Robert,
I had a version of this working for my local deployment, using ajax queries against REST Services. This all worked fine until we deployed to the test environment that is on a secured server, so all my queries to the REST services now result in a 403 - permission denied message.
My question to you is how you have the eSearch configured to get past that - I also have the eSearch in my app, and that does succeed in bringing back data. Is the query Task that you utilize somehow handled differently than the direct ajax call to the service?
thanks in advance,
Mikkel