Beloved Restaurant Eat Closes Downtown

By Scott Roeben, on March 24 2025
2 min read 3 comments
Downtown Las Vegas Las Vegas Las Vegas Restaurants

A longtime downtown restaurant, Eat, has closed.

Eat was the brainchild of chef Natalie Young, and was part of the legacy of visionary Tony Hsieh (who helped get the restaurant going back in 2012). A legacy that is slowly being dismantled, sadly.

Eat closed March 22, 2025, with zero fanfare.

For more than a decade, Eat ate.

Eat had its ups and downs. The restaurant nearly went under during the pandemic.

The restaurant was located on Carson Ave., near the Downtown Container Park.

Young didn’t provide much information about why the restaurant closed, but did tell the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Eat was an amazing experience! My lease is up as well, and there is continuous construction in the area. I’m grateful to everyone who has supported us through the years–now come see me at Echo!”

Natalie Young is clearly too classy to say her rent went up and construction sucks everywhere.

The fact Eat stayed open so long in spite of these hard-ass chairs is a testament to the quality of the food.

By “Echo,” Young is referring to a new endeavor, Echo Taste & Sound on South Main Street in the Las Vegas Arts District.

A number of downtown restaurants and bars have suffered Eat’s fate, often for the same reasons, including Downtown Cocktail Room, Smashed Pig, Inspire, Carl’s Donuts and Flippin’ Good Chicken, for starters.

Tony Hsieh and his Downtown Project often financed downtown businesses or kept rents unrealistically low to support them. Now, businesses are having to be viable all on their own.

You can learn more about chef Natalie Young on the Echo Web site. That’s the P.R. version. The realness is here.

While Eat is done, there’s always something new in the works downtown.

In the words of chef Young, “If I can pay my rent and break even, I will be really, really happy and live happily ever after.”

Here’s to happily ever afters.