EAT.

Downtown Las Vegas is experiencing a renaissance with the investments of Zappos.com founder Tony Hsieh who has started to buy up property all over downtown and turn it into a hip area of Las Vegas.  One of those he helped out was the restaurant eat. and ex-casino-chef Natalie Young.

Located on the corner of Carson and 7th in a nondescript building, eat opened in late 2012 and is now a bustling restaurant serving breakfast and lunch every day and closing in the early afternoon.  The place is simply decorated with red Navy chairs, a polished concrete floor, a communal counter table and colorful pieces of wood taken from food crates to make a low wall near the entry way.

We went for Sunday brunch on the last weekend of 2012 and walked into a packed restaurant with a live jazz band and singer helping make eat. extra cozy.  The breakfast menu is printed on one sheet of paper and changes over to the lunch menu at 11:00 a.m.  We started out with mugs of freshly-brewed coffee then ordered four different breakfasts - eggs benedict for me, steel cut oats for R, shrimp and grits for J and the chicken fried steak for C.  My eggs Benedict came on whole wheat bread with ham and crispy breakfast potatoes, the shrimp and grits was a large bowl of eggs, bacon and shrimp over grits, the chicken fried steak was a large piece of battered steak covered in gravy with fried eggs and the steel cut oats was served with cinnamon, roasted apples and sugared pecans.  Portions were hefty and the food was comfort on a plate.  eat is what Las Vegas has been missing and might be what will soon end up to be a hipster area in a town dominated by the bright lights of the Strip.  With the development of downtown and the opening of several other small cafes, bars and restaurants in the are, this will soon make Las Vegas a real city with a proper hipster neighborhood for the locals.

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eat.
707 Carson St. (at 7th avenue)
Las Vegas NV 89101
Telephone: +1 702 534 1515
email: info@eatdowntownlv.com
twitter: @eatDTLV
*Open Mondays to Fridays from 7 to 3 and Weekends from 8 to 2.  Serves breakfast and lunch daily.