Tivoli Village rounds out dining options with two new restaurants

Tivoli Village has added a couple of new restaurants since Cantina Laredo opened in November 2012, Poppy Den premiered in January and Pizza Lounge opened its doors in April.

The latest are Hops & Harvest, which began operations in May, and Sam Marvin’s Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse, which opened Labor Day weekend.

“Tivoli Village is redefining the local dining scene,” said Tonia Chafetz, general manager of Tivoli Village, 440 S. Rampart Blvd. “We are now able to offer a central location where diners can choose culinary delights from a number of award-winning chefs who have never before ventured to off-Strip locations. This is only the beginning of our growth into a destination dining hub.”

HOPS & HARVEST

Hops & Harvest is the latest concept from chef Bradley Ogden, who opened it along with partner Tony Angotti. The 180-seat restaurant forwards Ogden’s farm-to-table approach and includes his famous butterscotch pudding.

The decor is hip and contemporary. White walls open up the space, which sports painted concrete flooring and wooden table seating beneath a pressed-tin ceiling. A Hotpoint kitchen oven from the 1930s serves as a hostess station. A blackboard highlights featured drinks. In the rear dining area, high-back booth seating provides more privacy.

Since closing his namesake Caesars location in 2012, Ogden’s established Bradley Ogden Hospitality, which plans to open six restaurants this year, four in Houston and two in Las Vegas. Hops & Harvest is one of the two.

This time, he chose a location near Summerlin for those who want to avoid the Strip.

“They called me out of the blue,” Ogden said of Tivoli Village management. “We took a look at it. I mean, I think the growth and potential is huge. Especially what they’re planning with their whole retail side as well as their housing, the condos. … I lived in that area, Summerlin, for four years, and the economic outlook is good now, and the continued development of Tivoli (encouraging), so it all came to fruition.”

Hops & Harvest is open from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information, call 702-476-3964 or visit hopsandharvestlv.com.

ECHO & RIG

Sam Marvin’s Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse brings the butcher shop into the modern era with its dark marble floors, clean lines and “watch the butcher work his magic” concept on the bottom floor.

The butcher bar offers sandwiches and salads for casual eating.

Marvin, founder and chef, said he’s been planning the restaurant for a little over a year with a lot of research and development to understand what the community’s needs are.

Marvin, who has a second home in Summerlin, said buying meat that has “a bar code is so against everything that I believe in, that I stand for. My whole life has been about food and the way we raise animals and the way we slaughter them and the way we grow our produce.”

Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse boasts a huge upstairs dining room complete with an exhibition kitchen. Marvin called it a “whole new formula” for the restaurant business, where typically 85 percent of the beef on the market comes from four mega-companies. Instead, Echo & Rig buys its beef from small farmers such as California’s B & N Ranch, Pittman Ranch and Devil’s Gulch Ranch, all of which raise their livestock free range style.

“I look for an animal that’s had a good life, a good death, a good butcher and a good cook,” said Trevor Morones, butcher at Echo & Rig.

Marvin said the day of the ultra-large steak is gone.

“People don’t want the old formula New York and rib eyes and Porterhouses,” he said. “Our formula is 8-ounce cuts of meat; we’re doing a flank steak, an outside skirt steak, a hanger steak, flat iron steak, tri tip, sirloin, a Spencer, all great cuts,” Marvin said. “People don’t know these cuts because of the old formula. Just like smartphones and technology, when I look at a cattle on my computer screen, as a butcher and a slaughterer, I understand the millimeter to the millimeter of where to cut that cattle, which way the grain is going, where the muscles are. It is so precise on the screen now, that’s why we have all these cuts that they didn’t have 30 years ago. We’ve come so far in technology that it makes it a lot different for the butchers.”

Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse is open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday with a late-night menu. Brunch is offered from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

For more information, call 702-287-4130 or visit echoandrig.com.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.