The cotton is preserved behind glass. White bolls, in a rectangular diorama, frame the bar. Long planes of polished cypress flank the entry hall. Twined kudzu vines serpentine through the ceiling tiles. An impossibly long hunt board, presumably salvaged from a low-country plantation, anchors a 70-seat dining room that feels inexplicably cozy.

Louis’s Las Vegas, set in Town Square, is a new $750 million non-gaming development across from the city’s airport, and it’s one of two restaurants recently opened by South Carolinians Louis Osteen and his wife Marlene. Despite its location at the helm of a shopping center within sight of a California Pizza Kitchen and a Banana Republic, Louis’s is swish and refined and, as evidenced by the kudzu vines, a bit whimsical. More important, in a town like Vegas, where depersonalized concept restaurants are the rule, Louis Osteen’s new places are unapologetically personal and idiosyncratic.

The second-tier restaurant, Louis’s Fish Camp, is a 350-seat casual venue, outfitted with buoy chandeliers, backlit cork-as-art installations, and interior walls assembled from crab traps. The sound system blasts beach music, the de facto state sound of South Carolina. And there’s Flatt and Scruggs–style bluegrass in the mix too, because, well, Louis loves bluegrass.

Behind the veil of stacked crab traps is a bar, Zelda’s, where Louis has assembled one of America’s most eclectic libraries of bourbon. That means everything from 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve ($52 a pour) to 4-year-old J.T.S. Brown ($8 per pour), which Louis stocks for sentimental reasons. “That’s the whiskey Paul Newman drank from the bottle in The Hustler,” he says, eyeing the prize on a high shelf.

Small touches make the restaurants. Take the Fish Camp cocktail napkins. They’re not branded with the name of a distiller, but with a quote from literary heavyweight Carson McCullers. “Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning,” wrote the Georgia native in Clock Without Hands. “Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.”

All of which is to say that despite geographical impediments, and lacking a ready-made audience that can parse the various Southern culinary cultures to which Louis has paid homage — low-country, creole, Cajun, and Deep South — his two Las Vegas restaurants manage to offer a vision of place, specifically a vision of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and other points on the Southern map that matter to Louis.

And then there’s the food. Louis has a strong pedigree. Like Emeril Lagasse and Thomas Keller (both of whom have Las Vegas outposts), he’s a James Beard Award winner. And he’s been justly praised to the high heavens by a long line of reviewers.

I’m pleased to report that, upon first taste, it appears that little has been lost in translation from South Carolina to Nevada. (OK, so the pimento-cheese fondue was a bad idea, but I’m betting it won’t be on the menu by the time you read this review.)

At Fish Camp that means pan-fried flounder served on a bed of herby red rice. That means okra-thick gumbo in a muddy broth that’s sweet with crisp crescents of shrimp. Even the nontraditional riffs work, like the Cobb salad paved with broad swaths of crabmeat.

But the real star of this westward migration is the namesake restaurant, Louis’s, the more formal of the two. Louis and Marlene plan to spend the better part of each year in Las Vegas. And they’ve poured their hearts and their accumulated experience into the menu. They’ve also installed Carlos Guia, formerly of Commander’s Palace Las Vegas, at the helm.

That decision was a good one, judging by the cavalcade of dishes I tasted over the course of a long and wine-besotted evening. Dishes like pan-fried rainbow trout, stuffed with crabmeat and bacon, with a parchment-thin skin and dense, moist flesh perfumed with the barest hint of pig. And a rib chop of pork, served with what Louis calls pound-cake potatoes. That means, says Louis, “a pound of potatoes, a pound of butter, and a pound of cream.”

And then there’s that gossamer stew of oysters and benne seeds, a rich and briny lick-your-bowl-clean delight that, thanks to a healthy toss of those benne seeds, takes on a deep textural complexity. As you sip and chew and savor, as the seeds go chewy and pleasantly loamy beneath your teeth, the tastes of low-country South Carolina will come alive on your palate.

Brown Oyster Stew With Benne Seeds

This is one of the most popular dishes at Louis’s Las Vegas. It’s a very old recipe from a plantation in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Benne, more commonly known as sesame seed, was brought from Africa to the low country during the slave trade and has long been believed to confer luck to the eater.

THE RECIPE

4 tbs. benne seeds
2 tbs. peanut oil
2 tbs. very finely diced bacon
2 tbs. very finely minced yellow onion
2 tbs. all-purpose flour
1 ¼ cups heavy whipping cream
24 oysters, shucked, but with liquor strained and reserved
1 ¾ cups fish stock or bottled clam juice
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. sesame oil
2 tbs. chopped fresh chervil or Italian parsley, or a combination of both
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place benne seeds in small heavy-bottomed sauté pan over medium heat and cook about 9 minutes or until seeds become dark and fragrant. Remove from stove. Roughly crush half of seeds with a spoon and reserve.

2. Heat oil in heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat. Sauté bacon for about 5 minutes, or until crisp and lightly browned. Remove with slotted spoon and place on paper towels to drain. Leave oil and any fat in saucepan.

3. Add onion and crushed benne to saucepan and sauté for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently to ensure that they brown but don’t burn. When onions are lightly browned, add flour, stir well to combine, and cook for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, heat cream to just below a simmer.

4. Add reserved oyster liquor, fish stock, and thyme leaves and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring with whisk until mixture is simmering and without lumps. Add warm cream and simmer for 5 minutes. Add oysters, remaining 2 tablespoons of benne seeds, lemon juice, sesame oil, and chervil or parsley. Let oysters stew on heat until they begin to curl. Quickly remove saucepan from heat and add pinch of salt and grind of black pepper. Garnish with toast points or oyster crackers and serve.

Serves four.