south point casino las vegas restaurants

(Jiles declined to speak with me but granted Nelson her blessing to speak on the restaurant’s behalf.) Nelson credited Jiles’ mother, Willia Mae Chaney, with setting the restaurant’s culinary course.Ĭhaney was born in Tallulah, Louisiana, just across the river from Vicksburg, Mississippi, same as Nelson’s mother, and just about every other Black resident of Las Vegas in the 1950s. (Although at $10 a serving, they might be the best deal in a town that retired its 99-cent shrimp cocktail late last century.)Īccording to manager Emma Nelson, Jiles opened Gritz in 2007 after learning the space next to her sister’s cosmetology school was available. But conflating the region with licentiousness and excess - messaging I’ve encountered at other Southern restaurants outside the traditional South - is a worn-out stereotype that didn’t make my beans taste any better. Many people in the South are fat, along with 42 percent of all Americans. Plus, according to online reviewers, there’s too much sugar in the collards and not enough in the tea.īeyond ingredients, what struck me as off was one of the restaurant’s slogans, emblazoned on the back of a server’s T-shirt: “I’m just fat and happy!”

Beyond those visual signifiers, though, the Southern vibe is weak: Not one of the restaurant’s listed cocktails is made with brown liquor, and I had to ask the bartender for hot sauce. In Vegas, diners are greeted by a floor-to-ceiling painting of Nellie Jonas, with a skillet hanging from her waist and bolls of cotton adorning her hair.įirst up, the West, where Nellie’s is furnished with just enough barnwood and electric guitars to alert guests bound for Grand Wok that they’re in the wrong place. “She was one of those special people who had a way of showing love through cooking,” Kevin told a PBS North Carolina crew. The second location of a Belmont, North Carolina, restaurant created by The Jonas Brothers’ parents, Kevin and Denise, Nellie’s is a sit-down tribute to Kevin’s grandmother. So now, instead of steam table stations, the ritziest casinos open restaurant “concepts,” with each featured global cuisine claiming its own name, menu and dining room.Īt MGM Grand, toward the south end of The Strip, meal options include Ambra for chicken parmesan, Grand Wok Noodle Bar for pad Thai, and - since June 2022 - Nellie’s Southern Kitchen for biscuits, pulled pork and fried catfish.

A portrait of Willia Mae Chaney along with catfish at Gritz Cafe in Las Vegasīuffets may be passé in Las Vegas, but casual gamblers still want to taste all the world has to offer.

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