After winning the Dapper Companies’ Great Las Vegas Coffee Shop Giveaway, restaurateurs Mallory Gott and Chef Aaron Lee will open Winnie & Ethel’s Downtown Diner in the Huntridge Shopping Center next year.
“Aaron and I were engaged after dating for a while, and we talked about doing something together,” Gott told What Now in a Thursday afternoon phone call. “We talked about doing a vintage diner.”
After toying with the idea, the couple spotted an article about Dapper’s big giveaway. Soon after, they submitted a concept—described modestly by Gott as “ideas jotted down on the backs of envelopes”—and it won!
As it happens, the couple is quite familiar with the Huntridge area, both from living there and from having studied its history during the research process for their concept. That concept is itself one that reaches into the past. The diner’s two names are ancestral: Winnie, the name of Lee’s grandmother; and Ethel, the name of Gott’s great grandmother.
Winnie & Ethel’s Downtown Diner will offer a menu of what Chef Aaron Lee as “American home comfort food and diner classics done very well.” It will feature Classic Meatloaf, a Meatloaf Sandwich, house-made shoestring fries, classic breakfast foods, and more.
The couple has the resume for it, too: Chef Lee has worked in the culinary industry for nearly 15 years, and Gott has worked in concept and event design. Gott and Lee are working to bring their Winnie & Ethel’s Downtown Diner concept to Huntridge Shopping Center in 2023.
