Saracen Casino Resort expands its culinary team ahead of the hotel launch

Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, is preparing for a new phase of growth and is strengthening its food and beverage (F&B) operations amid preparations for the launch of the hotel and convention services. The resort, which opened in the fall of 2020, established itself among the state’s notable dining destinations from its first months of operation, positioning dining not as an add-on to the casino, but as a standalone reason to visit.

For Arkansas’s foodservice market, this case matters because Saracen keeps the bar high not only through interiors and scale, but also through investments in the team, kitchen standards, and service. Within the management structure, Todd Gold, Senior Director of Hospitality, is responsible for this, building a staffing strategy so that the restaurant component can handle the future demand from the hotel, banquets, and events.

How Saracen is changing—and why now

The shift from a casino to a resort with a hotel and convention capabilities usually exposes weak points in operations. In such a scenario, the restaurant has to operate in several modes at once, each with its own calculus of quality, speed, and consistency, and that is precisely why strengthening the team looks less like a cosmetic change and more like a structural move.

Saracen Casino Resort shows that the transition is possible—and that it can be done with quality. The importance of its example is hard to overstate, since more and more casinos are making this transition today. This is due to a number of reasons, but the main one is competition with the online segment. It began during the pandemic, and over time it became clear that in the field of gambling entertainment, land-based casinos are losing.

Online casinos can offer guests not just dozens, but hundreds of slot machines and other gambling games. In the post-pandemic period, their range has increasingly included exclusive games created specifically for the online segment—most notably Plinko and crash games such as Aviator, Jet X, Lucky Jet, and Aviatrix. The popularity of these games has grown even further since promotions and bonuses began to be used for their marketing. According to the website https://jet-x.com.in/, which provides information about welcome bonuses in online casinos with Jet X, this and other crash games have been added to the catalogs of the largest iGaming brands.

All these factors point to the development of the online segment, with which traditional gambling is becoming increasingly difficult to compete.  Therefore, land-based casinos are increasingly shifting their focus from purely gambling games to ancillary offerings. In order to retain tourists, especially with culinary highlights, that service must be at a very high level.

At Saracen, they are betting on a combination of three roles that together assemble a premium restaurant into a single system: the executive chef shapes the core menu and kitchen standards, the executive pastry chef is responsible for desserts and banquet production, and the general manager and Wine Program Director lead service, the wine list, and team training. This kind of lineup is more common in large city projects than in the regional casino segment, and it shifts expectations upward.

A timeline of change

The project’s momentum can be read through key milestones that show how the restaurant block gained weight in parallel with the resort’s development:

• 2020. Official opening of Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff
• The last five years. Development of the restaurant direction and the establishment of a reputation as a culinary destination
• Now. Preparations for the hotel opening and convention services, expansion of food and beverage (F&B) operations
• Spring last year. Michael Qandah joins Red Oak Steakhouse as executive chef

This sequence explains why the new appointments are presented not as scattered staffing news, but as preparation for a different operational reality, where there will be more seatings, banquets, and corporate scenarios.

Michael Qandah and the creative engine of Red Oak Steakhouse

Michael Qandah took the position of executive chef at Red Oak Steakhouse and is responsible for the kitchen, quality, and menu development at the premium steakhouse. His profile stands out for its versatility: he works equally confidently with plant-based dishes, meat butchery, and craft techniques, which helps bring new life even to a conservative steakhouse format without losing its recognizability.

His biography does not include a classic culinary school, but it does include a path through practice and mentors. The key stages that shape his current breadth look like this:

• A start in family barbecue restaurants in Little Rock and Benton, where he learned the business from the inside
• Honing craft skills by working alongside masters, including bread and cheese as distinct disciplines
• Deepening his seafood expertise through procurement experience, where quality is proven not by words but by product selection
• Work in different formats and cities, from club kitchens to Asian concepts, with constant menu tuning to the audience

At Saracen, he says, he was given the resources and freedom to refresh approaches. “This is going to be yours. You get the creativity you want, and you get the freedom that you want.” The second important detail he emphasizes is not about recipes, but about the environment: he speaks about support from the team and leadership and describes it as rare for the industry, noting “so much support and so much concern about me as a human being and also my work.”

For the guest, this means more chef-driven creations in the steakhouse while maintaining the premium standard of execution and the consistency on which trust in a classic menu rests.

Matías de Matthaeis and a return to pastry amid banquet growth

After strengthening the main kitchen, the resort returns its focus to the pastry program, which becomes critical within the hotel-and-banquet operation. Matías de Matthaeis now works as Saracen’s executive pastry chef, although he previously led the entire kitchen of Red Oak Steakhouse as executive chef, and the move reads as an expansion of scope, not a step down.

His strength lies in precision and repeatability, where flavor is grounded in measurability. He puts it plainly himself: “My passion [in food] is in everything, but people that know me closely have said that my heart is in pastry,” and he also describes an approach that resembles working with a laboratory formula: “I like to know the chemistry of it, and I like to know how many grams of salt consistently goes on this amount of potatoes or whatever it is.”

In practice, the role comes down to two directions: developing the dessert menu in the restaurants and scaling up kitchen production for event demand. De Matthaeis links the need for the position on a full-time basis to growth plans: “We are expanding, and we have the convention center. We’re going to have more restaurants in all these beautiful plans of expansion… it’s important to have an executive pastry chef full time because banquets are going to take a lot.”

For the guest, this means a stronger dessert lineup in the restaurants and a higher level of sweets and baked goods at banquets and events, where quality is visible in the details of presentation and texture.

Kenneth Lipsmeyer and wine culture as part of service

The final touch of a premium evening at a steakhouse is usually decided by the wine list and how the dining room works with it, and here the key figure is Kenneth Lipsmeyer, general manager and Wine Program Director of Red Oak Steakhouse. He is responsible for wine selection and service, service standards, and staff training, because wine service rarely rests on the talent of one person and is more often built as a system.

His core principle sounds like a rejection of the idea of a final diploma after which one can stop. “It’s a lifelong process. It never ends, and the goal isn’t to end; it’s just to keep learning and keep growing.” The second pillar of meaning relates to a team perspective: “My goal is to influence others,” linking his own studies with the development of colleagues and the quality of explaining wine choices to guests.

The terms in his résumé matter, but they require translation into plain language. Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) is an international system of levels for the wine and spirits industry, and the Diploma is among the higher tiers. The Master of Wine program is a multi-year track with rigorous exams and a tasting component; Lipsmeyer is in his second year and is considered a candidate in the program, and he became the first participant in the program from Arkansas, with the prospect of joining a circle of roughly 400 professionals worldwide.

The depth of immersion is illustrated by the professional geography of his trips, where study is tied to the place of origin of the wine and the practices of the estates:

• Regular visits to key European regions, including Burgundy, Germany, Italy, and Spain
• Systematic work on the U.S. West Coast, including Napa Valley
• Deepening engagement in South America with a focus on Mendoza and plans for Australia and South Africa

For the guest, this results in more precise pairing recommendations, a more tightly curated wine list, and more confident wine service in the dining room, where knowledge turns into clear, practical choices at the table.