Southern Highlands' New Neighborhood Spots All Arrive With a Track Record
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
Three neighborhood places to eat and drink are opening in Southern Highlands this season. Each operator has already proven a concept somewhere else in or near Las Vegas, and each picked this neighborhood deliberately. The owners are a co-owner of a 113-year-old desert saloon, a craft beer bar owner coming off nine years near Rainbow and Tropicana, and a restaurateur with eight openings behind him. Instead of the usual mix of untested concepts and national chains, the new arrivals bring recipes, service routines and regulars they built elsewhere.
That changes what the next few months look like close to home. One place is already open. One is aiming for this month. One is aiming for the turn of November. On Oct. 17, the neighborhood's longtime fall festival fills Goett Family Park in between.
The first to arrive was Mama Tess's Artisan Kitchen, which Stephanie "Mama Tess" Richter launched this summer. She and her husband, Stephen "Old Man Liver" Staats, own the Pioneer Saloon, which the Review-Journal describes as a historic 113-year-old bar about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.
The Review-Journal reports that many of the dishes Mama Tess's gave away as free samples at its grand-opening open house first ran at the saloon. That makes this the first Southern Highlands outpost of a kitchen that already had its own following. The menu covers soups, salads, sandwiches, burgers, house desserts and milkshakes. Richter said the dishes are based on what she cooks at home for family and friends.
The details for anyone heading over:
Until recently, eating Richter's cooking meant driving out to the desert. Now it's a short trip down the Parkway, open until 10 on weekend nights. The restaurant posts updates at mamatess.com and on Facebook and Instagram as @mamatessartisankitchen.
Hawthorne Craft Bar & Kitchen is the next one due, and its owner has explained publicly why he chose Southern Highlands. The concept is an elevated sports bar headed for the KAKTUSlife plaza at 10620 Dean Martin Drive, Suite 100, according to What Now Las Vegas, which found the project through a Clark County permit.
Restaurateur Robert Parekh is behind it. He has more than 20 years in food and beverage and has worked on eight restaurant openings, from small independents to large hotel and casino concepts. Here is how he described his site search:
"We looked for the right spot for over a year before deciding on settling in Southern Highlands. We feel that our concept is perfect for the underserved, residential neighborhood we're joining. The ease of access from the nearby I15 & Cactus intersection also allows for a broad range of guests from the surrounding areas."
His reasoning has two parts. The neighborhood itself is the core audience. The interchange at I-15 and Cactus widens the draw to the surrounding areas. That interchange sits on a stretch of interstate the Nevada Department of Transportation declared substantially complete in December 2025, when the I-15 South widening brought the freeway to 11 general-purpose lanes between St. Rose Parkway and Blue Diamond Road.
Parekh told What Now he plans to open by mid-October, with a grand-opening weekend that will include activations meant to introduce the bar to the neighborhood. As of early October, that date is still a target. The Hawthorne website still says "Opening Fall 2026!" Clark County's business license record lists the restaurant license as pending. Mid-October is still ahead, and nothing so far suggests the date has slipped. Anyone planning a game-day outing there should check the website before going.
The third arrival has the longest local history and has been the most open about the work of moving. 595 Craft and Kitchen is a nine-year-old craft beer bar near Rainbow Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. It is preparing a second location in Southern Highlands, which owner Van Nguyen calls SoHi.
Nguyen told the Food and Loathing podcast he is aiming for a late October or early November opening. Food & Loathing noted this was the first time the restaurant had publicly announced an opening window. No street address or shopping center has been published yet.
The way Nguyen is preparing says a lot about what the Southern Highlands location will be. The original 595 recently added weekend brunch, opening at 9:30 a.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Nguyen called the brunch rollout "a live exercise for the upcoming project," a way to practice building a menu, launching it and running the service before the move south. He also said the earlier hours reflect changes in his regulars' lives:
"A lot of our regulars, they've gotten married, they have kids. Now they want to have a reason to come in and do something family-friendly during earlier weekend hours."
The brunch menu at the original location includes Vietnamese steak and eggs with bread, pork liver pâté, pickled carrots and daikon. It also has loco moco made with both hamburger and Spam, chicken and waffles, a breakfast burrito, and chilaquiles with a choice of proteins. Most breakfast dishes cost in the low teens, and the Vietnamese steak and eggs runs above $20. Nguyen describes the kitchen's approach as trying "to piss off two different cultures in one dish."
Food & Loathing reports that the Southern Highlands space will be nearly twice the size of the original. Nguyen plans to open with something close to "595 Part Two" and leave room for a more ambitious culinary program later. He is also developing a larger selection of nonalcoholic drinks, teas and tonics, inspired partly by his first trip to Vietnam last December.
Nguyen himself named the main challenge of the move:
"SoHi is just another iteration of that belief. I think we're just opening up, trying to do the same thing, seeing if we can replicate the culture and the steps of service and the quality and all that."
All three operators face that same question. Richter is bringing dishes from a saloon in the desert. Parekh is bringing a playbook from eight earlier openings. Nguyen is bringing a culture built over nine years at one bar. Each is betting that what worked elsewhere will work for the households in Southern Highlands.
Here is how the fall lines up, using the dates the operators and organizers have announced:
The festival is the one fixed date on that list, and the only one put on by neighborhood organizers instead of a business. FOX5 calls it one of Southern Highlands' longtime fall traditions. Admission is free and open to all ages. The day includes a pumpkin patch, inflatable games and slides, rock wall climbing, face painting, crafts, bingo, food trucks, a Vendor Village and live performances.
The stage schedule as published:
Proceeds go to the Southern Highlands Boys & Girls Club and its programs for local youth. Organizers post costume contest rules and updates on the Southern Highlands Fall Festival website.
What connects these openings is who is opening them. Parekh spent more than a year looking before settling on Southern Highlands. Nguyen rehearsed his service for months before committing to a space nearly twice the size of his first. Richter brought dishes that had already won over customers at the Pioneer Saloon. These are planned moves by people who already know how to run a room, and the neighborhood they chose is described by one of them as underserved.
By early November, if both targets hold, Southern Highlands will have three new neighborhood options that did not exist at the start of summer. One is a lunch-and-dinner kitchen with milkshakes on the Parkway. One is a sports bar near the I-15 and Cactus interchange. One is a larger version of a Vietnamese-inflected craft beer bar that has served the west side since its first location opened.
Stephanie Taffanelli follows what opens, what slips and what is coming next in Southern Highlands, because those details shape daily life in the neighborhood long before they show up anywhere else. If you'd like a local's read on how this new cluster of places fits your part of the community, Vegas Listing Experts would be glad to talk it through. Schedule a Call.
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