I’ve been writing about restaurants in Las Vegas for a long time, longer than I’ve had a platform to print the words. (I started doing it for Weekly 16 years ago.) Through all those many meals and conversations about food and drinks and hospitality, I’ve been lucky enough to make some great friends in the local scene. And I’ve fallen in love with a restaurant here and there.
One of those most beloved is saying goodbye after 15 years. DW Bistro has been one of the most pioneering and influential restaurants across the local dining landscape. It was one of the first off-Strip spots to build a stylish social scene around the experience, especially during weekend brunch. And it gave us all a reason to drive to the southwest side of the Valley long before the area was one of the hippest food neighborhoods.
Dalton Wilson
For me, DW Bistro has been one of the warmest and most comfortable places in Las Vegas to meet with friends and just be—especially when it moved to the Gramercy from its original Fort Apache location. Hopefully I’d catch owner Bryce Krausman and chef Dalton Wilson for a quick chat, or maybe a long one, but we never really discussed the restaurant biz. We just talked about life, about Vegas.
It was always like going to your friend’s house for a meal, where the food was going to be great but the time together was the thing. That’s always what DW Bistro was supposed to be.
“People came to our house for brunch before we had a restaurant that served brunch, and we really fostered that feeling of home,” says Krausman. “This is what we would do had you been at our house, hand you a cocktail when you walk in the door, have music going, really connect with people. It’s just disguised as a restaurant that serves Jamaican food with New Mexico roots, and you have to pay the bill.”
DW will close after a grand, all-day brunch on April 6. Leading up to the final farewell, it has been hosting themed brunches on the weekends, including a superhero-themed party (costumes encouraged) on March 22-23. (Get tickets and make reservations at dwbistro.com.)
Before Krausman and Wilson started doing it, there were few if any neighborhood restaurants that were making a big deal of brunch, doing it with flash and cocktails, big flavors and fun atmosphere like the fancy casino eateries on the Strip. Today, there seem to be multiple trendy brunch spots in every neighborhood.
“It was very much the place people came when, say there was a great concert at MGM Grand, people would come to DW the next morning and everyone would be talking about Madonna or whatever happened the night before,” Krausman says. “We didn’t invent brunch but I don’t know another neighborhood restaurant that did brunch like that. It was a scene. A lot of days, it’d be Vince Neil, Nic Cage and Carrot Top at their table, holding court.”
As much as we’ll miss that energy, we’ll miss the food just as much: the pastry basket with never enough blueberry and white chocolate scones; goat cheese with fresh pesto for smearing across sourdough toast; Wilson’s spicy jerk fried chicken and waffles. Brunchtime was so popular that lunch and dinner offerings were sometimes overlooked, like the New Mexican red chile pork bowl or the perfect Nicoise salad with tuna kissed by that Jamaican jerk seasoning. No one ignored the burger with jalapeño bacon, roasted green chilies and chipotle mayo.
We won’t be able to enjoy this experience after April 6, but our friends will be around.
“We have these open arms, and we will still, it just won’t be in a brick-and-mortar setting,” says Krausman. “We love this business. You have to have passion that drives you every day, even if there are outside forces that reign over you, you still have that passion to take care of people. Hospitality is inside of you always, so whatever form it comes in, you’ll still feel the love and energy from us.”
DW BISTRO 9275 W. Russell Road #190, 702-527-5200, dwbistro.com. Wednesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Tuesday, Saturday & Sunday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
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