We’ve all had those days, too many of them now, when we don’t know how to keep going. How to get out of bed. How to put one foot in front of the other. How to make it all work. Some days you just need to see it done first, then you can pull it together and maybe just take a step.¶There are different kinds of leaders. Some rely on their experience or their talent, while others are just incredibly agile, charismatic or diligent. An extraordinary leader has all those traits. But in our current times, a much more intuitive, deeply rooted leadership is required. Most days we need to see it done first. Show us the way out or the way in. That’s the first step.

“For me, the pandemic was so crazy because we had just launched the Women’s Hospitality Initiative and we had this tremendous momentum behind this idea,” says Elizabeth Blau. “What better city than Las Vegas to use as a model, trying to really do something in a different manner and create change and get companies to work together.”

One of the hospitality industry’s extraordinary leaders, Blau teamed with other leading chefs, restaurateurs and executives to organize the WHI and craft its mission statement: to accelerate the development and advancement of women leaders in the restaurant industry. The Las Vegas-based program boasts an impressive collection of founding board members along with a strategic advisory board, plus big goals to expand nationally with educational curriculum, mentorship and advocacy programs.

“We just had this event with all these community leaders and so much support, and then literally the world shut down and so it wasn’t a matter of women in the industry. It became a matter of, we need to save our industry,” she says. “There was all this [work] with the National Restaurant Association and the new Independent Restaurant Coalition, and it just became so apparent that while the government and the states’ intent was to help, there was no clear understanding.”

While Blau figured out how to keep her own businesses—popular Las Vegas restaurants Honey Salt, near Summerlin, and Buddy V’s at the Venetian—running through the shutdowns and changing restrictions and continuing to provide assistance to the many different projects and clients associated with Blau and Associates, she stepped up as one of the local community’s most prominent lobbyists, helping to connect restaurant operators with resources and options in the fight for survival.

“Even when help came, it was so complicated,” she says. “We started this Facebook page [called] Save Our Local Restaurants; it’s changed now, but back then we were just trying to post anything that could help.

“It was so devastating to get these Instagram or Facebook messages from people who had sandwich shops or little cafés asking me for help. You needed a battery of lawyers and accountants to be able to figure out which loan to take. Is this one forgivable? Am I just getting myself more in debt? Or is this really a lifeline? So many haven’t been able to take advantage of tax credits, so many have shut their doors forever, and so many people have left our industry.”

Plenty of local restaurant owners, including Blau, haven’t received leniency or assistance from landlords, yet another complication of the pandemic. Some vendors have been more helpful, she says, but overall the strongest support for restaurants has come from loyal customers and other operators.

Most major restaurant cities across the country have seen the demise of some of their dining institutions. Las Vegas seems to have weathered this particular pandemic effect better than most, but the restaurant industry here has certainly been beaten down and continues to struggle.

“Maybe it ties into the whole Vegas Strong [idea],” Blau says. “I think people supported us but also trusted us, because they know we are going to follow precautions and stay safe. We adhere to all those rules because we have not only a responsibility to our customers but also a responsibility to our team.”

“I think Elizabeth Blau is a national treasure, and we’re lucky that she lives in Las Vegas,” Elaine Wynn says. “She came here at the moment when the city was ripe for a turn in the direction she took it. It’s her sophistication, her exposure, her taste level, her energy and her passion. She is, more than any person in the city, I think, single-handedly responsible for the culinary upheaval in Las Vegas.”

Few people have had the opportunity to watch Blau work in such close proximity as Wynn, co-founder of Wynn Resorts. That company’s landmark Bellagio resort, opened in 1998, is widely recognized as the Las Vegas casino project that created the blueprint for the city’s fine-dining future on and off the Strip, setting a new standard of luxurious and diverse cuisine for hotels around the world.

“She hand-picked those original chefs one by one. I remember going to dinner with these guys and how she’d advocate for them, and we didn’t know who half of them were,” Wynn says. “Some were James Beard Award winners, but some were much more esoteric. She just had her finger on the pulse and knew it was the exact right time for this city to do it.”

Blau’s first connection to Steve and Elaine Wynn came through a collegiate friendship with Gillian Wynn, the younger of their two daughters. When Blau was studying at Cornell University’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration, Steve Wynn spoke at its Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

During a school trip to New York City, Blau was spontaneously invited to the birthday party of Sirio Maccioni, the legendary restaurateur who founded Le Cirque, launched the careers of many great chefs and left an immeasurable impact on global fine dining and hospitality culture.

She worked for Maccioni while finishing graduate school until Las Vegas came calling, then connected the dots between Le Cirque and the developing Bellagio. Maccioni’s restaurants became the foundation for that game-changing food and beverage portfolio. It’s been said that Bellagio put Blau on the map, but it was the other way around.

“Even though she had graduated from Cornell and [the restaurant industry] was her focus, all the graduates don’t get launched like a rocket ship with such an impressive restaurateur like Sirio Maccioni. That’s hitching your star to quite a wagon,” Wynn says. “And she had the chops to hold her own. I don’t think we thought of her as an exception in the bigger picture. She was someone passionate with a sparkling future ahead of her.”

Maccioni died in his hometown in Tuscany in April 2020. The painful loss wasn’t the only one for Blau and her circle of partners and collaborators during the pandemic year.

“Sirio was such a huge influence on my career and life and passion for the industry, and it was really tough not only losing a lot of very close friends but not really getting a sense of closure, the normal process of being able to have funerals and celebrations of life and telling stories with friends,” Blau says.

Last year was also painful for Blau physically. In July, she was hit by a car while bicycling on Cape Cod, crushing her leg. There’s an eight-inch plate and several screws in that leg now, but she’s back on her feet, continuing to help the food and beverage industry do the same.

As complicated challenges sprung up during the pandemic, Blau and her network continued to create solutions.

“During the darkest days of the pandemic, Elizabeth was constantly in touch with us about ways to help the industry,” says Robert Cauthorn, COO of Las Vegas Weekly’s parent company, Greenspun Media Group. “What impressed me was that for someone synonymous with fine dining, she was fighting for everyone in the industry, from the person busing tables in a corner taco joint all the way to the most elegant restaurants in the city.

“I know for a fact that she was pressing our congressional delegation on the big picture of how vital restaurants are to our economy,” Cauthorn continues. “She would stress how restaurants are incubators for talent in many fields, the entry point for ethnic populations to own businesses, the first job for countless people. When the restaurant community needed a hero, Elizabeth Blau was seemingly everywhere, protecting everyone she could.”

In the early days when the coronavirus was just beginning to impact Las Vegas, Clark County Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick wondered how the most at-risk residents, seniors and other disadvantaged individuals and families, would be able to get food and supplies when it was no longer safe to leave their homes. Moonridge Group CEO Julie Murray and Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation executive director Punam Mathur answered the call with an idea to assemble healthy meals and take them straight to those homes, and they called upon Blau to make it happen.

Delivering With Dignity was born, a program that has delivered more than 413,000 restaurant meals to vulnerable Las Vegans through early July.

“They realized there was going to be a crisis for those who are at risk for hunger and have food insecurity issues, because community centers, senior centers and schools were all closing,” Blau says. “Everything had to pivot. There were supply chain issues because the whole city was shutting down.”

DWD started with Honey Salt chefs packaging meals for volunteers to deliver, and then other local restaurants and more private and corporate donors joined the effort. The program helped feed the community and kept dozens of restaurant workers employed in a time when they were required to stay closed for dine-in or were permitted only to operate at limited capacity.

“The logistics that went into it were complex, because you have to make sure you’re identifying people who really need help; these are situations where people take advantage,” Blau says. “Now we work with 40 nonprofits that identify these people at risk. If you didn’t have all these strategic partnerships, your idea to do good could go nowhere.”

Wynn has long been one of Southern Nevada’s most prominent philanthropists, and her support has been essential in launching both Delivering With Dignity and the Women’s Hospitality Initiative. She’s a firm believer that many problems can be solved at the local level when business and community leaders collaborate with the mission of taking care of workers and families.

“Elizabeth is such a collaborative spirit and she knows how to appeal to all the kinds of people that would partner in these efforts,” Wynn says.

After Bellagio, Blau continued with Wynn Resorts, helping create the dining lineups at Wynn and Encore. When Encore arrived in 2008, one of its top restaurants was Society Cafe, led by chef Kim Canteenwalla, Blau’s husband and founding partner in Blau & Associates. The couple has a son, Cole, and the family has worked together on the menu at Honey Salt and the homey Honey Salt cookbook released in 2018.

Even with all the challenges of the pandemic, Blau recently returned to Wynn to work as a consultant in food and beverage, strategizing behind the scenes on multiple projects including the splashy opening of Delilah at Wynn Las Vegas and the upcoming opening of Casa Playa in the former Elio space near Encore Beach Club.

“She has had her hands in every aspect of food and beverage and helped shape the culture of who we are today,” says Alaina Nieves, who has been with Wynn Resorts for more than 15 years and recently stepped into the role of vice president of food and beverage. “She shaped that foundation but has also done her own entrepreneurial ventures, has her own restaurants and has done consulting for different groups globally. Working with her has been a huge opportunity.”

Delilah, a collaboration with the LA-based h.wood Group that opened last month, isn’t just a glamorous restaurant with delicious food and live entertainment. Dramatically designed by Wynn Design and Development President and Chief Creative Officer Todd-Avery Lenahan, it’s an only-in-Vegas project that’s already moving the needle.

“Delilah is an amazing supper club in LA and Todd has brought it to a new level at Wynn,” Blau says of her longtime friend and design mentor. “He’s truly a visionary, and I think restaurants have become theater and entertainment as much as they are about dining and service. To have a partner like this is truly a unique opportunity.

“I think it’s arguably the most beautiful restaurant in America. It is stunning.”

Sarah Thompson came to Las Vegas to serve as executive chef at Encore’s stylish Mexican restaurant Elio, originally set to open on March 17, 2020. The pandemic obviously decimated those plans.

The new plan is Casa Playa, a similar but enhanced concept set to arrive in mid-September. The original partners have gone their separate ways and the Wynn team has assumed operations, but Thompson is staying on to guide the kitchen.

“I moved out here to advance my career and open this restaurant, and I feel like it would have been selling myself short if I didn’t continue,” she says. “I came here to make an impact and have the opportunity to do things you really don’t see anywhere else. Las Vegas is very different from what I’m used to, but it has grown on me a lot in the last year and a half.”

Unsurprisingly, Blau’s presence is a big reason why Thompson is sticking around—and why the project is coming back to life. “I’ve never met anyone who has such a strong work ethic, is so decisive and knows what she wants to do and is so supportive at the same time,” says Thompson, who has also been involved with the Women’s Hospitality Initiative since its inception. “She’s the whole bundle, and she’s been nothing but encouraging and supportive. It’s just so great working with someone who gives you everything they have.”

This has probably been the most difficult time in modern history for Las Vegas and for the hospitality industry. But the past 17 months have also been filled with examples and opportunities, instances of looking around at our extraordinary leaders, watching them read the terrain and finding ways to keep going.

That’s the past. The future, for Blau, will be about picking up the pieces of many different projects and pushing forward, in Las Vegas and beyond. The Women’s Hospitality Initiative will continue to have a significant impact on that front.

“One thing I’m incredibly proud of is that we were able to continue with the launch of our education platform,” she says. “We created a class called From the Classroom to the Boardroom: Leadership for Women in Hospitality—it’s the first leadership course for the industry. It was launched with UNLV and the Culinary Institute of America and they co-taught the class online.”

That happened in the fall, and in the spring of this year the course was launched at Florida International University. This fall, it will be available at San Diego State partnering with UNLV and the CIA is expected to bring in another partner this year as well.

The WHI focus on education at the high school and college level is crucial, Blau says, because it’s time to move beyond the theory of the glass ceiling.

“Sheryl Sandberg and her foundation did a study that identified a new phenomenon called the broken rung,” she says. “It showed that the issue is not isolated to the glass ceiling. Men and women are entering the workforce in equal numbers over the last decade, but women are falling behind at their first management job. It’s like a race and you may never get to the finish line.

“So if we could start there, focus on education and target women entering the industry and create mentoring programs, that’s such a powerful message. We’re super-excited about being able to carry that through.”

It’s an entirely different and very important way Las Vegas can influence the global hospitality industry. But clearly, it wouldn’t be the first time Blau played a role in doing exactly that. Simply put, no one else has accomplished what she has.

“I’m totally spoiled now. I can’t go to any city and have the consistently fantastic meals you can get in Las Vegas, especially in this radius of a few miles [of the Strip] which is literally a smorgasbord of the best offerings,” Wynn says. “It’s great, because people come through Las Vegas from everywhere because of our infrastructure. Millions of people are exposed to whatever dining is here, and they go home and rave about Las Vegas and how great the food is. And that is Elizabeth Blau.”

Blau on Vegas

Nobody knows the Las Vegas dining landscape like Elizabeth Blau, and we’re not just talking about upscale restaurants in big fancy casinos. To know her is to bump into her when you’re trying out the hottest new eatery in the Valley, whether it’s a suburban treasure, a Chinatown discovery or a glamorous supper club Blau helped mastermind.

So after all this time building and eating Las Vegas, what does she love about this unique food city?

“I love that there are still things pushing the envelope,” Blau says. “I love what [Cosmopolitan President and CEO] Bill McBeath and [A Perfect Bite founder and consultant] Oliver Wharton did with the Block 16 Urban Food Hall. Food halls were happening around the country, but reinventing it that way—being able to curate all these great brands and having Cosmo operating them but still keeping true to their concepts—is so great. And what’s been done at Resorts World with [Famous Food Street Eats] is like that on steroids, to be able to bring that extra level of authenticity.”

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