Las Vegas Restaurant Week

One of our favorite local events, Restaurant Week by Three Square, is right around the corner and we are so excited to announce that CRAFTkitchen will be participating for the first time ever this year. On its tenth year this year, Restaurant Week will take place from June 6th-17th. Read on to find out how you can participate and give back to the community simply by indulging in some delicious eats: 

What is Restaurant Week? 

Restaurant Week is an effort by Three Square Food Bank, an organization that delivers wholesome food to community members in need in its pursuit of a hunger-free Southern Nevada. Every year for the past ten years, Three Square has put on “Las Vegas Restaurant Week,” a week in which participating local restaurants, eateries and bakeries agree to donate a certain amount of proceeds from their sales to Three Square’s fight to end hunger in our community. All you have to do to help is dine at one of the participating restaurants anytime from June 6th-17th. 

How is CRAFT participating?

CRAFTkitchen will be donating $1 from every single item sold from our pastry case from June 6th-17th. So, swing by and grab one of your favorite pastry-case goodies (like our fan-favorite chocolate croissant or flakey French Kouign-amann) anytime during Restaurant Week and you’ll be doing your part to help end hunger in Southern Nevada.

Where can I learn more? 

You can learn more at helpoutdineoutlv.org, where you can find a list of participating restaurants and upcoming events. You can also follow Three Square on Instagram @ThreeSquarelv and follow Restaurant Week on Facebook @Las Vegas Restaurant Week for real-time updates. (And be sure to snap pretty pics of all of those CK pastries you buy and tag both CRAFTkitchenlv and ThreeSquareLV.)

We’re so excited for this important and impactful event to start and are so grateful to be a part of it. Since we first opened CRAFT, our mission has always been to get our community fed the way it deserves to be fed, and it’s a true honor to join forces with the unstoppable Three Square Food Bank to help do so.

NEW ART ON DISPLAY AT CRAFT

As a family of chefs, we constantly work to allow our children to be as creative as they want and to pursue whatever interests they may have. One of our children has always shown a huge interest in painting, which we were thrilled about. She’s an absolute natural and it’s been such a pleasure to watch her grow.

We ended up enrolling her in art lessons with the super talented Sarah King, the owner and director of The King Art Studio, and we couldn’t have been happier with the results. Our kids are such a big part of CRAFTkitchen, so the idea came to our daughter to paint a few pieces for the walls of CRAFT. With the help and guidance of Sarah, she was able to create four beautiful pieces that are now on display in the dining area of our space.

While the work and the ideas for the pieces come entirely from our daughter, Sarah plays a pivotal role in teaching her important art techniques like value, perspective and proportions. She is so kindhearted and wonderful with her students. It’s amazing to watch Sarah use her experience and seasoned eye to take our daughter’s natural talent to entirely new level (without stifling her creativity or playing too big of a role in the final product).

Sarah really has played such an important role in helping our daughter develop her talent, so we wanted to take a minute to share with you a little bit about The King Art Studio because we truly feel that, for anyone in Las Vegas who’s even remotely interested in the arts or art lessons, there’s no other place like Sarah’s studio in our valley. 

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Sarah moved to Las Vegas on a UNLV scholarship and has since been teaching art for 7-8 years. She drew beginning at age three and always knew it was what she wanted to do—and her passion and experience are both so evident in the way she works with our daughter and other members of the studio. She now mainly paints and specializes in acrylics (and she shows in Laguna CA and soon in Chelsea NY). You can check out her beautiful work here (keep an eye out for “Taj Mahal”—it’s her favorite piece and it’s easy to see why). 

One of the things we love most about Sarah and The King Art Studio is just the level of talent and professionalism she brings to the art scene here in Vegas. Though our city is definitely evolving, we’re definitely in need of some serious arts and culture, and The King Art Studio really helps to fill that need in our community. It’s such an authentic place with a focus on one thing: art. There literally is not another professional art studio in the entire valley, so The King Art Studio fills a serious void. 

We’re so glad we came across Sarah and The King Art Studio when we were searching for a studio for our daughter, and we’re so happy we have the chance to share our experience with you today. You can find The King Art Studio on Facebook and Instagram (Sarah also hosts painting parties that you can find on Facebook or Instagram).

SPOTLIGHT ON: FLORA COUTURE

At CRAFT, one of the things that’s most important to us is spreading the word about community members and local businesses that we love. Today, then, we’re so excited to share with you Flora Couture, the company that created our beautiful living walls and that provides all of the oh-so zen succulents and fresh greenery that help bring our space to life every single day. Basically, anything living and breathing at CRAFT that isn’t one of our hungry customers or bustling staff members, is a product of the Flora Couture team and their killer vision.

We began working with Flora Couture in 2015 as we worked to renovate the space that is now CRAFTkitchen. We knew the walls were missing something that fresh paint and new backsplash just couldn’t provide. Our entire approach was all about being local, organic and fresh, and, it was so clear we needed some greenery to breathe new life into our setting and communicate this approach.

So, we started working with award-winning floral designer and founder of Flora Couture, Michelle Joy Howard, to help bring our vision to life. We started by adding living walls with a heavy focus on succulents and other organic materials.

The walls turned out beautifully—they were just what our space needed and played perfectly into the clean, modern aesthetic we were going for. From there, we knew our patio needed something to separate it from the parking lot. We wanted our guests to feel as if they were dining in a space entirely of its own, rather than one that was part of a stripmall. Michelle talked us through a number of ideas, and we eventually landed on the herb palettes that you see on our patio today. They do just the job we were looking for—they carry the CRAFT aesthetic from interior to exterior perfectly, and they also separate the pretty patio space from the (not-so-pretty) lot beautifully.

Michelle’s experience and knowledge made working with Flora Couture such a breeze—she just got us (and understood—to a tee—what it was we wanted the space to say). Michelle and her team have been working to execute creative visions like ours since 1997, when Flora Couture was first founded. Flora Couture opened under the name Flora 2000 with a vision of bringing the high-end aesthetic and floral fashions that were commonplace in LA, Chicago and New York to the Las Vegas Valley (where nothing of that caliber existed at the time). Michelle describes Vegas as “a very small big town” and particularly loves interacting with community members as she works to turn their big ideas into something tangible.

Flora Couture’s services include everything from daily floral deliveries to providing plants for residential and commercial interior design to creating holidayscapes (among many other things). Michelle and her team also offer floral and décor for weddings and lifetime celebrations. But, perhaps our favorite efforts of the company’s are philanthropy based. Flora Couture works with a number of local charities and recently partnered with Create a Change Now, an organization that builds and plants gardens at at-risk schools and provides students with nutritional information.

You can visit Flora Couture’s (pretty fabulous) boutique at 9516 West Flamingo Road, #130 and its design studio at 2404 Western Avenue. You can also visit the Flora Couture website, Facebook page or Instagram for a complete look at all of their gorgeous work.