Chinatown Lands a Third Restaurant from Khai Vu

Mordeo Boutique Wine Bar

Address: 5420 Spring Mountain Road

Phone: 702-545-0771

Hours: Open Tuesday through Saturday from 6 to 10:30 p.m., but from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. once the restaurant gets its liquor license.

Chef Khai Vu is back at it again, this time opening a wine bar with a menu of Spanish and Latin dishes with a Japanese influence. The chef behind Chinatown’s Vietnamese District One Kitchen & Bar and Downtown’s Le Pho now has Mordeo Boutique Wine Bar. For now, the restaurant awaits its liquor license but a first rendition of the menu is available.

Mordeo, Latin for bite, features a menu of small bites, meat and cheese boards, ceviches, sharable dishes, salads, and desserts. Prices for those bites start at $3 and include morsels of Okinawa potato gnocchi, grilled Nigerian prawn, and skewers featuring trumpet mushroom, pork cheek, yuzu chicken, and ocean trout.

Charcuterie hanging behind the bar, at the center of the restaurant, comes on boards, while a wine room with sliding glass doors awaits its inventory sits next to the meat locker.

Diners can dive into grouper, lomi lomi ocean trout, shrimp, and Maine lobster ceviche options, or share a marinated lamb rack, aside steak, clams and mussels with chorizo, or maple soy taco with grilled octopus. Those dishes range from $12 to $28.

Twelve seats line the open kitchen, giving diners an up-close view of the action.

That liquor license could arrive any day, but in the meantime diners can bring their own wine. Hours remain shortened until the license arrives.

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