We, too, were fans of Rosemary’s and its famous BBQ shrimp dish, not to mention the desserts, and the half-price Ladies Night on Wednesdays always made for a fun and wallet-friendly girls’ night out.
The popular locals’ spot on W. Sahara Ave., which primarily focused on French cuisine, was one of the many victims of the Great Recession and closed in July, 2011, after twelve years in business. In the fall of 2012, however, there was some good news, namely that the husband-and-wife team of Mike and Rosemary Jordan would be reincarnating their restaurant as a cafe downtown. The venue was to be inside the long-shuttered 50-year-old Reed Whipple Cultural Center on Las Vegas Boulevard North, which was to experience a $45 million renaissance as home to the Las Vegas Shakespeare Company.
We’d heard nothing further since, however, and the Shakespeare Company is now trying to raise funds (donations of between $500 and $100,000 are encouraged) to build a custom home, the Clark County Theater Center, optimistically said to be opening in 2016. The official blurb says the facility will include a jazz club and a fine-art gallery, and BARd LOUNGE, a "chic late night-spot for lite [sic] dining & cocktails." There is no longer any mention of Rosemary’s Cafe.
Meanwhile, the latest we heard about the Reed Whipple resurrection project was in November last year, when the Las Vegas Sun reported that the Nevada Repertory was hoping to reinvent the building as the Cultural Corridor Theater Center, providing rent-free space for other non-profit arts entities, including the Academy of Nevada Ballet Theater, Next Wave Opera, Las Vegas Youth Orchestras, and Rainbow Company Youth Theater. Three proposed commercial tenants, including Rosemary’s Cafe, were cited in the article.
Since then, we’d again heard nothing, but our most recent investigation revealed an update earlier this month by in-the-know dining-news blog Vegas Eater, which revealed that at some point in the interim the Rosemary’s plan had been scrapped and that its planned home in the building was instead to be given over to yet another jazz club. The post also says that the Las Vegas Shakespeare Company might e back on the cards as a tenant, which makes us wonder if there are one or two jazz clubs in the works. We admit to being somewhat confused as the "Eater" information doesn’t seem to tally with what the Shakespeare Company’s own site is saying.
Whether either theater project will come to fruition (or, indeed, whether they are actually now one and the same) remains to be seen, but what does seem pretty certain is that Rosemary’s will not be included in any of the plans. If we hear anything further, we’ll post an update in "Today’s News." Sorry to be bearers of bad tidings.
