What would you expect to eat at the new neighborhood restaurant from a longtime local chef who made his name at an ingredient-driven critics’ favorite at Bellagio?
Probably not his mother’s recipe for banana bread. But that’s one of the top sellers so far at the brand-new Fine Company at Downtown Summerlin, co-created by Roy Ellamar, who previously fashioned Harvest into one of the great hidden gems on the Las Vegas Strip.
“It’s surprising how much people have been talking about it. It’s kinda crazy,” Ellamar says of the banana bread ($8) served with local wildflower honey, butter and sea salt. “I put it on and thought it would be an easy dish to do, and I grew up eating it, something homey and familiar. I didn’t think it’d be such a hit. It feels like it’s on every table.”
Ellamar connected with hitmaking hospitality company the LEV Group in the summer of 2022 and started discussing the possibility of building something new in the former MTO Cafe space in Downtown Summerlin’s northern dining area. He wanted to bring his fine-dining background into a more casual setting, “a place where people come to enjoy each other’s company,” he says.
Fine Company opened quietly in mid-September offering breakfast, lunch, and an early happy hour called “Fine Time,” which shows off a cool cocktail program anchored by bartender Camille Razo along with fresh dishes including seafood raw bar items. Dinner service is on the way in the coming weeks, but Ellamar isn’t rushing into anything.
“We want to slowly ease into that and see how it goes,” he says. “The dinner menu is going to be seafood-focused, with the raw bar continuing from Fine Time, with great oysters, clams, crudos, sashimi specials and things like that.”
Ellamar is a native Hawaiian but Fine Company is not a Hawaiian restaurant. Plenty of locals who ate his food at Harvest may have expected that direction, but the chef says, “it’s a neighborhood restaurant and I don’t want to put labels on it or be put in a box.”
For now, after your first serving of banana bread, you can work your way through brunchy fare like brown butter pancakes ($13), an acai bowl with toasted coconut and berries ($12), smoked salmon avocado toast ($18) or steak and eggs ($24), a ribeye with chimichurri plus soft scrambled eggs and potatoes.
Lunchtime gives way to salt and pepper shrimp with fennel salad and Calabrian chili oil ($18) or a porchetta sandwich ($19) on potato focaccia with seasonally appropriate pumpkin seed pesto, giardiniera and arugula. A burger, a fried chicken sandwich, salads and salmon and halibut options round things out.
It sounds quite casual, but where MTO was an actual fast-casual, counter-service spot, Fine Company is fully renovated, full-service and focused on hospitality—essential for a neighborhood eatery in this particular Vegas neighborhood. And it’s surroundedby Downtown Summerlin restaurants that focus more on evening business.
“I think it’s well-received by the neighborhood, it’s resonating,” Ellamar says. “It’s the chance to experience the all-day restaurant that I think didn’t exist here, until now.”
FINE COMPANY Downtown Summerlin, 702-405-0715, finecompanylv.com. Wednesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
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