Walk into Echo Taste & Sound on any given evening and you might ask yourself: Is this a restaurant with killer speakers, or a music spot that happens to serve great food? According to Natalie Young, who has spent 30 years in the culinary world including her beloved Eat near Fremont East, it’s definitely both.
“I think I’ve created a concept that doesn’t exist anywhere,” Young says. “We’re doing food, of course, and I have four different sound systems. It’s a listening lounge.”
And what a lounge it is. The space is retro-cool, featuring warm wood slats and acoustic paneling, filled with houseplants and vintage furniture salvaged from the late Downtown Cocktail Room. It’s the living room of your dreams (or at least mine).
Echo’s menu is built around small plates and shareable bites, extremely conducive to a social night out. On a recent evening, friends and I settled onto Echo’s cool couches and noshed on what Young modestly calls “snacks”—truly, they’re more like fine dining appetizers.
Snacks and dishes at Echo Taste & Sound
The tomato toast ($10) features house-made focaccia with marinated tomatoes and garlic—simple on paper, but one bite proves why good ingredients don’t need fuss. The crispy mushrooms ($16), lightly battered with shishito peppers, Asian slaw and ponzu, hit that perfect sweet spot of texture and flavor. The papas bravas ($9), with smash-fried potatoes, salsa brava and garlic aioli, is a crowd favorite, along with the Mexican shrimp cocktail ($17). Feeling flush? The caviar and truffle chips ($80) will make you the most popular person at the table.
For brunch, the chef has brought Eat favorites like her shrimp and grits ($23) with applewood smoked bacon and eggs over easy. And the cocktail program is just as elevated as the menu, featuring some of the city’s best drinks, plus thoughtful mocktails that pair perfectly with the food and the vibe.
Of course, there’s the other half of Echo’s equation: Young has assembled what she believes is “probably the largest McIntosh collection in the country, currently.” Since 1949, McIntosh has been making some of America’s finest audio equipment, vintage hi-fi gear that audiophiles travel to experience.
“Most listening lounges only have one system, and definitely not to the degree of the systems that I have,” Young says. “I have four, and they’re all different. So you can have a different listening experience depending on what mood I’m in.”
Young curates every selection personally. Jazz one night, Led Zeppelin the next, Nina Simone whenever the mood strikes. The emotional response is visceral. “People get teary-eyed because they’re like, ‘My dad had one of these when I was a kid.’”
The calendar stays packed: fried chicken and blues the first Saturday of every month, live jazz every other Wednesday, poetry and vinyl nights, and in December, a Korean blues band from Seoul.
Ask Young what she wants people to take away from Echo, and her answer is simple: “I want them to walk away feeling filled up,” she says. “The world is complicated. I just try to create a little space for people to feel safe and taken care of. They had a good drink, they had a good snack, and they got to listen to some good music.”
ECHO TASTE & SOUND 1301 S. Main St. #160, 702-268-7466, echotastesound.com. Wednesday & Thursday, 5-11 p.m.; Friday & Saturday, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. & 5 p.m.-midnight; Sunday, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
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