1st look inside famed steakhouse opening off Las Vegas Strip

At Rare Society, his new steakhouse in UnCommons in southwest Las Vegas, chef-owner Brad Wise is grilling in reverse.

The restaurant, with four locations in Southern California and one outside Seattle, is known for embracing Santa Maria-style barbecue, named for the town on California’s Central Coast, where tri-tip (mainly) and other chops are cooked over a red oak fire on a grate that is raised or lowered by turning a crank wheel.

But building restrictions at UnCommons prevented the installation of a tall grill with wheel, so Wise got creative, installing a grill whose lower grate can be adjusted over the coals while the upper grate remains fixed.

“It’s reverse grilling,” Wise said the other morning as final work proceeded on Rare Society, which will debut Wednesday at 6880 Helen Toland St., Suite 100. On the terrace sunk three feet below street grade, stacks of red oak awaited deployment.

“I will only cook over red oak that is sourced from the hills of the Sierra and the Central Coast and Santa Barbara County,” the chef said. “Vegas is the perfect climate for it — dry, dry, dry. The sweetness and light oak flavor is what makes Santa Maria-style barbecue Santa Maria-style barbecue.”

Which means that when it’s cooked on the reverse of the classic Santa Maria grill, the tri-tip still tastes as good.

Choosing off the Strip

The UnCommons restaurant, encompassing 5,000 square feet across the interior and terrace, makes a homecoming of sorts for Wise. When the chef was creating the first Rare Society, which debuted in 2019 in San Diego, he drew on Old Vegas glamour and swagger for inspiration. It was a natural step for the chef to plan a Vegas outpost, but initially, he only considered the big neon way.

“Out of my ignorance, I was so fixated on the Strip,” Wise said. “I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. When I had visited before, I had never left the Strip.”

But the developers of UnCommons were familiar with Rare Society from its Solana Beach, California, location, and they kept telling Wise about their upcoming development off the Strip. In the past two years, the chef traveled several times to Vegas and dined away from the Strip on each visit.

“I realized there was a huge market off the Strip for what we have to offer,” Wise said.

‘Flipping the script’

Part of that, he added, was for Rare Society to present its cozy swank as an alternative to the grandiose design of many Vegas steakhouses.

At UnCommons, the ceilings have been lowered and the front bar positioned at table height. A mirrored overhang reflects the front and back bars below. Walls gently curve; walnut abounds. Mushroom lamps in polished gold squat on tables. Chairs upholstered in hunter green velvet belly up to the chef’s counter and bar.

“We’re flipping the script,” Wise said of the look and feel.

Wood-fire epiphany

The chef met his wife, a Santa Maria native, in 2010. At a family Christmas gathering in 2012, his wife’s uncle pulled into the driveway hauling a Santa Maria-style grill on a flatbed trailer. Wise helped the uncle cook food for 50: tri-tip, ribs, chicken, lobster tails.

“I didn’t move from that grill for four hours, and that started the love for wood-fire cooking, the complexity it gives to ingredients and cooking. It’s become our thing. It was the birth of the group,” Wise said, referring to his Trust Restaurant Group.

Wagyu on board

Cuts of beef come off the wood-fire to provision the Rare Society Boards: wagyu for the Associate Board, dry-aged (from the house dry aging room) for the Executive.

The other morning, an Associate Board touched down on its custom lazy Susan, anchored by wagyu tri-tip, a 5-ounce filet and a Denver steak, all from Snake River Farms. Also on board: a grilled cipollini onion as a palate cleanser and 2 ounces of marrow with a long spoon for excavating from the bone.

“I want you: A, to come here to have value, and B, to try just more than one piece of meat. How do you come to a steakhouse and have several different types of meat? That’s where the boards come in,” the chef said. “It makes it fun and interactive.”

Salsa, yes, but no beans

Salsa and pinquito beans traditionally accompany Santa Maria barbecue. Wise has the salsa covered, serving his version that combines canned San Marzano tomatoes, two kinds of chiles, onion, garlic and lemon juice.

“We finish it with Mexican Coke. It rounds out the sweetness, adds a mellowness. It’s the equivalent of adding honey to a vinaigrette,” the chef said. “You need that neutral line for balancing it out.”

Pinquito beans, on the other hand, aren’t making the trip from the Central Coast. The beans, smaller and firmer than pintos, are an heirloom variety almost exclusively cultivated in the Santa Maria Valley. Farmers don’t grow enough to supply restaurants outside the region.

The bacon to end all bacon

Beyond the boards, the Rare Society menu runs to raw items like oysters that change every other day, lavishly accoutered seafood towers, several chops, add-ons like grilled lobster and seasonal black truffles, and a dozen sides (including summer corn and pickled fried onion rings). Also, bacon.

“It’s the least assuming menu description and the longest item to get to the plate,” Wise said.

Pork belly is cured for three days, dried overnight, slow-cooked for 22 hours so it’s fork-tender, pressed overnight, portioned out, lightly grilled, then anointed with house gochujang glaze made from invert sugar syrup, garlic, ginger and chiles. A spatter of Maldon sea salt finishes the bacon.

There are only-in-Vegas dishes, too, the chef said. Like Alaskan king crab by the half-pound or pound in the raw bar, lobster and king crab mac and cheese, and a 42-ounce dry-aged wagyu tomahawk from Snake River Farms.

Wise estimated the kitchen would use at least two cords of red oak per week, each cord being a stack of 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet, to create the wood fire. The Santa Maria fire.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.