The Most Popular Brunch Spot in Downtown Vegas Closes After 12 Years
Eat. | Eat. Natalie Young’s beloved Eat closes while she focuses on a new retro bar For more than a dozen years, Natalie Young’s Eat has been one of the most popular restaurants in downtown Las Vegas. When she opened the breakfast and lunch spot in 2012 with a loan from Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, Eat was one of the first restaurants in the burgeoning Fremont East District. Just as quietly as it opened, Eat has unceremoniously closed so that Young can pivot her attention to her new downtown bar and restaurant Echo Taste and Sound, which debuted February 25. Located at 707 Carson Avenue, near the Downtown Container Park, the casual Eat was open daily until 2 p.m., serving brunch dishes of biscuits and gravy, pancakes with chicken-apple sausage, and sandwiches on thick-cut toast. The must-order was the aptly titled Killer Grilled Cheese. It came on crisp and buttery sourdough that oozed with aged cheddar. Regulars knew to order it with sliced avocado in the middle. And it was all poised for dunking in a creamy and zingy bowl of tomato bisque soup. Eat. Eat Young borrowed $225,000 from Downtown Project (since renamed DTP) when she opened Eat more than a decade ago. She repaid the loan within a year — a testament to the neighborhood’s penchant for attracting culinary talent that, in turn, has steadily attracted both locals and tourists. In the years since opening Eat, Young also opened a Chinese food and chicken restaurant called Chow, near Fergusons Downtown, the dusky American classic Old Soul at World Market Center, and an outpost of Eat in Summerlin. Those three restaurants have since closed. Eat’s last day of operation was Saturday, March 22, reported City Cast Las Vegas. Fans of Young’s food can still find familiar fare at Echo Taste and Sound, a restaurant and bar with a focus on music inside the Colorado building on Main Street in the Las Vegas Arts District. The lounge serves a small menu of bites like tomato toast on focaccia and fried oysters with slaw to pair with cocktails like the frothy, spicy Night in Tunisia vodka cold brew. But Sunday brunches offer a return to form. The shrimp and grits features the same applewood-smoked bacon, over-easy eggs, and pico de gallo and butter sauce as the Eat incarnation. And while the casual industrial feel of Eat is replaced by a warm and retro vibe at Echo — soundtracked with hi-fi beats and the steady crackle of vinyl over turntables — it’s good to know Young’s pioneering influence remains in downtown Las Vegas.
Dante Ulanday - News Moderator 
Natalie Young’s beloved Eat closes while she focuses on a new retro bar
For more than a dozen years, Natalie Young’s Eat has been one of the most popular restaurants in downtown Las Vegas. When she opened the breakfast and lunch spot in 2012 with a loan from Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, Eat was one of the first restaurants in the burgeoning Fremont East District. Just as quietly as it opened, Eat has unceremoniously closed so that Young can pivot her attention to her new downtown bar and restaurant Echo Taste and Sound, which debuted February 25.
Located at 707 Carson Avenue, near the Downtown Container Park, the casual Eat was open daily until 2 p.m., serving brunch dishes of biscuits and gravy, pancakes with chicken-apple sausage, and sandwiches on thick-cut toast. The must-order was the aptly titled Killer Grilled Cheese. It came on crisp and buttery sourdough that oozed with aged cheddar. Regulars knew to order it with sliced avocado in the middle. And it was all poised for dunking in a creamy and zingy bowl of tomato bisque soup.
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Eat.
Young borrowed $225,000 from Downtown Project (since renamed DTP) when she opened Eat more than a decade ago. She repaid the loan within a year — a testament to the neighborhood’s penchant for attracting culinary talent that, in turn, has steadily attracted both locals and tourists. In the years since opening Eat, Young also opened a Chinese food and chicken restaurant called Chow, near Fergusons Downtown, the dusky American classic Old Soul at World Market Center, and an outpost of Eat in Summerlin. Those three restaurants have since closed.
Eat’s last day of operation was Saturday, March 22, reported City Cast Las Vegas. Fans of Young’s food can still find familiar fare at Echo Taste and Sound, a restaurant and bar with a focus on music inside the Colorado building on Main Street in the Las Vegas Arts District. The lounge serves a small menu of bites like tomato toast on focaccia and fried oysters with slaw to pair with cocktails like the frothy, spicy Night in Tunisia vodka cold brew. But Sunday brunches offer a return to form. The shrimp and grits features the same applewood-smoked bacon, over-easy eggs, and pico de gallo and butter sauce as the Eat incarnation. And while the casual industrial feel of Eat is replaced by a warm and retro vibe at Echo — soundtracked with hi-fi beats and the steady crackle of vinyl over turntables — it’s good to know Young’s pioneering influence remains in downtown Las Vegas.
