Eureka! bets on Sin City for its latest venue

WAILEA, MAUI >> Good food plus good service might add up to a successful restaurant, but many restaurateurs overlook a third key ingredient.

“A lot of restaurant success is dependent on real estate,” said Robert Suzuki, a former Maui resident who co-founded the Eureka! Restaurant group. The 9-year-old company will add a 23rd restaurant to its portfolio when Eureka! Las Vegas opens Monday in the Fremont East District.

The company hosted preview events on Maui last month to entice Hawaii diners to stop in when traveling to the city we consider our “ninth island.”

At a cocktail pop-up at the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, Eureka! beverage director Trevor Tyler served up a classic Old-Fashioned, plus craft cocktails that included the Electric Butterfly — rum, butterfly pea tea, lime, Copper & Kings Immature Brandy, Chareau Aloe Liqueur and orgeat syrup, topped with a Szechuan “buzz button” flower, comparable to eating a Szechuan pepper, said to heighten and alter flavor sensations.

Lunch the following day put Jason Hernandez, vice president of kitchen operations, in the TS executive kitchen in Lahaina, preparing such comfort-driven fare as mac ’n’ cheese balls, osso buco riblets with a fiery aioli inspired by Buffalo chicken wings, and a Fresno fig burger of Piedmont beef topped with fig marmalade, goat cheese, bacon, arugula and a spicy porter mustard, all paired with Maui Brewing Co. beers that will be carried at the new restaurant.

The event was a homecoming for Suzuki, a native of Pukalani, Maui, who took a nontraditional path into the restaurant world.

He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2007 with a degree in philosophy and found a job with a real estate company.

In 2009, after the subprime mortgage crisis, he and two of his co-workers left the profession to start a burger restaurant. They never looked back. Starting in Hawthorne, Calif., where Eureka! is based, the company now has restaurants in California, Washington, Colorado, Idaho and Texas.

They avoided main streets in favor of less expensive but arty, up-and-coming neighborhoods that would appeal to a mix of beer geeks, young professionals and tourists searching for local craft beers, small-batch whiskeys and classic cocktails, accompanying a made-from-scratch menu highlighted by burgers starting at $11.

“We never forget that we started in a recession, so we try to keep prices down,” said Suzuki, who aims to build and strengthen food communities wherever Eureka! sets down roots.

“If another burger restaurant opens next to us, fine. It just brings more people to the area who are curious and want to see what’s going on.”

Eureka! Las Vegas will open Monday at 520 E. Fremont St. in Las Vegas.