-The youngest sous-chef at the Bellagio when he was 21, he now owns and runs some of the top restaurants in Las Vegas.

Chef James Trees is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and other supporters.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

He grew up in East Las Vegas and started his culinary career at Las Vegas High School.

He earned an internship at The Mirage and, at one time, ran the Bellagio buffet.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he'd go on to work in fine dining across the country before returning to Las Vegas to open the beloved Esther's Kitchen in honor of his great-aunt.

A James Beard Award nominee, his restaurant consistently topped the "Best of" lists, and one of his newest dining adventures, High Steakes, sits atop the Rio.

Chef James Trees, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

Where to start... I think with that High Steakes restaurant, because I understand that was a big deal for you to go into a casino.

(James Trees) Absolutely.

You know, I've really kind of focused on not doing casino deals, not doing those kind of things because of the way that they're kind of running them and kind of the ethos and ethics that go behind those.

And I want to create restaurants for our community.

And one of the things that Patrick, their former president, really instilled in me was the consistent thought that it was a locals restaurant.

And that's the reason why I bought in and was able to make that deal and to be a part of the Rio.

And they've really kept up their end of the bargain.

They've really done great things to allow locals to be a part of that restaurant.

And I think we're bringing something there that no other steakhouse in Vegas is really doing.

-Game meat.

-Yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, I think it's just the whole experience from the beginning to end.

One of the best parts of taking over the old VooDoo space was we inherited some of the captains who had been there for 25 years.

People had been there before even VooDoo was there, before the second tower went up.

And those guys, Johnny and Billy, they're all great people that we really loved and really wanted to make sure that they knew that there was a new wave coming and there was going to be a refresh and it wasn't just going to be some, you know, out-of-state group.

It was going to be someone who knows where they come from, knows the background, then all their specialties and really building that culture from the beginning.

So we were able to start with a really great culture, and then we researched and developed all over Las Vegas to find out what wasn't happening in the different steakhouses.

So we were able to come up with some different things that we think are so much different than what's happening on the Strip.

You know, obviously the game is a huge part of that.

-Is that selling well?

-It's actually selling mostly better than the beef, which is crazy.

The highest selling item in the restaurant currently, right now, is the buffalo tenderloin.

So we're getting these amazing full buffalo tenderloins out of North Dakota.

And then also we're getting some from Wyoming.

And so we're bringing this product in, butchering everything in-house, and then we actually use all the trim from the chain and the ends and the tips and the tails of that product to create the wild game tartare.

So we actually also mix in-- We do all the butchering in-house of all my restaurants.

-And you do some of it yourself?

-Absolutely.

-You get in there-- I thought I read you said, I break the pigs or I... -So that's actually at Esther's.

Like, when we originally opened Esther's, we had porchetta on the menu.

It was like a staple.

But also, when you get the porchetta, which is the middle of the animal, you have to be able to use the rest of the animal.

So we would make porchetta di testa, where we would literally bone out the entire face of the pig, season it, roll it, and treat it like a salumi.

And then we would take the shoulders and we would grind those into sausage.

And then we would take the four shanks and turn them into zampone.

We make cotechino sausage, stuff them and then cook them and then we take them and bread them and fry them.

And then the back legs we would butcher out also to make our meatballs.

So there was a ton of craft that went into that when we would have that 68-seat restaurant.

And basically we, if you look at the current Ada's, which is now in the space of that, the entire pass is a cutting board, so you would walk in at, you know, seven o'clock in the morning, and we'd be there butchering down 250-pound pigs.

-Wow!

-So this is the thing that I've kind of instilled with all of my restaurants is, We make things; we don't buy things, right?

So we make everything.

We make all the bread in all the restaurants.

-What about the flour, though?

You get that from...?

-We were using really good flour from King Arthur, and that's what everyone's like making sourdough out of now, right?

So they like, Okay, King Arthur is great flour.

But then we were introduced to Central Milling.

Central Milling is in Southern Utah, and they mill their flour fresh every two weeks.

So now we're getting four or five different flours from them, and it's all organic flour.

We're actually using pesticide-free, freshly ground within two weeks flour which keeps the enzymes in the flour, which makes it much healthier for your gut, and that's what we use for our pasta and for our breads.

And then we also use light starter.

So we don't use any cake yeast or baker's yeast or brewer's yeast, which can also have adverse effects on people's guts.

So the joke goes that when you go to Europe, you can eat all the pasta and bread you want and you never feel bloated or anything like that.

Well, we actually source flours like that from America, or we get them direct from Italy or France.

For the baguettes, at Boheme we actually source T65 flour.

If you call something a Parisian baguette, it legally must use that flour.

So we actually have that shipped in from Leon.

-Wow!

Okay.

I want to read a quote that I really liked, you gave in an interview.

"All cooking is, is chemistry and math and art and science and history all kind of rolled up into one.

If you want to learn about Venetian food but you can't go to Venice because you're a poor kid from the East Side, you go to work for a chef who worked in Venice like I did."

Tell me about that.

And growing up in East Las Vegas, what was life like?

-I mean, so I have to admit, like, I love the East Side of Vegas.

It is like my heart.

You know, I have so many memories of growing up on Hillsway Drive.

And all my friends who I got the, you know-- My first employee at Esther's is my best friend, Alfio.

And he's still working with us today.

And I gotta tell you, those are the heart and soul of what made me who I am as a human being.

I first learned about Italian food from his dad, Pino, who was a Golden Nugget craps dealer, who moved over to The Mirage and worked at The Mirage from the day it opened till the day it closed.

I mean, we talk about Las Vegas roots.

These are the hardworking people who really created what Las Vegas is today.

And when I look to the East Side of Vegas, that's what I see.

I see the next generation of hardworking human beings who are going to build the city into what it's really going to become.

And I love that, and I love that space.

And so every once in a while, I'll also take my car up, drive up to the top of Linden Road right up on Sunrise Mountain.

And I'll sit up there, and I'll just look over the valley.

And I'll just be like, I'm so lucky to be in this place, you know?

And when it comes to who I got to work for, I got really lucky.

I got to work with Luke Palladino, one of my great mentors, and he's the one who gave me a shot when I was 17, coming out of that internship program.

He gave me the opportunity to come work in his kitchen.

And I knew it was an opportunity, but I never knew what kind of relationship that we would have 30 years later, where he's still my mentor.

And, you know, we travel to Italy and we go to the restaurant that he worked in and ran in Venice, and I get to meet the owners, Cesare and Diane at Al Covo.

And I look back and I see all these things in my cooking now that he planted the seed 30 years ago, and that's what I love about cooking.

-If people have that access to these chefs growing up here, is it necessary for them to leave and go to the Culinary Institute of America?

-Yes.

-Still?

-It is.

-You have to leave and come back.

-It is because, like we say, it's art, science, and history all rolled up into one.

And you can study.

When I started, there was no Google, there was no Internet, there was no YouTube.

And now you can get a YouTube education.

All these cooks come out, and they think they know how to do these techniques, but they've never been to the places where they actually were created.

And so I was kind of the first generation that had access to the internet, that had the access to be able to get more information and I could look things up.

If you wanted to learn a certain technique in 2003, you had to go to the place, work there for free, learn the technique, work in that kitchen for two years, and then you can move on to another kitchen.

That was the culture that we had, and that was the way you educated yourself.

Now kids have access to all the wonderful things, but they don't understand where those things come from.

So like having what we call "the providence" of the technique, providence of where you come from, the things you've learned, the people you've worked under, that's the difference.

And Las Vegas was kind of like a facsimile at that point.

I got to work with an amazing chef, Luke Palladino, but it wasn't-- it was Todd English's name on the door, right?

But it was Luke who taught me so much, and that's the person who became my mentor.

Then Alessandro Stratta was right next door, and I got to learn huge and vast amounts of things from him and his chef to cuisine and Luke Palladino wrote my recommendation letters to the CIA.

-CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.

When I hear CIA, I go, What?

The CIA?

Okay.

We are running out of time, but I want to fit in two kind of strange topics, I mean, when you put them together.

You were on Hell's Kitchen, and you said that that experience allowed you to refine your understanding of the pitfalls of the business.

Will you elaborate on that?

And then you also have to tell us about Great-Aunt Esther.

-Okay, absolutely.

So Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, so I made the TV show.

I wasn't on the show like as a contestant, because that would literally be my nightmare.

-Why?

-Because the people who are on that show as contestants don't really know how to do anything.

They're just there for television.

I was actually making television behind the camera as the culinary producer, and so I did that for a couple seasons, and then we did Kitchen Nightmares.

And Kitchen Nightmares is where I got to see the pitfalls of the restaurant business, where people can make mistakes.

What are the combinations of things that allow you to fail, right, and what makes you successful?

And one of the things that I have to say is, like, just because your mom and dad ran a restaurant does not mean that you know how to run a restaurant.

So the second generation of people, there's very few examples I can point to where they're successful, because they think that they built a restaurant and they didn't.

And it's the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that goes into a restaurant that gives it the soul that it has.

The second generation doesn't really understand that.

I will say that one of my great friends that is the antithesis of that is Nick Palmeri, who runs Gaetano's.

He is the carbon copy of his father.

He works every single day.

He's one of my great friends, and I love him because I see the passion that he has for that business and what they've been able to build.

And I'm so proud of him.

-So it can happen?

-It can.

-Great-Aunt Esther... -Great-Aunt Esther, she was the matriarch of my family, and she really-- you know, my mom was a teacher.

She taught at Chaparral for 17 years.

And then obviously, being a single mom, there wasn't a lot of resources around.

So when it came to all the things that we as kids needed, my Aunt Esther really provided.

I actually saved the money to go to CIA, but I didn't know what room and board was.

I didn't know that I needed room and board.

I didn't know that was a thing.

So she actually wrote the check that allowed me to be able to go to CIA to get the education that allowed me so many opportunities in my life.

And you know, towards the end of her life, I would spend every Tuesday with her and listening to the stories and spending time with her.

And there was-- I was going to name Esther as something Italian and goofy and whatever it was going to be.

There's only one name that Esther's Kitchen could be and that's Esther's Kitchen.

And it also gives us the freedom to play around.

Like our brunch dishes are not Italian.

Like, a lot of things that we do are not Italian.

If I had named something an Italian restaurant, you came in, there's Spanish and Portuguese and, you know, French dishes and English dishes all over the menu, it would feel out of place.

But since it's Esther's Kitchen, it's just the invocation of, like, her life and her love of my family.

And she's the best.

-Chef James Trees, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-I'm so lucky to be here.

Thank you so much.