Chef Natalie Young: Old Soul

BY JANICE MARIE WILSON

An Old Soul is a person who feels much older than their age reflects. This feeling is often accompanied by the gift of empathy, high intelligence, intuition, and keen insight into the human condition. Old Souls are relatively rare and compose a small percentage of the world’s population. Old Souls are not common in today’s society.

Old Soul restaurant in the World Market Center embodies all these qualities. The minute you walk into the restaurant, you have a feeling that something very rare and special was created. The restaurant’s décor is vintage 1920. You feel a special connection to the care that was chosen in each piece as if you were visiting your grandmother’s home.

The restaurant exudes a grandmother’s love and joy for her family. The menu and fare have the flair of giving you the hearty nourishment from a forgotten past. Remember when we loved sitting around the dinner table and felt the familiar love of our grandmother’s cooking. Everything was home-made, nourishing, fresh, and delicious. That is what Old Soul restaurant embodies. It is a rare and treasured find.

Chef Natalie Young, restaurateur and owner of Eat and Old Soul restaurants, is the intellectual powerhouse that created this experience. Her intuition and keen insight into the human condition gives the dining experience a memory to treasure.

Chef Natalie is an Old Soul by definition. An Old Soul focuses on irreplaceable things that bring them lasting fulfillment and joy. This is what you will find at her restaurant.

She embodies Rilke’s poem, “Go to the limits of your longing. Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going, no feeling is final.”

Chef Natalie Young wanted to be an artist. Her dad told her, “Get a job!” Born in St. Louis and raised in Denver, Colorado, she came to Las Vegas to get sober. “I lost everything, my family, my partner, my job. I did anything I could for work, trimmed trees, cleaned up after horses. I look around at everything I have now, and it seems absolutely unbelievable.”

“I never thought I could own a restaurant,” she states unabashedly. I asked her how she became so successful. She attributes everything to something/someone bigger in charge. Without hesitating, she told me, “I’m a f….ing miracle. I don’t have the ability to think this big.”

She’s now been sober for nineteen years. Arriving in Las Vegas, she spent two months in rehab. “If I can, you can.” Her brown eyes sparkle and ignite a flame from within. “I can’t believe I get to do what I get to do. I am so grateful. I feel I owe. I need to pay it forward. I don’t need anything. I have enough.”

She is a woman who believes in focus and grind. She doesn’t question things. She lives by the principle that she is not a victim. All are key ingredients for the recipe of success in the culinary world, and life.

She really never gave up her dream as an artist. She just traded paintbrushes and canvases for fruits and vegetables that create art on a plate.

A professional chef for over 20 years, she has worked in some of the country’s most celebrated—and most demanding—kitchens, including stints alongside such notable chefs as Mark Miller (Coyote Café) her favorite, and John Joho (Eiffel Tower) for seven years, where she was awarded her coveted Chef title. She also helped open the Hard Rock Hotel. Although she acquired her love for food out of necessity, her artistic soul nourishes every kitchen, job, and person she meets.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Chef Natalie at her Old Soul restaurant at the Las Vegas World Market Center. Meeting Chef was a transformational experience. Her signature style of tattoos, close-cropped shaved head covered by a straw hat with a worn crease, and overalls shattered my preconceived perceptions of the white frocked celebrity chef. Despite her unorthodox appearance, I am told Chef Nat is all Biz in the kitchen.

As she sat down at the antique table in Old Soul, she treated me like an old friend. She was warm, down to earth, authentic and humble. She brings her signature style to the culinary world, the art of breaking bread to the dining experience. She wants her customers to feel at home whether you’re a food critic or a valet. Chef Nat wants her restaurants to feel approachable. “I love this space,” she exudes with enthusiasm. “People are surprised by the way it looks and feels.” Old Soul is filled with antiques Chef Natalie purchased on Main Street, in Las Vegas. It’s like having a cherished meal on your grandmother’s fine china.

Her mantra is simple. Make the menu simple and approachable, “A potato comes out of the ground. Enjoy that potato.”

She has created the Old Soul’s menu to be simple without being predictable, blending East Coast dishes with Southern-style flair. For example, the smoked trout appetizer swaps corn cakes in place of traditional latkes. That nod to soul food pops up throughout the menu, in starters like fried green tomatoes (Chef Nat’s favorite movie) and fried oysters and entrées such as liver and onions. Don’t fret if you didn’t grow up on these old American staples; there’s plenty more to explore, like grilled branzino with wilted arugula and house-made chimichurri, or braised short rib risotto with English peas and truffle oil. The bread pudding with pineapple and vanilla ice cream is killer too. The cherry pie is served in a black skillet iron pan, that sizzles with an explosion of Grandma’s sweetness. Make sure you order one with a French press coffee to share—or skip dessert and go straight for an after-dinner cocktail of bourbon, like a true old soul. Relax and savor the ambiance, as you watch the black and white projections of silent films featuring Charlie Chaplin on the silver screen.

Chef Nat’s menu is as authentic as she is. She works at not hanging so tightly onto things and strongly believes life is a journey, not a destination. It is the experience that determines how you live, not how you die. She proudly shows off the black letters of her knuckled tattoo WALK AND CRY, as she recounts the story of a young friend who was dying of cancer at the young age of 21. They were walking on the beach in Venice, California, and Natalie was crying and feeling sorry for her dying friend. Her friend looked at her and firmly commanded Natalie to “Walk and Cry. I don’t have much time.”

Natalie’s no victim mentality comes from her dad’s advice. “You’ve got to go out and get yours. Nobody cares. Look what they did to Jesus. People are in fear when they’re not being nice.” She smiles, warmly recounting his words. “I kinda do what I want. I don’t know what I’d do if someone told me what to do.”

She recounts one of the penultimate moments, when Anthony Bourdain came into her restaurant and greeted her with, “Hi Chef!” Natalie beamed with the pride of an actor winning an Academy Award. “I worked my whole life to have him call me this,” she beamed.

Chef Nat, God certainly takes care of you. Thank you for being a steward to a nourishing soulful culinary experience for all of us.

Need to let you know that if you’re going to the Smith Center for a concert, Old Soul is the place to have dinner, drinks, or dessert before or after the theatre. And don’t forget to tell a friend. Places like Old Soul and people like Chef Natalie need to be shared and loved by all of us.

Old Soul: 495 S. Grand Central Parkway #A116, Las Vegas, NV
(702) 534-0999
Monday-Saturday, Noon – 9 p.m.