Executive chef Brian Massie has been part of The Light Group family for more than a decade, having overseen everything from the opening of Bellagio’s Fix in 2004 to the debut of the rustic Hearthstone Kitchen & Cellar earlier this year at Red Rock Resort in Summerlin. Massie talked with Las Vegas Magazine’s Jack Houston about the company’s newest venture off-Strip, his decision to get into the culinary industry and which ingredients make every dish better.
Las Vegas locals can be a challenging demographic, to put it mildly. We’ve seen so many quality restaurants close, while safe, predictable restaurants live to see another day. Yet Hearthstone was packed last Thursday night. What’s the secret?
That’s a good question. I think we’ve built a good menu. We’ve built an unbelievably comfortable venue to be in. It’s approachable. The biggest feedback you get from most people is, “I could sit here for hours, it’s so comfortable.” Anywhere you sit in that restaurant is a different experience. Whether you sit at the live bar where the chefs are cooking, or you sit in the booth behind it, or you sit in the lounge, or you sit outside—there’s something to watch everywhere in that restaurant. It’s entertainment. You don’t need to go to a show afterwards. You just sit there and eat, and it’s the full experience. I think we have a little bit of a ways to go to be where we want to be, but I think we’re getting there.
Hearthstone looks like a restaurant you might find in another city, and the menu is not your typical Vegas menu. I’m curious to know what kinds of places inspired Hearthstone.
Every restaurant that’s not in Vegas inspired me. It’s everything I feel like we’re missing. There’s community, there’s personality, and you’re not doing the big filet or lobster. There’s nothing really super-typical about the place, as far as ordering food. There are some safe dishes, we still have a burger, but we’re doing it completely different. We’re doing a dry-aged chuck burger. I travel all over the place. I eat and I try things, and you go to restaurants and you’re like, “Wow, nobody is willing to do this in Vegas and make that commitment to being true to the concept.” It’s all about the show, it’s all about the Strip, it’s all about the tourists, it’s all about going to a show afterwards. Dinner’s never really the main event in Las Vegas. It’s either before or after because there’s always the club influence. We’re the main event when you come here.
Were you worried that the restaurant wouldn’t have the built-in clientele that the clubs bring?
Not at all. I think what we’ve put together and all the proper planning and research, and the conversations we’ve all had internally about “Is this the right move?” “Is this the right dish?” “Is this the right glassware?” We weren’t worried about the nightclub business. You’re not going to the Strip after you eat dinner in Summerlin. You just don’t see it. We wanted to be different, and we wanted to be the main event up there. The more people that are willing to push the envelope is just creating a better environment for everybody up there (in Summerlin). Now you can get a Strip experience—quality of food, quality of service, the great build-out, the great concept, the great décor in a restaurant—off the Strip. So you don’t need to go down there for that.
There are always challenges opening a new restaurant. I understand that getting the rotisserie here was an adventure.
(laughs) That seems to be the topic of conversation this past week. We wanted to have a rotisserie in the restaurant, and in all the research and development on my end, I came across this company in Belgium called Alpina that makes these ovens. We were the first in the States to ever have one, or we were the first in the States to ever have two, because the first one literally fell off the truck. It’s so hard to get the guy on the telephone because of the hour difference, but we finally ordered it with all the bells and whistles that we wanted on it. It fell off the truck somewhere in transport and got destroyed. So we were so far ahead of the game, we were going to have it five, six, seven weeks before we opened, and now we didn’t get the second one because it takes x amount of weeks to make it and ship it. And we didn’t get it until two days before we opened it. And then all the bells and whistles he sent from the original were with the first package, but he didn’t send them on the second package because he thought we had the first package. Literally, I never wanted to see another rotisserie oven again.
I read that your folks talked you out of going to culinary school, is that right? What did you originally study?
It is. It was kind of a long road to get to culinary school. I wanted to be a physical therapist, and the road that took me there was football. I got a football scholarship in college and wound up going to two different schools for football and just realized that either I didn’t have the intelligence to do it or I didn’t have the dedication to college at that time because I was focusing on football for some reason. I wasn’t drilling down into the homework side of things and the studying. I lost the passion for it once I got there anyway. But prior to that, I wanted to be a chef, and my parents thought it wasn’t conducive for me. “You want to be home with your kids and your wife, and you’re going to be working every holiday”—they went through all of the negatives and none of the positives. They tried to talk me out of it, but that didn’t work. I went back and said I’m going to revisit this. I went home around New York and started working for a great friend of mine and his family, did some catering and worked out of their restaurant, got inspired and went to culinary school, and now we’re on the telephone.
You worked under some very well-known chefs here and in New York. Are there pieces of Lidia Bastianich and Charlie Palmer that we can see in the way you run your kitchens here in Vegas?
Not a specific item, but it’s more of the dedication to doing things properly and your passion and your work ethic. Just striving to be the best you can be in every dish. The teaching, the guiding and the inspiration of seasonality—you can definitely feel that from me. Even working in Italy, it’s so intense and so structured, I try to run my restaurants that way, to have a system, and a direction and a vision, and express that to the guys. I surround myself with great people because that’s what I’ve always worked with. You’re only as successful as the people you surround yourself with.
How would you describe yourself in the kitchen? Are you more of in-your-face or are you more of a lead-by-example type?
Both. I don’t think anybody’s any one way. I’ve learned from a lot of different people, and you’re a product of your environment. I used to be extremely aggressive—a bulldog, if you will—but I was always fair. Some people hold grudges and make it an uncomfortable work environment, but since I’ve had my kid and gotten older, I’ve learned there are other ways to handle situations and you learn to manage through things in a different way. But every person needs different managing. It’s such a diverse industry in how you handle things.
It’s been quite a year for you—the opening of Hearthstone, a dinner at the James Beard House—looking ahead to 2015, what can we expect from you?
I know we’ll have, without letting a lot of things out, some projects that we’re working on and we’ll continue to work on. In the next six to eight months, there will probably be one or two, but mostly development for the end of the year. A lot of menu changing, a lot of revamping the concepts. We went a different direction with Fix and refreshed it, and we’d like to do more of that in some of these other concepts. But Hearthstone’s the baby right now.
What’s one ingredient that makes everything better?
Love, alcohol and salt.
What’s the one food trend you wish would die a sudden death?
Farm-to-table. Because you should be doing that anyway. It shouldn’t be a trend.
Which big-name chef do you most admire?
I think Charlie (Palmer).
If you could eat one dish for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Pizza.
When you’re craving fast food, what’s your go-to spot?
In-N-Out.
Finish this sentence: If I weren’t a chef, I would be a…
I’d probably be a physical therapist.
