Dining

The impressive new Echo & Rig plans to redefine your steakhouse experience

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Take a fresh cut home or stay for steak at Tivoli Village’s new Echo & Rig.
Photo: Steve Marcus

Las Vegas has seen some excellent new restaurants arrive in the last year, but few have provided genuine surprise. At the Summerlin-area retail center Tivoli Village, for example, Ogden’s Hops & Harvest delivered exactly what it promised and what we thought it would—quality comfort food in a relaxed, somewhat-upscale environment. It’s in the Goldilocks zone, a just-right kind of place, and this is the strategy Tivoli Village is using in its ambitious quest to build a suburban mixed-use development around dining.

Echo & Rig is something entirely different. Here, there are surprises galore, and that was the plan from chef and restaurateur Sam Marvin (formerly of LA’s Modada and Bottega Louie). It is a steakhouse and butcher shop, a concept combo unfamiliar to Las Vegas, but that’s just the beginning. Marvin and his team aim to deconstruct what it means to be a steakhouse, including the standard big prices attached to big pieces of meat. That’s the first surprise.

Next, there’s the regal openness of the space. The first story is a vast foyer with a small bar, a small sandwich counter and a third counter that fronts the butcher operation. You can watch butcher Trevor Morones, an up-and-comer who apprenticed under the legendary Pat LaFrieda, do his thing thanks to huge windows enclosing the butchery. The dining room is upstairs, a fancy wedge with a vast patio and the feel of a banquet hall during a family gathering. Everything is bright and comfortable in a way that’s very unsteakhouse.

Echo & Rig does great sandwiches, too, like this porchetta on a soft, rustic roll.

Echo & Rig does great sandwiches, too, like this porchetta on a soft, rustic roll.

The surprise reaches full blossom on the menu, divided up into salads, soups, sandwiches, sides and small plates, steaks and other entrées. The signature plate is the Spencer steak ($25), an old-school cut taken from the center of the ribeye. It’s juicy and full of flavor and served with garlic potato chips and a Rockefeller-style stuffed mushroom. Since they’re butchering everything here, Echo & Rig offers several other steaks that you can’t find all over, like the ribeye cap, herb-marinated hanger and lemon and garlic tri-tip (all $23). The most expensive items on the menu are the New York strip, filet mignon and ribeye steaks ($34).

Steak is steak, and these are as good as you’ll find off the Strip. Complementing the meat is a lengthy list of shareable plates ($5-$9) highlighting fresh vegetables and heartier ingredients that could create an amazing meal by themselves. The flavors run from subtle to stunning in dishes like roasted cauliflower with chile de arbol and crispy shallots, burrata covered in English peas, mint and olive oil, and fried chicken with red wine gastrique. The non-steak entrées (all $18) are anchored by a roasted half-chicken with white grits, horseradish-crusted fish and Colorado lamb chops with mini potatoes, dried apricots and mustard.

The sandwich selection (all $12) is impeccable, highlighted by hanger steak with roasted chilies and lemon chimichurri, roast pork loin and sweet potato, and the indulgent Drunken Goat—red wine-marinated goat cheese plus smooth Brie, cranberry chutney and green apple on crunchy, toasted walnut bread.

Echo & Rig promises to be one of the most exciting new restaurants in this neighborhood, as plans are in the works to expand into breakfast and brunch. Until then, it’ll be hard not to become a regular, leaning into a comfortable dinner upstairs or stopping by on the way home to pick up some meat cut just for you.

Echo & Rig Tivoli Village, 489-3525. Daily, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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