Dan Coughlin opened the first cool restaurant Downtown: Le Thai. His take on spicy, street-inspired Thai food was a hit from day one, and we didn’t know it at the time, but the Fremont East favorite set the standard for the coming wave of cool urban restaurants—Eat, La Comida and Carson Kitchen.
Short rib. Fried rice. Egg. Le Thai's street-food-inspired goodness beckons.
All of those, plus a bunch more on the way, come courtesy of Downtown Project. So it only makes sense that Coughlin and DTP should team up, and the result is Bocho, new to the John E. Carson building on Carson and Sixth streets.
“When DTP approached us with that location, they wanted Chinese food, but we thought Downtown could wait on that and sushi would be better,” Coughlin explains. To execute his vision, he convinced the owners of his favorite local sushi joint, Jimmy and Becky Shun of Maryland Parkway’s Tokyo restaurant, to bring their act Downtown. “It’s their show to run.”
The Local Dining Issue
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The location of Bocho is perfect for the busy Coughlin, who can dash between his two restaurants. “We’ve been approached a few times to do Le Thai on the other side of town, but I saw my mom operate two or three restaurants in different parts of town, and I’m not going to do that right now,” Coughlin says.
Besides, he’s already working on another new concept that might take up space in the Juhl residential building. Downtown might just become the coolest place to eat in Vegas, and Coughlin will have more than a little something to do with that.
Le Thai 523 Fremont St., 702-778-0888. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m.-midnight; Sunday, 4-10 p.m.
Bocho 124 S. Sixth St., 702-750-0707. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.
