Who’s in the Kitchen: Sitting Down with Chef Josh Smith at Bourbon Steak
Often, a restaurant’s kitchen leaders are also its unsung heroes, toiling behind the scenes to provide a pleasurable dining experience for the eatery’s patrons. In this series, we shine a spotlight on talented, creative, and unique individuals who have become, or are becoming, the culinary superheroes of our city, and explore the paths they have taken to establish themselves as rising or recognized gastronomic stars.
In this chapter, we introduce you to Josh Smith, Executive Chef at Bourbon Steak.
Las Vegas native Josh Smith boasts an esteemed resume, having worked at some of the top restaurants in the country, such as the Michelin-starred L2O in Chicago. Locally, he’s cooked at acclaimed restaurants including Rosemary’s, Le Cirque, Alize, Seablue, Estiatorio Milos, Bardot Brasserie, and Delilah; and now the talented chef is sharing his talents with us at Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak at the Four Seasons.
What made you decide to become a chef? How old were you, and how did you make that happen?
I was born here in 1979 and graduated from Bonanza High School. Both my parents were native Las Vegans, so I’m a second-generation native Las Vegan. My mom was very experimental in the kitchen, and she also traveled a lot for her job. I often went with her and was exposed to restaurants in several US cities and a lot of flavors. About the time I was 19, I was inspired by shows on the Food Network, like Emeril Lagasse’s and began flirting with the idea of becoming a chef.
I had a job at the business center at The Venetian and was making good money. My mom’s favorite restaurant was Michael and Wendy Jordan’s Rosemary’s Restaurant, and I offered to work there unpaid on my days off to gain experience. At first, they told me no, but I kept asking, and finally got them to say yes. During the three months I spent doing that, I did prep work at 6 a.m., but there were countless opportunities to fill in for chefs who called out. Eventually, I was hired as a lunch cook at half the pay I was getting at The Venetian, but I jumped in headfirst and decided to give this cooking thing a try. It went great, and I was there for a year and three months.
What other restaurants did you work at that made an impact on you and your culinary career, and some of the chefs you worked with and for?
After Rosemary’s, I wound up working at Circo at Bellagio, a Tuscan Italian restaurant with [high] volume, and it was an incredible learning experience.
Then I worked with Jacque Van Staden at Mariposa at Neiman Marcus, who left and took me with him to Alize at the top of the Palms, where I got to work for Andre Rochat and overlapped with Gary LaMorte, James Trees, Johnny Church, and Marty Lopez, all really good professionals who are still doing big things. This was the height of my line cooking career. I worked the fish station and fell in love with seafood. As I learned to cook better, I was able to write my own specials, order and butcher my own fish, and figure out how the verbiage on a menu works to make it sound more enticing.
About this time, Michael Mina’s Seablue was opening at the MGM Grand. I applied to work there as a sous chef and was hired. It was my first sous-chef role, and I stayed there working for Michael (Mina) for four years, moving up through the ranks to executive sous-chef and then executive chef. When I was promoted to the executive chef position at age 24, I was the youngest chef ever to hold this title within the Mina Group.
I felt I wasn’t ready at the time to be a leader, but I was a really good cook, marketable, and experienced. So, people wanted to hire me, so I went to work for KOR Hotel Group as an executive chef. They had me traveling a lot, which I did for about a year and a half, but I didn’t love the travel and wanted to settle down.
I wound up settling down in Santa Monica. I worked as executive chef at the newly opened Anisette Brasserie, and from there worked as executive chef at Church & State, a classic French restaurant in Downtown LA. Working at both, I fell in love with French food twofold, which set me up for a future in Las Vegas when I would later open Bardot Brasserie.
But I came back to Las Vegas to open Estiatorio Milos when The Cosmopolitan opened. It was kind of a short stint, just over a year, but a lot of learning, and they allowed me to travel to Greece and see the product and work with whole fish, scaling it and gutting it to order.
Between Milos and coming back for Bardot, I went to Chicago for a couple of years and worked for Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants at RPM Italian and L2O, which was their super-fine-dining French seafood concept.
Then I left to open Bardot as executive chef. I wrote every recipe on that menu. I stayed there for six years and probably would have stayed there forever if not for the pandemic (and shutdown). We were all furloughed, and I had the opportunity to work for Harlø Steakhouse before it opened, and did R&D for almost a year, and then got tapped to open Delilah. I was there (Delilah) for three and a half years. Great experience there at the Wynn; every night was high volume, doing 500-800 covers.
Tell us about Bourbon Steak.
After working for ten and a half years at the Mina Group at Seablue and Bardot Brasserie, and then opening Delilah, it felt like a homecoming when I took the executive position at Bourbon Steak. It’s a big brand that is celebrity-chef-driven and owned, which can be [replicated] in other cities. Specifically in Vegas, what makes us special is I have the freedom to change the menu quite a bit, choose product, and make seasonal changes.
What are some of your favorite dishes currently on your menu?
My favorite steak on the menu is the Flannery. It’s a Holstein cow, which is typically a dairy cow, and it’s a dry-aged bone-in Kansas City New York. I like starters to be light and refreshing, like our Hamachi Tostada with a green herbal Thai sauce and Thai chili crisp. Other current menu items I like are the Creamed Spinach Pop Tart made with a three-cheese blend and cut tableside, and the Mac and Cheese with aged cheddar and black truffle bechamel.
How do you come up with your recipes?
We’re always planning [for] the seasons, and that takes a lot of combing through my personal files of what I like to work with in those seasons and trying to incorporate them into the menu like a puzzle and start working on ideas from there. I’ll cook a dish blind without a recipe, like I’m cooking at home, and if it needs some adjustments, we’ll write down all the measurements and fine-tune the dish, but I like things to evolve after it hits the menu.
What are some of your favorite ingredients you like to use in your recipes?
I love sunchokes, the Jerusalem artichoke. We’re working on a new dish, gnocchi with sunchokes, as a side. One of my favorite seasons is the fall/winter transition, and I love using wild mushrooms, high-quality cheeses, and high-quality wine. We use Julia Child’s old philosophy: ‘if you won’t drink it, don’t cook with it.’ We buy really nice spirits and wines to cook with.
You’ve garnered some impressive accomplishments. Which ones are you most proud of?
Cooking at Bardot was the most spirited and inspired cooking I’ve ever done. While I was there, we were listed in the top 100 of the OAD North America Top Restaurants and named to the World’s 50 Best Discovery list.
What do you think of the Las Vegas culinary scene?
It’s constantly evolving. I’m really happy to see what James Trees is doing with his French concept (La Boheme in the Arts District) and at the Rio (High Steaks), Dan Krohmer at his new Durango Social Kitchen, all that Bruce Kalman is doing, and my friend Elia Aboumrad, who owns Boom Bang Fine Foods [in Henderson]. I’m really happy to be here working amongst these really great chefs.
What do you like to do in your downtime, when you’re not working?
Spending time with my wife Signe, whom I’ve been married to for five years, and being a parent to my two boys, who are ages 4 and 11 months. Everything we do revolves around them. I’m also an avid weightlifter and do CrossFit a few days a week when I can fit it in. But being a dad is the most rewarding part of life.
What are your plans for the future? Do you intend to stay in Las Vegas?
For sure, I plan to stay here. We live in our dream home in an old neighborhood called Paradise Crest, a 1/3-acre ranch-style home built in 1970 with a pool and a big patch of grass. I think this new beginning here at Bourbon Steak is going to last a long time. I’ve never worked for a Mina restaurant for less than four years, so I’m here for the long haul.
