Here are some restaurants to check out at Downtown Summerlin
Downtown Summerlin, which officially opens Thursday, will have, among its 125 businesses, 32 that are restaurants or otherwise dedicated to food.
Just not yet.
Some of the biggest players in the complex’s restaurant collection are scheduled to open later this year or even next year. They include Wolfgang Puck Bar &Grill (for which a management team has been announced and hiring begun), which is scheduled to open in October. Andiron, from the married team of restaurant developer Elizabeth Blau and chef Kim Canteenwalla, is expected to open early next year. Others include local favorite Grape Street Cafe &Wine Bar; the canine-friendly Lazy Dog Restaurant, based in Southern California; Wonderland Bakery, also based in Southern California; and Ribs and Burgers, based in Australia.
But some of the restaurants, including a few that are new to Southern Nevada, are prepared for Thursday’s opening of the sprawling complex near the 215 Beltway between Charleston Boulevard and Sahara Avenue on the west side of the valley.
They include Crave American Kitchen &Sushi Bar. Zach Sussman, marketing director for parent company Kaskaid Hospitality, said Crave is a small family-owned company based in Minneapolis that has four restaurants in the Twin Cities and a few years ago started a national expansion, opening in Miami; Cincinnati; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Neb.; and next month Washington, D.C. Sussman said the company’s principals have long been interested in Las Vegas and visit frequently.
“The Summerlin project came to our attention a few years ago, and after visiting the site and hearing everything they had planned there, we were really excited to be there,” he said.
Sussman said Crave differs from other mall-based restaurant chains in that the company is chef-driven, with an emphasis on local sourcing when possible, and the variety of its food, which includes appetizers, pizzas, burgers, salads, steaks and entrees along with a full sushi menu.
“In other concepts that feature is an afterthought,” he said. “It’s really a full sushi restaurant combined with a full American restaurant.”
Besides sushi, some of the dishes on the Crave menu might include five-spice barramundi, duck confit flatbread and tuna poke. Crave will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, will have a happy hour and, like the other full-service restaurants in Downtown Summerlin, will have patio seating.
More familiar to Las Vegas residents will be Crazy Pita, which will open its third location in Downtown Summerlin, after starting in Henderson’s The District at Green Valley Ranch in 2006, followed by a Town Square outlet in December.
“It was the perfect location to be in Summerlin,” owner Mehdi Zarhoul said. “We’ve been waiting for that mall for years. We needed to open a third location in Summerlin, so you can have pita wherever you go.”
Crazy Pita will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Its menu includes salads, skewers and rotisserie dishes, sides and snacks, as well as pitas.
Panda Express, a well-known player among Las Vegas restaurants, also will open Thursday. What will be different about the Downtown Summerlin location is Panda’s first tea bar in this market.
Royce Chow, regional director of operations, said he got the idea for the tea bar after seeing one in the company’s innovation center in Southern California. The Downtown Summerlin tea bar will be a smaller version of that, he said.
“It’s a two-in-one type of concept,” he said. Besides the regular Panda Express, there will be a “tea station where people can go and order the tea stuff, and chairs where they can sit and enjoy the tea.” Offerings, he said, will include regular teas plus such choices as mango fruit tea.
Chow said the expanded Panda Express is in line with the developers’ vision of Downtown Summerlin as an all-day destination where someone can go see a movie, have a meal, shop or relax.
Or learn. The Sur la Table store, which also opens Thursday, will have a resident chef and full demonstration kitchen for cooking classes. District manager Alex Le said chef Devyn Ripka has a staff of three chef-instructors who will lead classes in such things as Halloween treats, the secrets of Spanish paella or Thai cuisine, some of them geared for families. The classes, which will average 16 students each, are sold out for the first two weeks, he said. (The company is offering a reduced price of $19.96 for classes through Oct. 25. For a schedule and more information, go to www.surlatable.com.)
He said the store also will offer basic classes such as knife skills — “skills every cook should know.”
“It will be lots of fun, lots of different classes,” Le said. “You get to be hands-on. You get to taste the food that you make.”
Downtown Summerlin also will be home to a Trader Joe’s, which will open Thursday. Macy’s, which opened last weekend, has a Starbucks with entry from the street.
Zarhoul said he’s eager to watch it all unfold.
“We’re looking forward to have the businesses,” he said. “I hope the other restaurants will open soon, so they bring in more traffic.”
For a map of Downtown Summerlin and listing of restaurants and other businesses, visit downtownsummerlin.com.
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.
