Snooze and booze: Offbeat breakfast joint opens 1st Las Vegas location

At Snooze A.M. Eatery, the bar opens in the morning when the restaurant does. Welcome to Las Vegas, Snooze! You’ll fit right in.

The creative breakfast spot, founded in 2006 in Denver, is scheduled to debut its first Vegas location on Dec. 7 at 1075 S. Rampart Blvd., in Summerlin. The chain has about 50 locations across the U.S. — and a point of view both offbeat and earnest.

Remaking a millennial cliché

Consider the morning imbibing. “We didn’t invent day drinking, but we enjoy taking it to a whole new level,” the restaurant explains in its corporate story. That might be a Thai bloody mary with house mix, Japanese vodka, ginger and tamari, or a Morning Marg letting loose with jalapeño tequila, orange liqueur and house sour.

Snooze aims to do “breakfast, but different,” as its motto goes, with dishes like pineapple upside-down pancakes or a habanero pork belly Benedict or breakfast pot pie showcasing puff pastry, rosemary sausage gravy asmother and sunny-side cage-free eggs.

The bravocado toast upends a generational cliché and remakes it into something worth trying: rustic bread, smashed avocado, red onion honey jam, roasted tomato, sunny-side eggs and a spatter of Maldon salt.

Even food photography on the website contributes to the unexpected. The dishes are shot in bright artificial light on a faux wood-grain table. A steel-blue strip of background often appears. There are no props, and no food styling beyond standard plating.

The effect feels knowingly retro, as if the images were inspired by a forgotten coffee shop menu — while simultaneously being primed for Instagram.

Sustainability and community

The Snooze philosophy of doing breakfast, but different, includes serving breakfast that serves communities and the environment. The company designates 95 percent of its sourced ingredients as “Snooze Approved” for the ethical farming and other sustainable practices of the suppliers.

Cups at the restaurant are reusable, paper straws are provided on request, low-flow equipment reduces hand-washing water and about 90 percent of waste is kept out of landfills through composting and recycling, according to the company. Snooze employees receive sustainability training.

One percent of the sales from each Snooze restaurant is donated to local organizations through in-kind goods and services, the company says. Past outreach has included planting trees for each employee and donating all sales on National Pancake Day to creating community gardens.

Put another way, pineapple upside-down pancakes mean green for the people.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ItsJLW on Twitter.