Mark Wahlberg has reassured guests that his Las Vegas restaurant is in good shape, just days after it caught on fire.
The 53-year-old actor shared a recent video to Instagram of his restaurant Flecha Cantina during its grand opening, which took place last night (November 7). In the clip, Wahlberg was seen standing at the front desk of the restaurant and taking a call from a customer.
“Flecha, how can I help you?” he said over the phone, before asking the customer their name. He then told the restaurant staff: “Hey, Samuel’s running five minutes late!”
While on the phone, the Ted star quipped about the fact that his restaurant had caught on fire days before the establishment’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“There’s no fire, there’s no fire,” he added. “We’re open for business. Come on, Sam. Drive safe. I’m holding it down for you until you get here.”
In the caption, Wahlberg also poked fun at the restaurant fire. “Amazing grand opening last night,” he wrote. “It’s the hottest restaurant in Vegas.”
A fire initially broke out in the restaurant on November 6, just one night before Wahlberg hosted the ribbon-cutting ceremony. At the time, a video of the flames outside Flecha Cantina was shared on X/Twitter. The incident also came nearly three weeks after Flecha Cantina’s soft opening on September 14.
A spokesperson for Flecha Cantina told People that the blaze started after “a defective fire pit caught fire on the bottom of it.”
“The fire crew came and put it out right away,” said the spokesperson. “No damage at all in the interior restaurant. The only damage was the fire pit and the chair next to it. Thankfully no one was injured.”
They added: “The fire sprinkler company came back out and recharged the system and the restaurant was back open at 7pm.”
The Clark County Fire Department responded to reports of flames reaching the restaurant’s patio at approximately 5:30pm. By the time they arrived, sprinklers had already activated and the restaurant had been fully evacuated.
Fire officials confirmed that the flames had not reached the building’s interior and were confined to a single propane fire table. Surveillance footage indicated that the fire ignited from within the table’s internal mechanisms.
Flecha Cantina – which also has a location in Huntington Beach, California – aims to “re-experience Modern Mexican cuisine through the eyes of Mark Wahlberg and his team of chefs and restaurateurs,” according to the company’s official website. The restaurant’s menu is “crafted by renowned international chefs and mixologists, blends Mexican classics with a contemporary fire.”
Wahlberg moved to Las Vegas from Hollywood in November 2022 with his wife, Rhea Durham, and their four children - Ella, 20, Michael, 17, Brendan, 15, and Grace, 14. During an appearance on The Talk one month before his move, he shared his plans to "build a state-of-the-art studio in his new hometown, Las Vegas,” and “make [the city] Hollywood 2.0.”
“I wanted to be able to work from home, I moved to California many years ago to pursue acting and only made a couple of movies in the entire time that I was there,” he said. “So, to be able to give my kids a better life and follow and pursue their dreams, whether it be my daughter as an equestrian, my son as a basketball player, my younger son as a golfer, this made a lot more sense for us.”
