Sandwiches saved them.
Scott Arn and Ramtin Yashar, both in their early 30s, opened Golden Boy Market & Deli in Henderson almost six months ago. In the years before their viral baguettes and straciatella and beef with au poivre aïoli, they cooked at Michelin-starred restaurants — in Spain for Arn, in Los Angeles for Yashar — later joining the restaurant group owned by James Trees, arguably the leading independent chef in Las Vegas.
Arn rose to sous chef at Esther’s Kitchen, James Trees’ flagship in downtown Vegas, Yashar to executive chef for Petite Boheme, just two blocks south. But the pace of fine dining, the joy of food at an exalted level but also the grind behind the glamour, began to raise doubts.
“I think I speak for both of us — this is a brutal industry, and quality of life suffers, and the people of around you suffer,” Arn said. “Esther’s was a great place for learning all the tools you need to have to be chefs.”
Yashar added about those days: “You have a huge disconnect between you and the guests and making people happy. It almost becomes, ‘How do I get through this service?’ The guest almost becomes secondary.”
In the past year, Arn and Yashar left the Trees organization, Yashar in particular recalling his exit interview with the chef: “I had a heartfelt conversation with him: ‘I’m not sure I can do this anymore.’ He said, ‘I get it. I don’t want you to be in a place anymore you’re not happy.’ At that time, I thought I was done with food. I said, ‘I’m going to be a car salesman.’ ”
But extended warranties were not in his future. Arn and Yashar talked after their departure.
“We knew we had reached a natural finishing point,” Arn said. “Maybe we should do something? We began putting feelers out.”
The kitchen gods met in conclave; kismet weighed in (abetted by leasing brokers); a turnkey space on South Eastern Avenue, in a restaurant-deprived area of Henderson, came on the market early this year.
“The space dictates our food in a huge way,” Arn said. “There’s no range, no hood. You can’t be cooking pasta, be doing meats, anything with a huge volume that produces grease. I don’t think we would have thought of sandwiches if not for this place.”
Golden Boy Market & Deli was born.
Harder than expected
It’s a fair question, and one the business partners, to their credit, were willing to acknowledge immediately: You used to cook for James Trees, at top Vegas restaurants. Are sandwiches a comedown?
“This is much more an experience for the guest,” Arn said. “It doesn’t feel like a regression in technique for what we’re doing. We get to put that experience and that technique and that flavor into plating with sandwiches.”
The earl’s invention, Yashar said, presented its own challenges.
“I want to say: Making sandwiches is hard. You create it. It’s a little vulnerable. You see a guest: Oh, wow, they came back to try something else. That’s such a personal thing I’ve been missing (from fine dining). The sandwich is such an interesting canvas to put things on.”
Sandwich style
The art of the sandwich proceeds at Golden Boy (10960 S. Eastern Ave., Suite 103) with a chicken Caesar version built from confited chicken breast (they cannot stop being chefs), a Caprese with basil pesto and stretchy straciatella (a cheese on-trend these past few years), a beef stack with that au poivre aïoli, onions and potato sticks out the side.
Aiding the sandwich assembly, like high-end scaffolding, are ingredients such as Bridor breads, Kewpie mayonnaise, house vinaigrette, pomegranate molasses (a nod to Yashar’s Persian heritage), and house chili crisp made from smoky fried Calabrian chiles, garlic and onions.
“Our chili crisp, it’s just spicy enough, is becoming the Golden Boy thing,” Yashar said.
All hands on bread
In the days after Golden Boy opened in early July, the chili crisp, as flavor-enhancing as it is, could not be the object of attention. There was much more to fry, like balancing demand with expectations. That weekend, Arn and Yashar served close to 400 sandwiches, almost two sandwiches a minute for three hours straight.
“I’m getting tendonitis in my elbow from ripping butcher paper,” Arn said.
Family and friends had to be called in as reinforcements. “Some of them had never cooked in a kitchen before,” Yashar said. “I said, ‘Just toast the bread.’ ”
A few days later, Golden Boy ran out of food. Did the business partners ever think they’d work so hard, with so many challenges, with sandwiches?
“No,” Arn said. “Absolutely not,” Yashar added. “We thought we were going to make sandwiches, do the register, clean, do all that.”
In the past six months or so, the owners have settled their opening challenges, and Golden Boy Market reminds Las Vegas that what distinguishes the food culture of the city also exists between halves of bread.
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at [email protected]. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.