SLS is planned to open late this year, bringing with it a platoon of dining concepts popularized in LA. But the casino’s breakfast and lunch joint, the Griddle Café, became a Hollywood institution without the benefit of a famous chef or cutting-edge cuisine.
There are, however, brown sugar-baked banana buttermilk pancakes. And pumpkin pancakes with streusel, butterscotch chips and caramel, the favorite dish of a regular named Stevie Wonder.
Jodi Hortze, known as the Willy Wonka of breakfast, opened the Griddle Café 14 years ago on Sunset and Fairfax, and the lines have been long ever since. She finally decided to expand her restaurant when her friend Sam Nazarian came calling. “I’ve been surprised how many emails and tweets I’ve received from Vegas people who are used to coming to California to see us, and now we’re bringing it to them,” she said.
The Vegas version will have a bigger menu, adding boozed-up breakfast items like Guinness-soaked French toast with bittersweet chocolate chips and vanilla-bourbon whipped cream while maintaining a stacked selection of scrambles, tacos, burgers and sandwiches. In true Sin City style, it’ll be open 24 hours, because it’s always the right time for apple cobbler cinnamon crunch French toast with a side of chicken tequila sausage. Where do the ideas come from? “I dream them,” Hortze says. “I have probably 10 composition notebooks, and I’m always scribbling in them. It’s in my mind, nonstop.”