Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

After nearly 40 years, Piero’s remains a hotspot for Las Vegas locals and celebrities alike

Piero's Celebrates 40 Years

Steve Marcus

Owner Freddie Glusman and his son Evan pose at Pieros Italian Cuisine, across from the Las Vegas Convention Center, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. The restaurant opened near downtown in 1982 and moved to its current location in 1987.

Piero's Celebrates 40 Years

Owner Freddie Glusman and his son Evan pose at Pieros Italian Cuisine, across from the Las Vegas Convention Center, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. The restaurant opened near downtown in 1982 and moved to its current location in 1987. Launch slideshow »

Freddie Glusman is celebrating his 85th birthday this month, a truly special occasion for one of the city’s unique characters.

But the real party is coming in March, when his landmark restaurant Piero’s marks its 40th anniversary in Las Vegas, a one-of-a-kind dining destination that reflects the character of the man who founded it.

Located since 1987 on Convention Center Drive between the Strip and Paradise Road — now in the shadow of the brand-new West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center — Piero’s looks, feels and tastes like the type of old-school Italian restaurant portrayed in the 1995 Martin Scorsese film “Casino.”

Joe Pesci’s character Nicky Santoro ran that restaurant, and Pesci is a real-life fan of Piero’s, one of many celebrities, sports heroes and elected officials that regularly return to the restaurant for the food and atmosphere.

“That was a good movie, and it helped the place too,” Glusman said. “Pesci, he’s the greatest. I wouldn’t let him smoke a cigar in here, so at the (end of filming), he brought a case of cigars in and gave them to everyone.”

Glusman was born in Canada, became a U.S. citizen and served in the Army, and moved to Las Vegas from the Los Angeles area in 1957. He operated different businesses, selling carpet and running dress shops and offering other services, until he got his start in restaurants at the Las Vegas Sporting House athletic club, located where Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club now stands on Sammy Davis Jr. Drive. 

What compelled him to try his hand at fine dining in Las Vegas? “I’m just a genius,” he laughed. “I got lucky. I’ve got good people.”

He opened the first version of Piero’s on Karen Avenue near downtown Las Vegas in March 1982. He bought the land near the convention center and moved the restaurant to its current location five years later after demand at the 88-seat original spot outgrew the space.

“We moved everything over here in a week. It was fun,” said Evan Glusman, Freddie’s son and Piero’s general manager. “I remember sitting with his friends who would shuck all the clams into a big bowl, sitting with all these older guys having no idea who they were.”

Sitting in the same corner booth where he resides most nights, Freddie interrupts his son: “They were those guys.”

“Yeah, those guys,” Evan continues. “I’d sit at that table and eat clams with a big spoon with those guys.”

In its early days, Piero’s was popular with a different kind of famous Vegas figure, not just actors portraying mob figures but the actual mob figures themselves. Freddie is known to tell and re-tell stories to his regular guests, like the one when corrupt New York “Mafia cops” Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, detectives convicted of moonlighting as mob assassins, were arrested at Piero’s in 2005.

“I got a lot of great stories. Some of those (connected) guys used to come in here and check the tables to see if there were any bugs, and they wouldn’t sit at the same table two nights in a row,” Freddie said. “And I had to move my Kennedy pictures. They didn’t like the Kennedys because the Kennedys kind of defused them a little.”

But those shadowy figures were never the most welcome or celebrated diners at Piero’s. Freddie Glusman was close friends with longtime UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and actor Jerry Lewis, both frequent guests whose presence is now commemorated with plaques and pictures all over the restaurant.

“Tark, this was his place, and he really made the restaurant. He ate here for over 20 years,” Freddie said. “He never paid for a meal, and I didn’t want him to; I just wanted his presence.”

Those legendary Las Vegas names have contributed a lot to the mystique of Piero’s, but at its heart, it’s simply a great Italian restaurant forever focused on fine food and even better hospitality.

“It’s consistency. That’s what he taught me, from when I was very little,” said Evan Glusman, who is regularly talking about continuing the family legacy with his kids and siblings. “First off, you have to be great, then it’s about consistently being great with the same level of service all the time.”

Piero’s came through the challenging circumstances of COVID-19 with flying colors last summer, one of its most profitable seasons yet. With the new Convention Center expansion bringing added exposure to the iconic restaurant, the future looks bright.

“The (Great) Recession was worse (than COVID), back in 2008,” Freddie Glusman said. “We were two-thirds off back then. We had to borrow money. Now, every time people come in, they tell me they’re coming back in a few weeks or months. With the new convention hall, they just fall in here.”

Routine visitors to Las Vegas make it a point to return to Piero’s, whether they are in town for business or pleasure. But serving locals is what the staff and ownership love most, despite the location just off the Strip.

“For locals, we bend over backwards,” Evan Glusman said. “Everybody comes for their favorite dishes, the veal chop parmigiana, the Caesar salad, the osso buco. But if you want something we made in the past, we’ll make it now.”

Whether you’re looking inside the Strip’s casino megaresorts or exploring the diverse development of dining in different neighborhoods, there’s no question the Las Vegas restaurant landscape has grown and evolved in a big way since Piero’s first opened its doors. But even with all that change, and steady change in the industry overall, customers keep coming back to this frozen-in-time Italian eatery.

After 40 years, Freddie Glusman knows why.

“Well, it starts when you pull in the driveway. We have valet parking, and we do not charge for valet parking. We greet you with two young lady hostesses. We give you the best Caesar salad, the best service, we give you all the fanfare,” he said. “I serve the best food, I take care of the customers, I do anything they want me to do, and if they are rude or out of line, I throw ‘em out. That’s my reputation.”

But don’t worry, he doesn’t throw people out very often. And definitely only when they deserve it.