Fall finally arrives in September, and already 2018 looks to be a big season for restaurant openings in Las Vegas. The cooler weather serves up 20 anticipated restaurant and bar openings all across Las Vegas. The Park MGM and NoMad plan to debut with a restaurant from Roy Choi, Eataly, La La Noodle, and NoMad Restaurant & Bar. Wynn Plaza serves up Cipriani and Urth Caffe, while the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas dishes out Block 16 Urban Food Hall with six bars and restaurants, along with the Chinese Red Plate.
Off the Strip brings a new Thai restaurant from Bank Atchawaran in Chinatown, a new steakhouse from Herbs & Rye’s Nectaly Mendoza, a barbecue restaurant from Michael Symon at the Palms, and a burger restaurant at Palace Station.
Buckle up. Here’s a look at what’s on the horizon for restaurant openings in fall 2018. See something missing? Drop it in the comments.
The Strip
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Cipriani
Location: Wynn Las Vegas
Projected Opening: October
Wynn’s plans to open Wynn Plaza that stretches to the front of the resort keep getting delayed, but that latest pegs Cipriani opening in October. The restaurant serves sashimi and tempura selections, alongside Italian appetizers, pastas, risottos, and pizza favorites. Once open, diners can order lunch or dinner Sunday to Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. and closing at midnight from Thursday to Saturday.
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Urth Caffe
Location: Wynn Las Vegas
Projected Opening: October
The 5,493-square-foot, European-styled coffee shop will be the first non-California, U.S. expansion for the Los Angeles-based brand and is expected to feature its casual breakfast and lunch selections.
• All Coverage of Urth Caffe [ELV]
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Block 16 Urban Food Hall
Location: Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Projected Opening: Aug. 31
Block 16 Urban Food Hall brings a lineup of hot chicken, doughnuts, pork sandwiches, and tequila, along with a roster of famous chefs and restaurants, opening on Aug. 31. The food hall sits on the second level of the Boulevard Tower, taking over a portion of the former sports book next to Marquee.
The eatery features New Orleans-based District: Donuts. Sliders. Brew., Nashville’s hot Southern chicken joint Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, Lardo with sandwiches from Portland chef Rick Gencarelli’, James Beard Award-winning chef Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok Wing from Portland, and Tekka Bar: Handroll & Sake from Las Vegas restaurateur, Takashi Segawa. New York City’s Ghost Donkey with its menu of a tequila and mezcal cocktails rounds out the new restaurants.
• Boom! Cosmopolitan Reveals Six New Restaurants Opening This Fall [ELV]
Red Plate
Location: Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Projected Opening: Fall
Red Plate brings a Chinese restaurant to the Cosmopolitan, replacing chef Scott Conant’s shuttered Italian concept D.O.C.G. Enoteca, the space sits between Beauty & Essex and Conant’s other former Italian restaurant Scarpetta. Executive chef Yip Cheung will oversee Red Plate’s multi-regional Chinese cuisine, moving upstairs from his position at the resort’s Talon Club, specialists in catering to a high-end gambling clientele. So far, only roasted meats, Chinese hot pot, and handmade dim sum have been revealed for the menu. Marnell Companies alongside Celano Design Studio, a pair of talented teams familiar to Las Vegas, will create a “striking exterior” to “entice guests with curved, champagne-colored walls contrasting black metal and brass detailing.” The entryway will lead to a bar and lounge and a dining room lined with “luxurious red banquettes.”
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Catch
Location: Aria
Projected Opening: Late October
Catch takes over the former BarMasa and Tetsu space at Aria with a menu of seafood, sushi, and steak. Already the resort touts dishes such as the Catch roll with crab, salmon, and miso honey; truffle sashimi with tuna and hamachi; wagyu on a rock, which goes for $26 an ounce in Los Angeles; and Cantonese lobster, weighing 2.5 pounds and going for $95 in LA.
In Los Angeles, the menu includes seafood towers, skewers with chicken meatballs or eggplant, crunchy rice cakes with tuna tartare, scallop gnocchi, lobster mac and cheese, and herb-roasted branzino. A section of the menu caters to vegans with a hearts of palm crab cake and sweet potato gnocchi, while gluten-free dishes are also available.
Los Angeles also serves brunch, and features an open kitchen and retractable roof.
• All Coverage of Catch [ELV]
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Unnamed Roy Choi Restaurant
Location: Park MGM
Key Players: Roy Choi
Projected Opening: Late fall
Chef Roy Choi out of Los Angeles promised the venture “will feel like Ktown when you walk in and I plan on filling the casino with stinky delicious smells and lots of double dipping. Ha.” His new restaurant in Las Vegas at the Park MGM still doesn’t have an official name, but in an interview with Bloomberg he dubbed the restaurant Best Friend. A space with that name is confirmed to be on the way to the Park MGM, but has yet to be announced by Choi.
Choi plans what he calls a “multifaceted, multi-sensory experience” restaurant, he tells Food & Wine, inspired by LA’s Koreatown, where he started with his gourmet Korean taco truck Kogi. So expect a bit of Korean in the mix.
• All Coverage of Roy Choi [ELV]
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Eataly
Location: Park MGM
Projected Opening: Late fall
Cafes, restaurants, pizza, a bakery, and to-go counters are all part of Eataly, the massive, 40,000-square-foot going into the front of the Park MGM. Products from sustainable Italian and local producers. Nicole Brisson, the former culinary director for B&B Hospitality Group, takes over as the new executive chef at Eataly.
• All Coverage of Eataly [ELV]
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La La Noodle
Location: Park MGM
Projected Opening: Late fall
La La Noodle will begin serving a Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai menu this November.
A rarity for a Las Vegas Asian restaurant on the Strip, New York’s Parts and Labor Design created a modern, bright and airy space that also adds a covered outdoor patio.
Customers will have a choice of dining at the long counter facing an open kitchen, in booths, or the light-filled dining areas.
Executive chef Bill Chan, a 15-year veteran of The Grand Wok & Sushi Bar until the MGM Grand restaurant closed earlier this year, will oversee the noodle, seafood, meat, vegetable, and rice dishes.
Inspired by the “Mandarin term for pulled — 拉 (pronounced lah)” La La will specialize in hand-pulled noodles, including familiar pork belly or chicken chow mein options, plus Hong Kong seafood crispy noodles prepared with shrimp, scallops and squid.
• All Coverage of La La Noodle [ELV]
NoMad
Location: NoMad
Projected Opening: Late fall
Out of all of the new projects headed to the Park MGM and NoMad hotel, the planners Sydell Group and MGM Resorts have kept very quiet. Daniel Humm and Will Guidara promise to behind the swanky restaurant and bar with the NoMad name. Whatever develops will surely live up to the Michelin-starred original in New York City.
• All Coverage of NoMad [ELV]
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Electra Cocktail Club
Location: Palazzo
Key Players: Sam Ross of The Dorsey and Rosina fame
Projected Opening: September
Electra Cocktail Club, a lounge the Palazzo says “represents the evolution of nightlife in Las Vegas,” comes from Sam Ross, the barman behind The Dorsey and Rosina cocktail menus.
Electra plans to sit on the casino floor, closer to the check-in desk with rums, Caribbean agricoles, mezcal, and tropical cocktails taking center stage.
Future drinks at this lounge that opens in early September include the Penichillin, a frozen play on The Dorsey’s popular Penicillin with lemon, ginger, honey, and smoky Scotch; a frozen peach daiquiri, made with white rum, rhum agricole, peach, and lime; the Trouble Maker with vodka, sweet vermouth, cucumber, lemon, and strawberry; the Pina Verde with Green Chartreuse, pineapple, lime, coconut, and a dash of cream; and the Age of Aquarius, with mezcal, passionfruit, lime, honey, and Campari.
• All Coverage of Electra Cocktail Club [ELV]
Jeannie’s
Location: Fashion Show
Key Players: Seattle restaurateur Tom Douglas
Projected Opening: Late fall
Restaurateur Tom Douglas, a highly respected fixture in the Seattle dining scene, has joined forces with the Nordstrom department store to debut Jeannie’s at the Fashion Show mall this fall. Revealed back in June, the restaurant will replace the now shuttered, 15-year-old Marketplace Café and has been allocated an estimated construction budget of $2 million for the speedy overhaul. Douglas was named James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur in 2012 and recipient of the 1994 James Beard Award for Best Northwest Chef.
• Seattle Restaurateur Tom Douglas Heads to the Strip [ELV]
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Palace Station
BBD’s
Location: Palace Station
Key Players: Chef Ralph Perrazzo
Projected Opening: Aug. 31
Chef Ralph Perrazzo makes his long-awaited return to Las Vegas when he brings BBD’s (Beers Burgers Desserts) to Palace Station this summer. Since 2014, the Long Island, New York-based chef wanted to bring a restaurant to an off-Strip location.
Now the chef who worked at Bradley Ogden Restaurant at Caesars Palace plans to serve dishes that start with beef butchered in the restaurant’s butcher shop, visible in the restaurant. Every burger can be cooked one of three ways — as a steakhouse burger cooked over embers of cherrywood and Canadian charcoal, as a griddle burger with a thin patty cooked on a hot griddle with a crispy brown crust, or as a steamed burger served over chopped onions and pickles. Steaks cooked over a wood fire, and vegan and vegetarian dishes such as a gyro taco and meatball parm hero also make the contrasting menu.
Craft beers delivered via a draft system and a menu of rotating bottles and taps bring a roster of vintage, sour, and rare brews along with nitro and cask selections.
The “D” portion of the menu address desserts, which include soft serve ice cream made in house along with custard-based shakes in boozy and non-alcoholic versions.
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Palms
Location: Palms
Key Players: Michael Symon
Projected Opening: Late fall
Chef Michael Symon brings Mabel’s BBQ, an outpost of his downtown Cleveland restaurant, to the Palms with an outdoor patio as well as a variety of new barbecue dishes exclusive to and inspired by Las Vegas. Some of those novelties include sandwiches and tacos made with Symon’s smoked meat. Beyond barbecue, diners will be able to make their way through a disguised door at the back of the restaurant into a speakeasy with a tableside Caesar salad, large raw bar selection, smoked prime rib for two, and a classic bananas Foster flambeéd table side.
• All Coverage of Mabel’s BBQ [ELV]
Chinatown
Lamaii
Location: 4480 Spring Mountain Road
Key Players: Bank Atchawaran
Projected Opening: Late fall
Fans of Bank Atcharawan and his Thai food only need to wait until fall for him to get back in the Thai food game. Granted, Atcharawan already has Patio Desserts & Drinks, which he opened last April with its menu of Asian cakes, honey toast, and drinks, but now he plans to open Lamaii, a modern take on classic Thai food restaurant near Macy’s on Spring Mountain Road.
Atcharawan says the beverages focus on wine “with a large chunk of the list dedicated to Riesling, Champagne, and Chablis.” He hopes to finish building out the space by late fall.
• All Coverage of Lamaii [ELV]
Eastside
Location: 3900 Paradise Road
Key Players: Nectaly Mendoza
Projected Opening: Sept. 9
Nectaly Mendoza’s Cleaver — Butchered Meats, Seafood & Classic Cocktails is just about ready to open on the eastside, taking over the former home of Ruth’s Chris, Kelly’s Prime Steak & Seafood, and Toscano Italian Steakhouse at The Park at 3900 retail and office center on Paradise Road.
Fans of Herbs & Rye, Mendoza’s nine-year-old cocktail lounge and steakhouse on the westside, can expect the roles to be reversed at Cleaver. Mendoza plans more of a traditional American steakhouse with pastas, meats, and seafood paired with a smaller cocktail menu and wine-forward drinks menu.
• All Coverage of Cleaver [ELV]
• The Biggest Restaurant Openings in Las Vegas in 2018 [ELV]
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