Celebrity eateries: Flavor Flav, Gene Simmons to open restaurants

As if Las Vegas needed any more flavor. A new soul food eatery is opening in the City of Sin, helmed by rapper and reality-TV personality Flavor Flav.

With a ribbon-cutting scheduled for March 15, the House of Flavor Restaurant will join the unceasing march of celebrity-backed food ventures. The menu will be dominated by fried chicken, along with other options such as red velvet waffles -- all made using recipes and secret spice rubs that the restaurant’s management says were developed by the star.

It’s not like Flavor Flav is a food neophyte. The Public Enemy rapper and VH1 mainstay earned a culinary arts degree in the late 1970s and his parents operated a diner on New York’s Long Island.

His pedigree, however, doesn’t guarantee success: An earlier restaurant venture -- Flav’s Fried Chicken in Iowa -- flopped within half a year in 2011.

But the risk of failure rarely keeps celebrities from venturing into the food and beverage business (just ask onetime restaurant owners such as Steven Spielberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger). Jon Bon Jovi launched a pay-what-you-can soul food eatery in New Jersey in the fall. Boy band Hanson said last year that it would launch its own beer.

Add to that list: Gene Simmons. The Kiss bassist is teaming up with restaurateur Michael Zislis and concert promoter Dave Furano to launch Rock & Brews in El Segundo next month.

The comfort food establishment will cater to music fans with large screen televisions playing concert videos as well as dishes such as “Front Row” pizzas and “Headliner” sandwiches.

The trio also plans to open locations at LAX as well as in Denver, Atlanta, Hawaii, Tokyo and Mexico.

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