A Plaza source told me today they're building a glass-walled office for Oscar Goodman off from the bar area in the famed glass-dome space that is soon to open as Oscar's. In it will sit his famous mayoral furnishings, including this:
I'm told it'll be sort of like the Oscar Goodman Zoo where visitors will be able to witness the famed leviathan himself in his natural habitat. Interesting. You can see my pictorial of Oscar's City Hall office from 2009 here.
I'm still fairly dubious of how well this concept will work. As I'm hearing it, this steak place is going to be sort of a Vegas-themed Hard Rock/Planet Hollywood kinda thing, decorated with Oscar's likeness and artifacts of his illustrious careers. There's even talk of opening Oscar'ses in other cities after this one establishes itself.
Ultimately, though, gimmick-driven restaurants usually don't succeed, not even in the case of Switch at Encore where the kitchen is run by exceptional chefs. So Oscar's will have to serve up great food that is, because this is still Downtown, inexpensive. And cheap steaks usually are not terribly good steaks. So there's the conundrum.
Still, if Carolyn's husband is actually there hamming it up a lot -- and I mean A LOT -- then maybe it could work. I question, though, how often Oscar Goodman might toil in his office doing whatever "work" he has to do after, say, 6 p.m. when the dinner rush takes place.
2 comments:
If the place is going to have any chance, the steaks will have to be as good or better than the ones at Triple George, which to me is the best joint Downtown.
Great post (we'll be linking to it). However, I mildly disagree with the thought that it will be inexpensive, thus having cheap steaks, hurting the quality of the restaurant.
The Center Stage had a complete bone-in prime rib dinner in the $22 range.
Obviously, inflation will come into play. But I completely see how the location/view combined with "downtown friendly" pricing then adding in the "Casino" (the movie) vibe along with how well known Oscar is among regular Las Vegas visitors (the kind likely to frequent downtown) has a significant chance for success.
Add to that the fact that any nice hotel needs a steakhouse anyway (I hate writers that use the word anyways -- IE Doug Elfman -- but this is just a blog comment). Even without Oscar, they'd have fine-dining in that spot. With amazingly rare exception, hotels don't simply close their main fine dining option. (Wynn closed one, but it wasn't their only one). So, the place is going to be there no matter what. If they cut a fun deal with Oscar to use his name, all the better.
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