Paul Saginaw, a co-founder of Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened Saginaw’s Delicatessen in the fall of 2020 in Circa, a new casino on Freemont Street in downtown Las Vegas. The longtime veteran of the specialty food industry said the Las Vegas dining scene has come a long way over the past two decades, and is now home to a vibrant community of ethnic restaurants and independent, chef-owned establishments.
He recently spoke to SFA News daily about his suggestions for foodies flocking to Las Vegas for the Winter Fancy Food Show from February 6 - 8, and about the challenges of opening a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic.
What are your recommendations for visitors who want to explore the Las Vegas food scene?
My number one recommendation is to go to Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road. It’s hard to find a bad meal there. There's great Chinese food, great Japanese food, and great Vietnamese food. There's also a large Ethiopian community here, so there are some really good Ethiopian restaurants.
If you go back 20 years, the food scene in Las Vegas was basically about which casino had the best all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, major celebrity chefs from around the world have restaurants here. Those are generally in the hotels and casinos, but there's also a vibrant restaurant scene with locals—a lot of chef-owned establishments, and chefs that worked in the fancy restaurants in the casinos going out on their own. I'd suggest sticking to the local chef-owned restaurants and the local food scene.
There's great food right down here on Fremont Street. There's an incredible Thai restaurant called Le Thai, and there’s a place in Circa called 8 East. We also have a great steakhouse in here called Barry's Downtown Prime, and we have a burger-and-wings sports bar called Victory Burger & Wings Co. The owners are the brother and sister that ran the iconic American Coney Island in downtown Detroit.
For people visiting, a great place to start is to look at the Instagram of John Curtas. He’s a local food critic who really knows a lot about the scene.
How has Saginaw’s Deli been doing in these challenging times?
We're doing pretty well. We're inside of a casino on the second floor, so a lot is dependent on occupancy. But Circa has the largest sportsbook in the world and that drives a lot of traffic here.
I never imagined when we started planning this that I was going to open in the middle of a pandemic. It was kind of whiplash for a while—50 percent occupancy, then 35 percent occupancy, then 75 percent, then 100, and no masks, then masks again. We're still waiting for the pandemic to be over, and I don't know if that's ever going to happen.
The weekends are always good, because a lot of people come to Vegas just for the weekends, but the weekday traffic is really supported by international travel, which we don't have a lot of yet. Canada only recently started to open, and that's a pretty big market for Las Vegas. Hawaii's also a big market—they call Las Vegas “the ninth island,” and their governor was asking people to only do essential travel for a long time. Monday through Thursday is also filled up with conferences and trade shows, which are only just now really starting up again.
But we're doing fine, and we’ve been well received. People are happy to have a really good corned beef sandwich and a really good pastrami sandwich out here, and some of the other traditional deli dishes.
I'm also in a joint venture operating the kitchen up on the pool deck, with a completely different menu. The pool deck here is a feature, not just an amenity. We’ve got six pools and a gigantic screen, and a capacity of about 3,200.
What have you learned about your menu or about the operations since you've opened Saginaw’s Delicatessen, and are there things you've had to change?
I've learned that our biggest meal is breakfast, and that makes sense, because the bulk of our traffic is folks staying at the hotel. And I've learned that it's hard to run a 24-hour operation because you always have to be ready. You have to have the right amount of folks on staff, and sometimes you're going to be really busy, and sometimes you're going to be dead, but you have to have them there just in case.
We’re getting more and more locals that come here, and we like that. We have locals who, when people visit them, say, "Hey, we have a real delicatessen now, come on down and check it out."
I didn't imagine our breakfast would be as big as it is, but we have a killer breakfast. It's really good.
What’s popular on the breakfast menu at Saginaw’s?
There’s Lori's Across The Board, which is the whole thing—three eggs and bacon or sausage and hash browns and either pancakes or toast. Steak and eggs is a big deal. When people come to Las Vegas, they want to eat steak and eggs for breakfast. We also make a really, really fantastic loco moco, which is a traditional Hawaiian breakfast. Because we cook our own roast beef, we have all the drippings, and we make a very rich gravy out of that.
We’re making everything from scratch and to order. We have great latkes, great matzah balls, blintzes, and really wonderful onion rings made fresh to order.
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