Chef, nightlife vet bring Black Tap to Las Vegas millennials

Joe Isidori, Chris Barish and their team have been racing to put the finishing touches on their new restaurant — Black Tap at The Venetian — to open in time for New Year’s Eve revelers.

The New York-based restaurant chain, which has outposts in Geneva, Dubai and soon Anaheim, specializes in hamburgers, shakes and cocktails, offered in a hip atmosphere designed to appeal to both families and foodies. That’s not a terribly novel idea in Las Vegas. Black Tap’s space is where Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s B&B Burger and Beer was, and before that, the short-lived burger haven Rattlecan.

But Black Tap’s brand of cool-casual is a long way from the projects that first made the partners famous in the Las Vegas Valley.

Isidori burst onto the local dining scene as chef at Donald Trump’s DJT, which opened in the Trump International Hotel in 2008. At the time, the restaurant took modern American fine-dining to a new level for Las Vegas, specializing in multi-course tasting menus and offering a full menu of bottled water choices from around the world. It was quickly awarded a prestigious Michelin star.

Barish is a nightlife veteran who made his first big mark on Las Vegas when he brought the New York-based club Light to Bellagio. He went on to invest in the Marquee nightclub brand and helped bring Gordon Ramsay’s steakhouse and pub here, but he is most well known for helping bring pricey bottle service to the Strip.

So what brought these purveyors of gourmet food and sky-high check averages to the world of burgers and shakes?

“It’s a sign of the times,” says Isidori, who operated restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island after leaving DJT. “When I went back to New York, I continued the crusade of fine dining, and just found myself, every day, fighting and struggling to get people into the restaurant, and to make a profit. It got to the point where I started putting burgers on the menu in my restaurants, and they were dominating.”

He says millennials simply aren’t interested in the extended formal experiences he offered.

“I was satisfying my artistic soul,” he says. “Few customers understood that and allowed themselves to be taken control of by me for three and four hours. Those people are few and far between.”

At Black Tap, however, he says, “It’s about making everyone happy and having fun. You make more people happy and have more fun when you keep it simple and sell burgers and beer.”

Although he has added a truffle burger to the menu specifically for the Las Vegas location, he insists touches like that are no longer his focus.

“Everywhere you go,” Isidori says, “they’ve got a dry-aged burger on a brioche bun with gruyere cheese, and shitake and maitake mushrooms, and this and that. It’s almost to the point where it’s boring. And I, personally, was tired of that. I’m a New York City kid and I want the old luncheonette-style burger. I want to bring something back that’s nostalgic. So I think we’ll be a breath of fresh air.”

In addition to burgers, the menu will feature salads and various health-conscious dishes, including a black bean-based vegan burger. The bar will offer a large selection of over-the-top milkshakes, all of which are family-friendly, but also available with recommended booze pairings for tableside spiking.

“Catering to families is important (but) we’re not a family joint,” Isidori says. “We’re not Chuck E. Cheese’s. We’re not Applebee’s.”

Because of that, Barish and his 9-year-old daughter are as in-demand these days as he was when he was running top nightclubs.

“My whole life, promoting parties and having nightclubs, people used to call me to get in. Now it’s the parents calling to get the kids into the restaurant. And then the parents are saying ‘I want to come back without my kids and have a burger and a beer and a drink.’ ”

The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. Las Vegas Sands operates The Venetian.

Correction: An earlier version of this story indicated that a Black Tap outpost in Anaheim was currently open.

Contact Al Mancini at amancini @reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter.