Sand Dollar Lounge’s Sunday party to focus on barbecue, charity

The Sand Dollar Lounge is typically known for good live music and as an after-work gathering place for bar and restaurant workers. On Sunday, however, it’ll be all about serious barbecue, world-class cocktails and the fight against cancer. Oh yeah, they’ll also be showing a football game.

Sure, for the rest of the country Feb. 4 is Super Bowl Sunday. But Sand Dollar owner Anthony Jamison realizes that football, even the NFL’s championship game, isn’t exactly his wheelhouse. In fact, the only reason he’ll open his Spring Mountain Road doors on Sunday is because a little over two years ago, a local bartender named Gene Samuel asked him if his barbecue collective Black Tiger BBQ could throw a charity event there.

“When Gene approached us about doing this fundraiser two years ago,” Jamison recalls, “I said ‘Why not?’ I mean we weren’t going to try to compete with PT’s and everyone else during the Super Bowl. We were going to just close the bar.”

Local ties and rivalries

Black Tiger has strong ties to the local food and beverage community. Samuel mixes drinks at Flock and Fowl’s new downtown location, while one of his principal partners Matthew Bessette is lead bartender at Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill. Many of their teammates also pull shifts behind the stick. And they regularly cater events aimed at bar and restaurant workers. But it was actually a rivalry with a local restaurant that inspired Black Tiger’s formation.

Gene Samuel says that when he and his partner Samuel Harris formed Black Tiger in 2015, their inspiration was to beat the team from Pot Liquor BBQ in the annual Pigs for the Kids competition in North Las Vegas. The two barbecue fanatics had previously worked together at the Town Square restaurant, and they had something to prove.

Beating their rival in every category provided them with some satisfaction. But their ninth place overall finish and fifth place showing in the pork shoulder category prompted them to keep the project going. And that event’s support for childhood cancer charities gave them new inspiration.

“I won’t lie to you, (the rivalry) is how it started,” Samuel says. “But immediately after that we just thought let’s do more for our community. Let’s keep giving back. Let’s show that we have good barbecue out here and let’s show that we are a good community.”

Over the past two and a half years, Black Tiger has gone from a group of friends who like to cook for a good cause to a serious crew that caters about 20 events a year.

A portion of the proceeds from every meal they’ve served has gone to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. They recently added the Helen David Relief Fund, founded by local bartending legend Tony Abou-Ganim to aid bartenders battling breast cancer, to their list of beneficiaries.

“I can’t stand seeing kids in need or hurting,” Samuel says. “And women with breast cancer in our beverage community, they need help.”

Bringing out the big guns

For Sunday’s event, the Black Tiger team will be joined in the Sand Dollar parking lot by Food Network alumnus and 7 Sinful Subs founder Vic Vegas, Hell’s Kitchen season 15 runner-up Kristin Barone and Hell’s Kitchen season 12 winner and Freedom Beat chef Scott Commings.

Inside, the bar will feature an equally impressive cast mixing drinks. In addition to having Abou-Ganim on the bill, Samuel is flying in Yael “Stormborn” Vengroff and Joey Bernardo of The Spare Room in L.A. and Travis Tober of Austin’s Nickel City.

Hosting the event will be the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild’s Las Vegas chapter president Raul Faria and Josh Davis of Chicago’s Bureau Bar.

A $60 general admission ticket is good for all you can eat and drink. For $15 more, attendees will receive a T-shirt and raffle ticket. A la carte plates will be available for $20.

Samuel says the day, which will start around noon outside, and an hour or so later in the bar, will be “just a rowdy good time.”

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