MTO Café

Next to City Hall and the infamous Las Vegas Greyhound station, MTO (Made to Order) services a mixed crowd of local professionals, tourists and some of the city’s odd riff-raff. Its watchwords: “fresh comfort food.” Here you will find dark, strong morning coffee in wide mugs; and for those still rapt in Las Vegas revelry, there are bloody Marys and mimosas. That’s a good thing, because the sweet flavor profiles of the breakfast menu are well enhanced by a buzz. 

Many customers start breakfast with apple rings. These are genius little cousins of donuts, weirdly reminiscent of onion rings. A heavily battered tart apple goes into the deep fryer until its surrounding dough is golden-crisp. The apple inside is still basically raw, just barely warmed. The package is drizzled with cinnamon “butter icing.” The resulting dish is more crisp and less sweet than you’d suspect. It’s just right as a starter or coffee snack.

Kentucky Fried Chicken isn’t what you might expect. It is a stack of superb hash browns (curiously, billed as mashed browns on the menu) topped with a crisp-fried fillet of tender chicken breast, then eggs and a semi-sweet cinnamon scented gravy chockful of hotdogs and bacon. The gravy is strange indeed, but it works. This is a bizarre, messy dish that delivers all the comfortable, if immature, flavors we want out of breakfast.

Pancake dippers are another expression of MTO’s goofy genius. These are spongy oblong flapjacks cooked with a crispy strip of bacon right down the middle. They’re pretty great pancakes, plenty tasty without syrup or butter. As you cut through them, the bacon breaks even with the sweet cakes and adds crunch. It all adds up to a fun breakfast, but one at which the cookery is serious.

MTO has a second location at 10970 Rosemary Park Dr. 702-982-0770