After opening a flashy fine-dining restaurant at the Fashion Show on the Las Vegas Strip with NFL legend Emmitt Smith, the Leverage Hospitality team decided to turn its attention to locals and one of its favorite neighborhoods.
The result is the new Social Station, a Henderson restaurant and bar at Eastern and Horizon Ridge focused on comfort food, seasonal ingredients and warm service. “We wanted it to be very casual, inexpensive, the kind of neighborhood restaurant where you go for a lunch meeting on a Tuesday, a date night on a Friday, and bring the kids on Sunday,” says Leverage founding partner Kelley Jones.
The company debuted Emmitt’s, a new American steakhouse, shortly after the Super Bowl and that project is attracting half-and-half locals and tourists, Jones says. Emmitt’s is completing construction of its second-floor beer garden and plans to open that part of the experience soon.
The 2,500-square-foot Social Station takes a different direction, one better suited for Henderson diners. “I don’t know if the Valley was ready 12 or 15 years ago for that more curated restaurant experience, because everything was dominated by chains,” Jones says. “If you go up and down the Eastern Avenue corridor where we are, there’s still a lot of chains and lots of different ethnic cuisine.
“We wanted to create an American comfort-food restaurant. Our menu was developed by asking people, ‘what’s your go-to comfort food?’”
The answers were not surprising, but the creativity applied to those popular dishes at Social Station has resulted in a large number of returning guests in the eatery’s opening weeks. Reuben egg rolls ($9) transform the sandwich favorite into a crispy, craveable appetizer. The carrot hummus with lamb sausage ($15), served with pita and topped with sumac and feta cheese, evolves a familiar dip-and-nosh experience.
Top-selling entrees include: Beef Bourguignon ($23), a gussied-up beef stew with a flavor boost from bacon; crispy pork ribs ($22) with mac and cheese and green beans; and pan-roasted salmon ($25). Jones notes the most expensive dish on the menu is the New York strip steak frites ($27).
Sandwiches and salads round things out for lunch and dinner, and the brunch menu offers vanilla French toast with blackberry compote ($11), steak and eggs with crispy hash browns ($26), and a caprese frittata ($14), plus much more.
“We envisioned a modern-day Cheers, bringing true hospitality and warm, personal, engaging service back to Las Vegas,” Jones says. “We’ve already got people who’ve been there multiple times. We’re starting to see regulars and we want them to know us by name.”
SOCIAL STATION 10624 S. Eastern Ave. Suite S, 702-816-2124, socialstationlv.com. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.; Friday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
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