Chris Santos will open the spin-off of his New York-based Stanton Social in just a few weeks. Stanton Social Prime is gearing up to debut at Caesars Palace on Tuesday, March 21, with a restaurant and menu that dials up the extravagance and theatricality, appropriate for the Las Vegas Strip.
Stanton Social Prime will bring back some of Santos’ dishes, first popularized at Stanton Social, which closed in 2018 after 15 years in New York City. Those include the French onion soup dumplings and potato and truffle pierogies. New creations just for Las Vegas include a yellowtail crudo with grilled pineapple and smoked butter board with crudités, proving that the butter board trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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The highlight of the menu at Stanton Social Prime is the steak, seasoned with dry rub, rested in French butter, and finished with pink Himalayan salt and roasted black garlic. One steak, the Pretty in Pink, is a 10-ounce filet with pink peppercorn sauce and pink oyster mushrooms. Steak sauces come in vintage perfume bottles. And sides include those of dirty tots, crispy spuds combined with caviar and lobster crème fraîche. Leaning into the restaurant’s showmanship, the restaurant offers a number of tableside presentations, showy desserts, and cocktails — both boozy and zero-proof.
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The 200-seat restaurant in the former Searsucker space, adjacent to Omnia Nightclub, takes inspiration from the original restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side. Visitors will enter through velvet curtains to a red and blue main dining room. It also has a 10-seat bar and two private dining rooms which each have their own backstage salon.
Stanton Social was one of the first NYC restaurants by TAO Group — the dining and nightlife group that operates brands like Hakkasan, Marquee, and LAVO. Stanton Social Prime is Santos’s second Las Vegas venture with Tao, joining Beauty and Essex over at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. In 2019, Santos told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Stanton Social was his “baby,” his first restaurant. “My first priority really is to keep that brand alive, while it still has name recognition and value,” Santos said at the time. Starting on March 21, Stanton Social Prime will be open Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday from 5 to 10:30 p.m., and Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday from 5 to 11:30 p.m.