Todd English’s Olives in Las Vegas Is Permanently Closing

Less than two years after opening, Todd English’s Olives is closing inside the off-Strip Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. The Mediterranean restaurant opened in August 2021, following the closure of Olives at the Bellagio. In a statement, Virgin Hotels said the restaurant will close after dinner service on Sunday, June 4 for “reconceptualization.”

Olives first opened in Boston in 1989 and was widely regarded as one of the city’s best restaurants. The restaurant was English’s first, and helped catalyze his career as an international restaurateur. English opened the Vegas location on the Strip in 1998 and it remained there for nearly two decades, closing in January of 2018 — just months after sexual harassment charges were levied against English. The chef also once ran a bar in Vegas called the Todd English P.U.B. at Aria, but that was also shuttered after the charges against him, in 2017.

The latest iteration of Olives opened at Virgin Hotels in 2021, following its changeover from the Hard Rock Hotel. The 185-seat restaurant boasted a stone and steel hearth kitchen and a raised bar with lounge areas featuring Renaissance-inspired hand-glazed art. Its menu drew on the Mediterranean fare that originated with Olives in Boston, highlighting dishes like beef carpaccio with gorgonzola rosti cake and scallion cream, Nantucket Bay scallops, flatbreads laden with fig and prosciutto, and pasta tossed with Maine lobster, uni butter, and crushed cherry peppers.

English still runs the Beast at Area15, and just last year he opened the English Hotel and its in-house restaurant, the Pepper Club.

English has previously garnered negative attention following his involvement in a 2014 drunk driving arrest and settled other lawsuits over the years.