Luxor's new Company ditches fancy food

Back in December I went to the opening for Company American Bistro at Luxor. Company, run by Pure Management Group, offered a high-end dining experience created by chef Adam Sobel, but, by working on a nightclub model, added celebrity investors to kick up the restaurant's appeal.

A VP for Luxor told me at the time: "This is new to Las Vegas from a dining perspective. Restaurants have not only become a dining experience but an entertainment experience. The celebrity gives more appeal to a particular restaurant and defines the space.”

The celebrity investors for Company include: Nicky Hilton, Nick Lachey and Wilmer Valderrama. Back in December, Nicky Hilton told me: “What really attracted me were the people, Pure Group. They have LAX (at Luxor) and Pure (at Caesars); so their track record is first class.”

 

Of course, since then Pure Management Group has been subject to an IRS investigation that has focused on Pure as well as LAX. Also recently, Pure's Lucky Strike at Rio has been sold back to the casino.

 

The last time I was at Company was on New Year's Eve. Not by coincidence,  Nicky and Paris Hilton were having dinner there at the time. Maybe they like quail eggs. But I never liked Company as a place to eat. I am not a foodie. When I went to Company I could hardly find anything on the menu I would eat, and what I would eat, I could not afford. I guess I was not alone.

 

Now, after a lot of whispering about bad numbers, there appear to be major changes underway at Company. Sobel has resigned following the departure of other key members of the cooking staff. Also, according to Robin Leach's blog: "the Company sommelier, Michael Shearin, and the front-of-house manager Lucas Rienans, who both worked together previously at the prestigious Guy Savoy restaurant in Caesars Palace, have been hired away by real-estate mogul Trump for his new fine-dining destination restaurant."

 

In its next incarnation, Company 2.0 will be "more affordable." Translation: a more typical menu meant for average tourists rather than the highest end of the market.

 

PMG spokesperson Kate Turner offers this on the new incarnation of Company: "It will then be open 7 days a week (instead of 5). We'll also have a bar menu for the first time."

 

Obviously, this situation is yet another bump in the road for Pure Management Group. It turns out that people will let a Hilton sister lead them to dance and drink but not to dine.

But more importantly, Company's problems also send an interesting message to the Luxor about the appeal of high-end, celebrity chef dining to its core clientele. If this sort of food cannot succeed in a prime position across from the packed and hot LAX nightclub, maybe the nightclub crowd and the fine dining crowd don't overlap as much as many people in Vegas assumed. And if that is true, it may be there is a good reason that the star chefs congregate mostly at the high-end resorts like Wynn, Venetian and Caesars.

The old Vegas view is that people staying at a middle-market property like Luxor want to eat a good steak more than they want to dine on exotic food for three hours. That was the theory that restaurants like Company attempted to show was obsolete in the new Vegas by using celebrity to "define the space."

But that approach seems to have resulted in too much empty space for Company. So my guess is that the new menu will be far more in keeping with the traditional tastes of Luxor's guests than with the more esoteric tastes of celebrity owners. 

Photo: Sarah Gerke