Honey Salt

The Couple Who Reshaped Las Vegas Dining

Elizabeth Blau arrived in Las Vegas in the late 1990s and did something no one had done before: she systematically recruited celebrity chefs to open restaurants inside the city’s casino resorts. Through Blau + Associates, her restaurant development and consulting firm, she brokered deals that brought some of the most recognized names in American fine dining to the Strip — transforming Las Vegas from a buffet town into a world-class culinary destination. Kim Canteenwalla, her husband and business partner, came up through professional kitchens: Executive Chef at MGM Grand, then leadership roles at restaurants in Singapore, Dubai, Bali, and Montreal. Between them, Blau and Canteenwalla had shaped more Las Vegas restaurants than almost anyone in the industry.

Honey Salt opened in 2012, and it was deliberately not on the Strip. Blau and Canteenwalla built the restaurant at 1031 S Rampart Boulevard — in their own Summerlin neighborhood, a fifteen-minute drive from the resort corridor. The concept was farm-to-table cooking rooted in seasonal ingredients and family recipes, served in a space designed to feel like an extension of someone’s home rather than a hotel lobby. The menu reflected Canteenwalla’s global training filtered through the couple’s desire to cook the food they actually eat: roasted vegetables, house-baked bread, whole-animal proteins, and produce sourced from Southwest farms.

A Cookbook and a Neighborhood Institution

In 2018, Blau and Canteenwalla published Honey Salt: A Culinary Scrapbook, a cookbook that wove family recipes together with stories from the restaurant’s first six years. Food & Beverage Magazine named it Best Cookbook of 2018. The book reinforced what Honey Salt’s regulars already understood — that the restaurant’s identity was built around the personal lives of its owners, not around trends or branding exercises. Honey Salt has maintained a loyal following in Summerlin for over a decade, drawing families and neighborhood regulars who treat it as their default dinner reservation.

Honey Salt in the Las Vegas Valley

Summerlin is one of the largest master-planned communities in the United States, home to more than 100,000 residents on the western edge of the Las Vegas Valley. Honey Salt occupies a particular role in that community: it is the independent, chef-driven restaurant that Summerlin residents claim as their own. While the Strip’s dining scene cycles through openings and closures tied to hotel renovations and corporate strategy, Honey Salt has been serving the same neighborhood for more than a decade. Blau and Canteenwalla’s decision to invest off-Strip — in the community where they live — set a template that other chef-operators in the valley have since followed.

Owners

Elizabeth Blau, Kim Canteenwalla

Founded

2012

Address

1031 S Rampart Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89145

Phone

(702) 445-6100

Website

honeysalt.com