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Eater
22-05-2025
- Eater
The Eater Guide to Road Trippin' Nevada
Nevada became a state in 1864 — months before a saloon in a town called Genoa posted a wanted sign for Abraham Lincoln's then-unknown assassin, four years before the transcontinental railroad stitched the state to the rest of the country, and five years before the first major silver strike in the U.S. sparked a rush that built Virginia City nearly overnight. Over the next 50 years, towns flickered to life and blinked out of existence, chasing the veins of silver and metal some 200 feet beneath the desert's hard-packed earth — land long inhabited by Indigenous communities of the Great Basin, like the Paiute and Shoshone, and the Washoe near Lake Tahoe. The boom-and-bust rhythm shaped not just the state's economy but its identity — a place built on promise, reinvention, and stories that survived long after the mines ran dry. It's easy to picture Nevada as a stretch of dusty nothing between Las Vegas and Reno. But the state is more than its desert scrub. There are the spire-like slot canyons of Cathedral Gorge, the snowy ranges of the Ruby Mountains, and the stargazing solitude of Great Basin National Park. Serpentine highways weave past alien-themed diners, larger-than-life cinderblock women, and Day-Glo boulders stacked like cairns. The surreal lives here — tucked just off the next exit. And beyond the haunted hotel rooms and Wild West souvenir shops, there is, and has always been, the grounding presence of a dining room table. The boom-and-bust rhythm shaped not just the state's economy but its identity — a place built on promise, reinvention, and stories that survived long after the mines ran dry. In early Virginia City, saloons evolved from watering holes into community hubs, where mahogany bartops ferried slippery mugs of ale with the same rapidity as the conversation surrounding it. In the middle of the state, where one of the world's largest Basque communities put down roots, traditional restaurants still serve family-style courses of charbroiled steaks and roasted salmon to communal tables. At the southern tip, Las Vegas's most coveted seat is at an 18-stool countertop at the Oyster Bar, where round-the-clock lines wait for thick, creamy pan roasts brimming with seafood. And even today, in a town of just a few dozen residents, one restaurant draws visitors from around the world — strangers who lean over flying saucer-shaped burgers and pies to trade stories of strange lights in the night sky. There's nothing more inherently Nevadan than the open road. Once braved by wagon, then rail, and now car, it's still the best way to cross the state. So take to its desert highways and come hungry. Whether you seek idyllic desert landscapes, the kind of art that only a dust-addled mind could divine, or meals that are worth driving a few hundred miles to enjoy, Nevada has something waiting — and it's worth the drive. —Janna Karel, Eater, editor, Southern California/Southwest Credits
Eater
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
The Cult of Las Vegas's Oyster Bar
What's the toughest table to get in Las Vegas? Maybe it's Mother Wolf, that juggernaut of modern Roman cuisine inside the Fontainebleau, or Stubborn Seed at Resorts World, the latest opening from a Top Chef winner who seems to actually be making good on his potential. One would be forgiven for guessing an old standby like Joël Robuchon, or a newcomer like Gjelina at the Venetian, a Los Angeles export grilling yu choy and other sundry dishes that embody California cuisine. But you would be way, way off. The toughest seat is actually the 24-hour Palace Station Oyster Bar, where devotees are queued up at all hours of the day and night to taste its Cajun- and Creole-style seafood dishes. The 18-seat Oyster Bar, which turns 30 years old this fall, has a fervent cult following and there are no reservations. There's also nothing exclusive about access, nor is there a dress code: It's literally in the middle of the casino floor, where the slots bisect the table games. And although it's certainly not cheap (it's serving seafood, after all), it's not cost-prohibitive, meaning its customers are a mix of tourists and locals. Las Vegas is a city rife with contradictions, so it's no surprise that its most exclusive restaurant is simultaneously one of its most inclusive. It also sits within one of Vegas's most populist casinos, on an expanse of land just west of I-15 on Sahara Avenue, awkwardly positioned between the Strip and Downtown. The location, simultaneously inconvenient and yet a short drive from nearly everything, embodies the term 'neither here nor there.' It's a spot that's so seemingly unremarkable, in fact, that its decades of success don't make much sense to the casual observer. ('People thought he was crazy,' says Lorenzo Fertitta, son of Station Casinos founder Frank Fertitta Jr., referring to the location of his father's venture.) Hopefully, a picture is beginning to come together. You're in Vegas, hungry in the infernal heat, dodging F1 construction and checking out whatever ads or emojis happen to be emblazoned on the Sphere that day. Walking into Palace Station, there's the familiar waft of cigarette smoke. Dragon Link and other creature-themed slot machines call out ( 'Buffaloooooo!' ), but there's a hint of something else floating in the air — tomatoes, cream and... is that sherry? The aromas intensify as you go deeper into the belly of the building. The first thing you'll notice is the marquee: 'Oyster Bar 24/7,' with a little anchor on the side. The faux chalkboard lettering on a half-octagon that wraps around above the bar has a distinctly '90s Bar Louie feel, but don't let that dissuade you. Past the stanchions cordoning off Oyster Bar from the rest of the casino is a long line of people on one side, like theater patrons waiting for the latest hot off-Broadway show. Behind the bar, there is an entrancing performance: Cooks and servers rhythmically rotate behind billowing clouds of steam, pouring drinks and arranging oysters in circles atop crushed ice. Oyster Bar's most popular dish is not, in fact, the fat Gulf oysters as big as computer mice, but rather the pan roast. And while plenty of people get oysters or a shrimp cocktail on the side, or maybe an order of the herbaceous gumbo or heady etouffee, most people come for the pan roast. Oyster Bar goes through 33,000 gallons of it annually. The counterintuitively named dish, which may originate with Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York, conjures an image of a chicken in a pan, roasting in the oven. Put this out of your head. Instead, imagine a bisque — a thick, creamy, shellfish-based seafood soup, a rustic base for huge floating hunks of seafood. Anchored by tomatoes and cream, girded with an aromatic sofrito that tastes of the holy trinity of Cajun cooking, the pan roast has an undertone of garlic and a nutty fruitiness, akin to brandy or fortified wine. It should be eaten with a spoon, but some larger chunks of shrimp, crab, and lobster may need to be forked out. Served with white rice and a basic chunk of bread, the pan roast can also be eaten with a side of noodles. Rice is the correct choice, however, as the surface tension allows the base of the roast to envelop the rice, creating a creamy crustacean porridge. Let's be clear — this is not revelatory fine dining. I remember, after first having the pan roast, feeling even slightly underwhelmed. At the end of the day, it's 'a jazzed-up bisque,' in the words of specialty cook Bob Higdon, who's worked at Oyster Bar for the last 25 years and has a seemingly endless repertoire of droll quips and one-liners he delivers to patrons. But a day later, I felt an unfamiliar tug. The taste had almost instantly grown on me, like I'd been eating it for years. And now, sitting here writing this piece, the slow burn has grown into a bonfire: I want to go back. I can't wait to go back. 'I tell people all the time,' Higdon says. 'I said, 'You're not going to hate me now, you're going to hate me next week when you're sitting at home and get that flavor in the back of your mouth.'' And he's right. That's exactly what happened. Beyond the pan roast, there are a few things you need to know when dining at Oyster Bar. First, you'll be asked to select a spice level, 10 being the highest. Most people who like spicy food can probably swing a 7 or 8 without feeling like they've made a grave mistake. Otherwise, stick to a 4. Spice can always be added in the form of the off-menu lava sauce — a tangy, chunky mixture of hot peppers that you can feel burning your mouth before the spoon even reaches your lips. You have to ask for it specifically, and it's only for showoffs and true masochists. Second, the entrees are a huge amount of food, especially with the rice. Finishing a pan roast solo is a serious undertaking. The leftovers are worth keeping if your hotel room has a microwave and/or fridge. Third, don't bring the kids. Oyster Bar is literally a bar, and they can't seat anyone under 21. Also, you won't get the exact recipe, so don't ask. ('You don't ask the Colonel for 11 spices,' says Higdon.) And finally, be ready to wait. The story of the wait, and of Oyster Bar, starts in 1976 with Fertitta Jr., who discovered a demographic that had not fully been tapped into: a casino that catered to Las Vegas locals, not tourists. (Indeed, he opened as simply The Casino.) Oyster Bar came along in October 1995. While there may have been a Cajun joint or two around town at the time, this particular style of New Orleans cooking hadn't quite taken hold in Vegas. Emeril Lagasse, he of the onomatopoetic catchphrase, didn't open New Orleans Fish House at MGM Grand until the following month. Today, there are plenty of Cajun options in Vegas, mostly off-Strip, mostly of the crawfish or seafood-boil variety. In the summer of 2000, something had changed. 'That's when I noticed the lines.' Oyster Bar was opened, in part, as an apparent nod to Fertitta Jr.'s origins in southeastern Texas, near the Louisiana border. 'That kind of food is very prominent around there,' says Dave Horn, general manager of Durango casino and former GM of Palace Station. 'I think it's a real easy tie-in that they said, 'Okay, you know what? We should bring this here.'' Interest in the restaurant ramped up slowly. 'It was a cult following at first,' says Horn, who was a valet attendant for the casino at the time. He posits that Oyster Bar's rise in popularity coincided with the rise of online culture in the mid-1990s. 'That's when you have the internet start to come alive,' Horn recalls. '[There's] that five-year period where people can start to talk about things on the internet or Palace Station can put something out there.' By the time Horn came back for his second stint at Palace Station in the summer of 2000, something had changed. 'That's when I noticed the lines,' he says. The line is an amalgamation of different cities, states, and countries, where folks of every shape and size stand and wait for one of those 18 coveted seats at the counter. The line can take as long as five hours to get through ('Super Bowl weekend a couple years ago,' says Higdon). The line is, in some ways, the defining characteristic of the Oyster Bar experience. A blessing and a curse. Okay, it's mostly a curse. Lines are unpleasant. But decadeslong Oyster Bar customers seem to think it's worth the wait — or, at the very least, they've convinced themselves of that truth. Gina Bruno, a flight attendant visiting from the Washington, D.C., area, has been coming here for the past 20 years. 'It's like a camaraderie,' she says. 'You stand in line, you talk about what you're gonna eat, and it's just a whole experience.' But she is also frank about the line, which she and her dining companions had been standing in for about two hours. 'It sucks,' she says, laughing. 'It's worth the wait,' says Barry Bryant, who works in entertainment in Atlanta. Bryant, who also has been coming to Oyster Bar for two decades, says he makes the trip every time he comes to Las Vegas. 'It's not too fancy, it's casual and it's different — it hits different.' Anitra Baker has been a fan for even longer — 25 years. She typically visits from California every year on her birthday. 'You can't get the same taste anywhere else,' she says. 'I can't find it anywhere else. I literally come all the way from San Francisco to get it.' 'I can't find it anywhere else. I literally come all the way from San Francisco to get it.' I've been to some restaurants where there's a vague feeling that the wait was somewhat manufactured, or intentional. As in, staff could have done more food prep or planning ahead of time if they'd wanted to, in order to cut down on wait times. That's not the case here. Oyster Bar cooks move as quickly as possible, turning all the seats at a rate that approaches once per hour, 24 hours a day. With only 18 people being served at a time, each pan roast, gumbo, or bouillabaisse taking around 8 to 10 minutes to cook, and just six jacketed steam kettles to prepare them, the cooks are limited in how quickly they can serve those customers. The kettles resemble small woks and sit in a row behind the counter in a setup that looks literally steampunk — tubes and pipes wriggling out of the counter to spew cold water or feed jets of hot steam into the containers. There are numerous advantages to cooking with these kettles: being able to boil cold water in about 30 seconds, not having to constantly wash pots and pans, and keeping the kitchen cooler because there's no open flame. But the biggest advantage is the evenness and consistency of the temperature. 'You can let your stuff reduce without it burning the sauces,' Higdon explains. 'The whole surface of our kettle is the same temperature. It doesn't have a hot spot.' No hot spots mean uniform cooking, which means you don't get some pieces of seafood that are perfectly cooked and some that are rubbery and overdone. And no broken sauces, either. 'If you've ever had a scorched cream sauce, you know that's not good stuff,' he says. The cooking method also provides a bit of theatrics, which has been another part of Oyster Bar's lasting appeal. Ordering, preparing, plating, and consuming all happen within a couple feet of each other. 'There's no other setting you get like that besides hibachi, [where] you get to interact with your cook and they cook right in front of you,' says Paul Sanchez, the chef that currently oversees Oyster Bar. Sanchez notes that it takes a special kind of cook to make it work. 'I fell in love with it right away,' he says. 'The style of cooking, being able to talk to people from all across the world, interacting with guests. But a lot of cooks, they don't like that. You know, that's why they're back of the house.' Nothing has been able to dethrone the original Oyster Bar. Las Vegas is a place heavy on mimicry. When something in the city works, particularly in the food arena, imitators pop up left and right. And while that's certainly happened with Oyster Bar — even in the form of places opened down the street by cooks who quite literally used to work at Oyster Bar — nothing has been able to dethrone the original. (Station Casinos also has four other Oyster Bars at its different properties. I've heard they don't match the charm of the original.) Sanchez explains it this way: 'My theory is, in a chef's mind, you want to make things better, always want to take it to the next level. Well, here, it's not about taking it to the next level. It's about keeping the consistency... If somebody comes here from Hawai'i once a year, and this is the place to go, they come and order a pan roast. Next time they come, they want that exact same flavor profile.' In other words, nostalgia and sense memory are powerful aspects of food. And when people fall in love, they don't want a better, flashier version. They want what they had. 'If you try to recreate [the pan roast] and put it somewhere else, it won't work,' says chef David Chang, who has been beating the Oyster Bar drum for years. Chang estimates he's eaten there between 30 and 40 times. Trying to replicate the exact chemistry of a place like that, he says, is a futile exercise. 'Sometimes a restaurant like that works because it's the perfect balance of ingredients, of everything. From the ambience to the cigarettes in the air, everything works together.' 'I don't describe it,' Chang says. 'I just say, 'Trust the process and you'll be so happy.'' Even if that means waiting for an hour or two. Or three. Most of the day, there's no getting around the wait. There is one workaround — well, it's not exactly a workaround, but a path to a shorter wait. If you want a pan roast first thing in the morning, and let's face it, you might not after a night of Jägerbombs, try rolling in around 7 or 8 a.m. The line will likely be much shorter. But aside from that, the best bet is to come as a crew and rotate people in and out of the line. Someone waits while the other people go gamble, go to the sportsbook, or mall-walk the casino floor. Horn even recalls seeing people put in food orders while waiting in line, just to tide them over: 'They'd literally put in a pizza and a drink order... In my head I'm thinking, '[These are] people eating and drinking in the line to wait for a food and drink product .'' But the best thing to do is to embrace it. Give in to it. Come hungry and ready to wait, safe in the knowledge that the entire sensory experience of the Oyster Bar — the visuals of the cooking, the smells of the steaming seafood, the electronic din of spinning slot machines, the sardonic one-liners coming out of Chef Bob's mouth — all combine together in a way that is sui generis in the restaurant world. Like the symphony inside the pan roast itself, there's nothing quite like it. Sign up for our newsletter.
Boston Globe
26-02-2025
- Boston Globe
Roommate of woman who was allegedly raped by Uber driver saw man in backseat of SUV, police report says
She said she saw movement in the back seat when she went outside and began knocking on the window. Advertisement 'The witness stated she then made eye contact with a male who was inside of the vehicle,' the report said. 'The witness stated as she went inside the residence, she observed the male exit the rear passenger side door and walk around in front of the vehicle and into the driver's seat.' The roommate ran back inside and told police she was about to call 911 when the woman came in and disclosed what happened. At the time, the victim's 'dress was 'torn' open in the front,' the report said. 'She stated when the victim left [earlier to go out], she had pinned the front of her dress.' Police also spoke with the woman at her home and again at a Boston hospital, according to the report. She said the driver, later identified as Hermann Ngoufack Jiokeng, 39, picked her up around 11:48 p.m. Saturday outside Loco Taqueria and Oyster Bar on West Broadway. The woman initially said the driver stopped during the trip when another car pulled up beside his. She told police two men got out of the second vehicle and dragged her out of the Uber, placing her in their car where they raped her, the report said. 'The victim stated they gave her something and told her 'to clean up,'' the report said. 'Then she was dropped off' at her residence. Advertisement During a subsequent interview, she said she was intoxicated when she left the restaurant and that everything seemed fine until the Uber was just outside her residence. 'The victim stated the driver of the Uber climbed into the back seat and pinned her hands down on the seat,' the report said. 'The victim stated a second person 'came out of nowhere' and also raped her. ... The victim stated she thinks the second person was on foot prior to entering the vehicle and it looked like the two suspects knew each other.' She told investigators she 'knows the Uber driver raped her and believed that the second individual in the vehicle at least watched the assault take place,' the report said. 'The victim stated she had consumed a lot of alcohol on the prior date and has started to question some of the details she has provided.' However, the woman clearly recalled being raped, telling police she knew an assault occurred 'because she 'felt it,' remembered the assault, and based on how her body felt after the incident.' Jiokeng was identified as the Uber driver based on the woman's receipt for the trip, police said. He was arrested Sunday morning outside his Hobart Street address in Brighton. He later waived his Miranda rights and agreed to speak with police, the report said. He told police the woman was 'highly intoxicated' in his vehicle and appeared to nod off at times, officials said. 'The suspect stated upon their arrival to the victim's destination he did enter the back seat of his vehicle where the victim was seated,' the report said. 'The suspect stated while inside the back seat with the victim he recalled a person knocking on the rear window of the vehicle. When asked, the suspect stated he 'didn't remember' whether he had any sexual contact with the victim.' Advertisement A South Boston Municipal Court judge on Tuesday ordered Jiokeng held without bail on a rape count, pending a dangerousness hearing slated for Friday, records show. Jiokeng pleaded not guilty. His lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report. Travis Andersen can be reached at
