Stanton Social Prime Is the New Glam Eye-Popping Restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip

Chef Chris Santos’s spin-off of his famed New York steakhouse Stanton Social is now open at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. And the opening was ushered by the debut of a velvety and gem-toned restaurant where made-for-Instagram plates of microgreen-sprinkled bone marrow, heaping bowls of lobster macaroni and cheese, and tomahawk steaks suspended by fairy lights and set aflame were paraded through the chandelier-lit dining room.

A dining room with a wide blue chandelier overhead. — Stanton Social Prime

“I’m 52 years old. When I started doing this 30 years ago, it was just to make delicious food,” says Santos. “Now, people want a show. Especially in Vegas.” And that compulsion to put on a show is only amplified by Stanton Social Prime’s proximity to Omnia nightclub. Located in the old Searsucker space, Stanton has a door that opens right into the megaclub. “Four out of seven nights we’ll have an Omnia Night,” says Santos. “We’ll open those nights with a much different playlist and it will cater specifically to the Omnia crowd.”

Tomato tartare with quail eggs on top, and a bowl of burrata. — House salad, crispy burrata, and tomato tartare

Another way Santos is dialing up the Vegas version of Stanton Social, which closed in 2018 after 15 years in New York City, is by giving his 50 or so menu items the Instagram treatment. Order the 64-ounce Super Tomahawk ($170) and your behemoth of a steak will be carted in under a dome of string lights. Your server will then flambee cognac and pour the spoonfuls of flames over the meat, before carving and serving it with short ribs, bone marrow, and flavorful pan drippings. “I’m taking direction from the original Stanton Social and trying to recapture the mindset of when I created that first menu,” Santos says. “Things have changed in the last 17 or 18 years. Now things have to be Instagrammable.”

Bone Marrow topped with microgreens and plated with toasted bread. — Bone marrow

Even the comparatively modest cuts of steak are presented with steak sauces inside glass perfume bottles. A bowl of French onion soup dumplings present like escargot, with picks through each dumpling with which customers can pull the dumplings out from under a layer of melted cheese. Another dish is the dirty tots, a plate of crispy potatoes topped with lobster crème fraîche and caviar. One standout on the menu is the prime filet carpaccio, drizzled with fragrant lemon and thyme brown butter with smoked aioli and crunchy pine nuts. A whole grizzled branzino is fileted and filled with saffron caramelized fennel and leeks over a velvety egg yolk rouille sauce.

Prime beef carpaccio with greens and pine nuts. — Prime beef carpaccio

The desserts are just as eye-catching. A key lime pie is covered in a tower of whipped marshmallow-like meringue. And a cup of strawberry milkshake reveals itself to be entirely made of cake — straw and all. One cocktail, the Lady Elletaria, is made with vodka, lemon, Chartreuse liqueur, cardamom, and raspberry popping boba. The Where There’s Oak uses bourbon, maple syrup, and cherry bark bitters and emerges tableside from inside a glass smoker.

A cake that looks like a strawberry milkshake in a plastic cup. — Strawberry blond milkshake.

The restaurant itself is also designed to be looked at through a viewfinder. Stunning blue-fringed chandeliers loom over the main dining rooms. The walls are draped in velvet. A private dining room is wrapped in floral wallpaper to match the vintage pendant lights overhead. And I dare you not to take a selfie in the mirror-covered hallway leading to the bathroom. The design choices should come as no surprise to anyone who has visited Beauty & Essex, Santos’ first venture with Tao Group Hospitality, in which one must first pass through a pawn shop to gain entry into the glam dining room beyond. Another New York-based steakhouse, Peter Luger, is expected to open within Caesars Palace this year.

Stanton Social Prime is open at Caesars Palace Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday from 5 to 10:30 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday from 5 to 11:30 p.m.