Locally owned French café continues its Las Vegas expansion
It’s the latest l’expansion for Le Café.
The French-European bakery, breakfast and lunch restaurant is set to open its third Las Vegas location — Le Café Central — this spring in Chinatown. The debut follows the launches (and subsequent success) of Le Café du Val in Henderson in spring 2020 and Le Café du Sud in Southern Highlands in early 2022.
The cafés make up Le Café du Vegas group, with each restaurant name indicating its geographic location within the Las Vegas Valley. Chef David Gazzano, who hails from southern France, and his wife, Carmen Barbur, originally from Romania, own the cafés. At Café Central, executive chef Claude Escamilla joins the couple as a partner and director of operations.
A new dinner menu
During the day, the new café will send out viennoiseries — light, buttery, flaky pastries — along with traditional macarons, galettes (the Breton buckwheat crêpes), other sweet and savory crêpes, salads, sandwiches, espressos and teas.
On weekends in the evening, the restaurant expands the brand with its amuse bar and petites plates, a menu of small plates inspired by Gazzano’s hometown of Nice and the surrounding Mediterranean region.
Among the dishes are socca (chickpea flatbread), crisp-creamy panisse (chickpea fries), petits farcis stuffed vegetables, bouillabaisse and daube Niçoise, the southern French cousin of boeuf Bourguignonne. Other items to look for: foie gras and boudin noir blood sausage.
Big-time credentials
Gazzano has worked in restaurants for more than 35 years, including stints at Michelin-starred or -recognized establishments such as Dal Pescatore in Italy, Guy Savoy in France and Vegas, and Les Nomades in Chicago. Barbur has extensive front-of-house experience with top hospitality brands such as Starwood, Hilton, Hyatt and The Little Nell.
Before joining Le Café Central, Escamilla led pastry programs at Bellagio and Aria. He is a gold medal winner in the U.S. and world pastry championships; he was also named Pastry Chef of the Year in 2014 by the Nevada Restaurant Association.
Gazzano and Barbur opened their first valley café, Le Café du Lac, at Lake Las Vegas in 2017; the shop closed in 2022. The new Le Café Central will be at 3616 Spring Mountain Road, Suite 101. More information on the opening is scheduled to be released soon. Visit lecafeduvegas.com.
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.