

We have a line 24 hours a day.

The bar's constantly full.

The expectations are high.

We're such a popular place.

The prep to keep up with the 24-hour operation

is really difficult.

That's really where my role comes in.

My biggest thing is we cannot run out of anything,

gumbo, pan roast, bouillabaisse,

and 1,000 oysters every day.

[upbeat music]

Hey, guys, my name is Paul Sanchez.

I'm the Specialty Room Chef here at the Oyster Bar

at Palace Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

It's 7:30 in the morning.

First thing I do is I check on my team,

see how the graveyard shift went.

Let's go.

[upbeat music]

This is the Oyster Bar.

Right now, in the morning,

we're on the back end of the graveyard shift.

My cook back here has been here since 11:00 last night.

He'll be outta here at about 9:0 in the morning.

First thing I do when I get on property, I come here,

I check in with these guys to see how the night went.

I'm the Room Chef of this place,

which is why I'm the one that makes sure everything's good.

Good morning, Miss Dina. Good morning.

Morning, Miss Margie. Morning.

Joel, [talks in Spanish]. Yeah, good morning.

Good morning, how's your night?

Good, good, good. Everything good?

We have a very unique style of cooking here.

We have six small kettles

in which we cook each dish in to order.

It usually takes about eight minutes per dish

because it cooks at 600 degrees,

and it really does help with the speed and timing

so that we can really, you know,

get people in, get people out, given that there's a line.

One of the main things I do come in and check,

making sure my tags are with my oysters,

my shellfish tags in every shellfish.

Given that it's livestock by health department rules,

I have to make sure these tags

stay with every live shellfish until we sell the last one.

It has the lot number,

so they have exactly when it was harvested,

when it was pulled, and it has a harvest day.

Given I can only keep it for 17 days per health department,

but, here, I go through eight to 10 cases of oysters a day.

So I have 'em coming in fresh every day.

From here, I'm gonna go around the back.

We're right behind the Oyster Bar line.

If you can see, the casino floor

and all the guests are right out there.

Make sure my shrimp cocktail's good.

We go throw about 25 pounds of shrimp cocktail a day,

our lobster tails as well.

So basically, my guys come in the morning,

and they go into the main walk-in.

They grab all their bases, all their portioned seafood.

They stock up this reach-in to try to make

minimal movements off of this line.

Everything's all about efficiency and rhythm.

So having everything you need here

and stockpiled here so that you're, literally,

coming around the corner, just grabbing what you need,

taking it to the front.

I'll give you a little sneak peek

of our oysters are right here.

These are Louisiana gold banded oysters.

They're banded, and they're pressured

so that they cannot open, they cannot breathe.

They're still alive, so as soon as you pop this band,

it'll, literally, open up just a little bit

to try to breathe, and it makes it so much easier to shuck,

and look at the size of this bad boy.

Most likely, if you're eating oysters here,

it came in that morning.

These shellfish, they're alive.

Yeah. So now, I'm gonna go check

and make sure they have enough inventory

to get through the next five, six hours

'til my prep guys finish their day out

and bring all their stuff down.

This is the kitchen here.

Here in Palace Station,

we have six different restaurants here.

So because the Oyster Bar is so small,

we have limited space.

When you have those places together,

it's a lot easier and ideal to be able to share spaces,,

whether it be dry storages, walk-ins, and stuff like that.

I have all my sauces here, rolled pasta,

trinity, portion crab, sliced lemons, romaines,

two, four, six, eight, 10, 11 cases of my house oyster,

so that's about 1,100.

That'll probably get me through 'til tomorrow at about 1:00.

I've been working at Palace Station for about 13 years.

So I'm very in tune.

I can look and I know.

Okay, I'm gonna have to order this.

I'm gonna have to order that.

That's a lot of what this is,

making sure they have enough to get through the day.

I think I got what I need to get my orders down.

Let's head upstairs so I can change.

[bright music]

So we're in my office.

So I'm gonna look at the forecast,

see what it's looking like in the hotel,

you know, see if I gotta order a little heavier or less.

We aren't just a casino.

We are a hotel as well.

We have over 550 rooms.

I think, there's 575 to be exact.

So I get an email, basically, telling me

the basics of how many people are coming in for the day

in the hotel, and I try to use that to kind of forecast

how much foot traffic we're gonna have here on property.

That way, if there's an abundance

or there's a special event or a convention or something,

I can make sure that I over order.

They usually send it out every four hours.

Today's Wednesday, midweek.

It's not too crazy, but we're still about half capacity,

but looking at the forecast, most likely,

we'll go up about another 100 by the end of the day,

but going into the weekend,

we're definitely gonna be sold out for the weekend.

A lot of restaurants probably wish they had a tool like this

to really help them 'cause it really is.

It really helps me control my food cost.

I'm pretty much prepared for what's gonna go on.

It's about 10:00, 10:15.

I gotta get back and get some prep done.

[upbeat music]

We're at the Oyster Bar prep kitchen.

These are my prep cooks.

Without these guys, none of the stuff goes down downstairs.

These guys, literally, this is where the magic happens.

Without the hard work these guys do,

without the sauces they make, without the diligence they do

to make sure they have everything they do,

that Oyster Bar would be nothing.

Right now, Julian's peeling U-15 shrimp,

which goes in about three or four dishes.

Tasha's over here, portioning lobster.

Bernardo over here, he's dicing chicken up

for chicken gumbo.

These are the only part that's not 24 hours.

What they take down today at about 2:00 or 3:00

will last until tomorrow 2:00 or 3:00.

I'm gonna actually make a bouillabaisse sauce,

which is a tomato saffron stew with onion and celery.

It comes with fish, crab legs, mussels,

clams, lobsters, and big U-15 shrimp.

It's the one dish that really has

pretty much everything we have to offer.

Prep is the most important thing to any kitchen, right?

Being there's only one cook,

if they run out of something at 2:00 in the morning,

and I got a line of 25 people over there,

it's gonna make a big difference.

So while that cooks a little bit,

we're gonna make what we call the bouillabaisse bags.

So in any kitchen, portion control is key, right?

So if I have guys that are gonna give away

a pound of crab legs

and something that should only be eight ounces,

what's that gonna do after they do it 50 times?

That's gonna bring your food costs up, up, up, up.

So we bag these things out to make it,

one, easier for the cook to make each dish,

so it's quick grab and go, and, also, to help make sure that

every dish is exactly the same.

They'll take this down at 3:00.

That's just gonna get 'em to 3:00 tomorrow.

This is about halfway cooked.

We're gonna deglaze with about two gallons of white wine.

Got some diced tomatoes.

Clam base is basically like a clam flavoring, right?

They take clams, and they cook it and reduce it,

and they make a base, which makes it easier for us,

'cause we don't have the time to make stocks like that.

We add about 32 gallons of water.

The great thing about kettle cooking

is that things really don't burn.

Because there's no direct heat,

the bubbling outta this right here,

there's a space about this big, all the way around the side

that water is constantly going around

and the water is so hot, that's what's making it cook,

and when you do that steam style,

it keeps the kettle from burning,

you just get a deep caramelization on things.

So that our final bouillabaisse sauce already done,

now, it's time to pull it out.

We drain 'em into these 400 pans,

just makes it so much easier.

When you have this much sauce,

it's impossible to tilt the skillet

or to reach in there to be able to scoop it out,

and we'll label it up,

and we're gonna pull this back over to the blast chiller,

if you wanna follow me.

This thing chills down all the sauces

down to where it needs to be.

Everything needs to drop down below 40 within four hours.

That has to be down to 70 within 1:00.

Starting to get crazy down with the Oyster Bar,

so I'm gonna take a couple prep items downstairs.

[upbeat music]

How are you doing, man? I'm good.

Dulce, what's up? Hi, what's up?

Everything that gets made up here

has to travel downstairs

so we can get into our big production walk-in.

It's all about making things efficient,

easy, quick for the cooks.

They have a long day, hard stuff,

so the easier it is, the better it is for them.

All right, got some prep down here.

Oyster Bar line's get a little crazy.

It's 12:00, I'm gonna go see if I can, now, go help 'em out.

[upbeat music]

Well, we're in the middle of lunch rush now.

Came up to give my man, Bob, a break for a minute.

So we have two servers and one cook.

The cook cooks all the food and serves it,

and then the servers do the checks.

They take the orders.

They shuck all the oysters and appetizers.

The cook, basically,

he stays banging on the kettles all day.

We have no room back here, but it's pushing it with three.

[Camera Person] Are we in the way right now?

No, not at all. [laughs]

We have our oyster bay over here.

Under here, we have pretty much all of our sauces.

Up top, we have a big ice bay

that we keep full of ice at all times.

This is where we keep all our items

that we put in each dish.

It is very strategic.

Basically, how you're gonna build your dishes

is in the order you go from, right?

You go right to left based off of proteins,

vegetables on top, that way, everything mixes

when you get into the kettle bar.

Right now, I'm gonna make a combo pan roast and sausage,

and then I'm gonna make a bouillabaisse.

So our combo pan roast, that's our bestseller.

It's like a tomato base.

'Cause you got shrimp, crab, and lobster,

it has a thickness, a richness.

It's very creamy.

We're doing lobster, shrimp.

The holy trinity is onions,

celery, green pepper, and red pepper.

Now, add just a little bit of our special seasoning,

get a portion of crab,

add a couple scoops of this Andouille sausage.

They're gonna go to spice number five.

Our spices go from a level of one to 10, right?

A full spoon is a 10, half the spoon is a five,

and we just go based off that.

It's crushed red pepper.

It gives you the spice, but it doesn't have a strong flavor.

Next, I'm gonna get together the bouillabaisse.

We'll grab one of these bouillabaisse bags,

like we made earlier.

We're gonna do some big U-15 shrimp here.

We'll do lobster.

So with that, we come over to the kettle.

I'm gonna go ahead and throw these in like this.

So in a hidden compartment, somewhere on this property,

there's a humongous boiler.

That boiler has steam lines that come up to over here.

You got 600 degree steam pushing through one side,

which goes through the kettle and back down the other side.

It's very unique.

It would have a total different profile

if we use straight fire.

It just wouldn't have the same richness and flavor

because of the reduction

and the temperatures that it really cooks at.

We keep clams and mussels in these bigger ones.

Being that, you know, clams, sometimes,

have dirt on the inside, same with mussels,

we don't want to throw it directly in with the dish.

So we cook it over here on the side,

and then we can add it later.

That way, you don't get that grittiness.

So now that I get those to a certain point,

I'm gonna come back here.

I got brandy, I got white wine,

and then after we add the sauce,

we'll hit it with a little bit of Pernod,

which is like a fennel liqueur,

and then I'll add the bases.

Start with my pan roast.

Ideally, being what this place is and how busy it is,

we have to keep everything close quarters.

You can, literally, just turn right back around, and boom.

Minimal movements means food goes out quicker

means happier customers.

Here's the bouillabaisse,

which you guys see me make earlier upstairs,

and as you see how quick that was,

it's already starting to boil and reduce.

I tell anybody that I hire or any cook,

There's no place like this.

Like most cooks, they're in the back of the house.

Your servers go into the front of the house,

have to deal with the customers.

Like here, it's in your face.

You always feel like you're being watched.

There's 18 eyes on you, and not just that,

people will stop and look just to watch the show

to see how everything's going,

but this place is definitely,

definitely always have eyes on you type of place.

We're gonna top off the bouillabaisse

with our clams and our muscles, and they're done.

So that's ready to serve.

On the top of each check, it'll have a number.

Each seat is numbered from one to 18,

starting here, going all the way around.

Combo pan roast and sausage and a bouillabaisse,

and that's it.

It's painful cleaning these pots, they're super hot.

That's why we run straight cold water.

Trying to clean it without the cold water

is very, very, very dangerous and almost impossible.

You really don't get a chance to stop.

You gotta keep going and going and going and keep pushing.

I have two house gumbos,

and I have three bouillabaisse working right now.

It's always about your next move.

Your first move, what you're doing, should be automated.

Your next move is really what you should be thinking about.

You shouldn't be thinking

about what you're doing in the moment.

It's about what you're doing next.

[Camera Person] Do you ever get confused or lost?

It's always.

You gotta be confused or lost

to come up here and wanna work 10 hours without a break

and with these lovely people.

Two house gumbos,

bouilla-Roast four,

Bouilla-Roast five.

So this is how it goes all night, non-stop,

beginning to end, kettle after kettle, after kettle,

dish after dish after dish.

Now, I gotta get back to doing my job,

making sure these guys have the stuff they need

to run this place.

[gentle music]