Smooth opening of Standard & Pour means restaurateur ready for next project

This time, Cory Harwell didn’t have to go shopping on the eve of his restaurant opening.

Harwell, president of Simon Hospitality Group, opened Carson Kitchen in downtown Las Vegas with Kerry Simon in 2014. As the big day approached, Harwell decided some of the chairs were just too big, and frantically headed to the few stores that were open late in the evening.

Things went more smoothly when the group’s latest venture, Standard &Pour, opened on Eastern Avenue in Henderson late last month. Harwell said Standard &Pour was the last project that Simon, dubbed the “rock and roll chef” by Rolling Stone magazine and an early contributor to the renaissance in Las Vegas dining, worked on before his death Sept. 11, 2015.

So far, Harwell said, the community has responded “incredibly positively” to the restaurant, where specialties include scallop crudo, venison tartare and a wine and cheese sundae.

Next up for SHG (the motto of which is “Keep Calm and Kerry On”): a pan-Asian concept in the Huntridge area. Harwell conceded Huntridge isn’t exactly known as a dining destination, but he’s undaunted.

Well, sort of.

“I think anytime you’re putting hard-earned money into an investment, it’s a leap of faith,” he said.

But he’s been there before.

“It’s at the beginning stages of becoming the next neighborhood downtown to go through a gentrification process,” he said, adding that in the pre-Carson Kitchen days, the building was “an old flophouse.”

“People walked down that street and thought I was completely out of my mind,” he said.

The as-yet-unnamed new spot, which he expects to open in April or May in the former Mahoney’s Drum Shop, finds the group “dabbling in the Asian market.”

“We’re going to bring a good introduction to a wide variety of Asian cultures and cuisine,” Harwell said. “They’re some of my favorites.”

Openings: Evel Pie is expected to open next month at 508 E. Fremont St. in the space most recently held by fondue-and-baby-bottle-wine spot F. Pigalle, and before that Radio City Pizza.

The name is a nod to motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, who famously jumped over the Caesars Palace fountains 49 years ago, and it’ll be operated in cooperation with his son, Kelly.

The firm behind it is High Horse, which has The Golden Tiki on Spring Mountain Road. The parents of High Horse co-founder Branden Powers had a chain of pizza shops in the ’70s, and Evel Pie will evoke that era.

Sightings: Rapper Wale dining at Tao at The Venetian, hip-hop artist French Montana in The Jewelry Box private-dining room at Beauty &Essex at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Have an item for Kitchen Confidante? Email hrinella@reviewjournal.com.