LAS VEGAS’S MOST ANTICIPATED RESTAURANT OPENINGS, FALL 2024
With the balmy days of summer nearly in the rear-view mirror, Las Vegas is setting its sights on a fall season of big-name restaurant openings. The last quarter of the year moves quickly in Las Vegas — spurred by the over-the-top holiday celebrations and the traffic-annihilating takeover of the Formula One race. In the interim between early September and the end of the year, a handful of highly anticipated restaurants are still making their debuts. Caesars Palace is converting its food court into a veritable cool kids’ table of celebrity chef quick-service restaurants. A Venice, California darling is parachuting into Las Vegas. A downtown bar will prove that the tiki trend isn’t going anywhere, and a local restaurateur is working on a new cafe with homemade tortillas. Here are the restaurant openings to look forward to this fall.
Opening dates often change. Check back for updates. Know of a cool restaurant, bar, or coffee shop opening? Email [email protected].
Four Sixes Ranch Steakhouse
Where: Wynn Las Vegas
When: Monday, September 16, 2024
Taylor Sheridan will take over the Tableau restaurant at Wynn Las Vegas with an elaborate pop-up that merges the Texas barbecue of his Four Sixes Ranch with the upscale extravagance that one can expect from Wynn Las Vegas. Think 28-ounce cowboy steaks and caviar towers layered with potato tots, kettle chips, chicken tenders, and deviled quail eggs. Sheridan, the ranch owner known for creating Yellowstone, previously set up a backyard barbecue during the resort’s Revelry festival, in conjunction with the World’s 50 Best ceremony, where he cooked whole hogs and tomahawk steaks — sourced from his 260,000-acre ranch in northern Texas — over live fire. During his residency this fall, the steakhouse will pivot from a backyard barbecue aesthetic to something more luxurious: think tableside prime beef tartare, a full breed wagyu cattle 40-ounce tomahawk steak carved tableside, and banana pudding topped with butterscotch custard and spun sugar. Master mixologist Mariena Mercer Boarini is heading the cocktail menu with smoky Old Fashioneds and spicy margaritas.
Glitter Gulch Tiki
Where: Downtown
When: October 4, 2024
Merging the old and new, Glitter Gulch Tiki will open soon near Fremont Street. Tiki got its start in Vegas in the ‘60s and has seen a resurgence within the last couple years. The latest iteration enlists legendary tiki bar designer Ben Bassham — better known in tiki circles as “Bamboo Ben” — to create custom straw-thatched booths, bamboo-paneled bar tops, and totem-style statues. Glitter Gulch Tiki, evoking the decades-old nickname for the sparkly stretch of downtown, will stay true to the name, with glitter in the tables and neon lighting on the ceiling. Glitter Gulch is local Mexican restaurant chain Nacho Daddy’s first venture into tropical kitsch. Expect traditional tiki drinks, plus signature cocktails with lychee puree, dry ice, and flaming lime slices. The kitchen will serve light bites of coconut shrimp and, as one would hope from the Nacho Daddy team, poke nachos on crispy wonton chips.
Chamana’s Cafe and Molino
Where: Spring Valley
When: Mid-October
Dan Kroehmer of raw bar and seafood restaurant Other Mama is taking over the space next door to open a brunch-centric cafe with a Mexican lean. That means midday plates of steak and eggs with homemade tortillas and salsa, smoky and aromatic bowls of pozole with cacahuazintle heirloom corn, and American diner staples like eggs over-easy with bacon and smashed potatoes. Chamana’s will have an extensive beverage menu, focused on fancy espresso drinks from what Kroehmer calls “the most expensive expresso machine in the world,” and sodas with fruit purees such as watermelon-basil, guava, lavender, and cinnamon. Beyond brunch, lunch and dinner will include tortas filled with pork sausage, fried and flaky empanadas, and crispy flautas filled with potatoes and chorizo.
Swingers Las Vegas
Where: Mandalay Bay
When: November 8, 2024
For more than a year now, the Mandalay Bay has had signage posted on the doors of what will be a $50 million adults-only mini golf course. This fall, the cavernous space, which had been the Light nightclub, will debut with four elaborate golf courses, each modeled after a whimsical English countryside. The British brand already has locations in London, New York, and Washington D.C., and it’s stepping up its production value for the Vegas iteration — with courses themed around a clocktower, a hot air balloon, a carousel, and a meteorite, as well as projection lighting and moving obstacles like windmills, waterwheels, jumps, and loops. Cocktails will be delivered by caddie and pizza, burgers, and tacos will be available at the parasol-covered sunken garden lounge. While Las Vegas is experiencing a trend of golf-and-play attractions, Swingers will tee off the ritziest version yet.
Mokbar, Tortazo, and Buddy V’s Pizzeria
Where: Caesars Palace
When: Fall 2024
Caesars Palace will give its entire food court a glossy new facelift, swapping out its mostly generic vendors for restaurants with celebrity chef clout. So far, Bobby’s Burgers by Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri’s Chicken Guy! have moved in. This fall, Esther Choi will open her New York restaurant, Mokbar, in the food hall. And later this year, Rick Bayless will debut Tortazo, while Buddy Valastro will expand his Las Vegas footprint with Buddy V’s Pizzeria. Mokbar will offer Choi’s style of Korean food, introducing a new culinary category to the resort, with pan-fried dumplings, buns, fried chicken, ramen, and rice bowls. The “cake boss” will fire up his signature pizzas and Bayless will go all in on tortas with Tortazo, taking soft telera rolls brushed with black beans and filling them with chile-rubbed prime sirloin and avocado or portabello mushrooms and Chihuahua cheese. It’s shaping up to be the cool kids’ table of Vegas food halls.
Gjelina
Where: Venetian Las Vegas
When: Late 2024
This Venice Beach darling, popular for its crackly California-Neapolitan pizzas, vegetable-forward menu, and California-cool decor, is taking to the Las Vegas Strip. It’s on track to be the first new restaurant to open at the Venetian as part of the resort’s staggering $1.5 billion renovation. The new Gjelina location is moving into the resort’s Restaurant Row area and will be open for lunch and dinner — which means lunch options of grilled kabocha squash with miso glaze and vegetable sandwiches, and dinner offerings of oysters, mixed mushroom pizza, and saffron spaghetti with bottarga and confit tomato.
Stubborn Seed
Where: Resorts World Las Vegas:
When: Winter 2024
Top Chef Season 13 winner Jeremy Ford is taking his Miami-based Stubborn Seed restaurant to Las Vegas when it opens at Resorts World this winter. The James Beard Award semi-finalist earned attention for Stubborn Seed for its prix fixe menus — one that plays with surprising combinations of flavors and textures like in a course of cured yellowtail plated with lemongrass gel and a popping watermelon and lime “gusher” with icy kiwi jalapeno granita. The restaurant’s name refers to “a nod to the persistence required to open a restaurant, or even more broadly, any passion project, to flourish and grow,” according to a press release. In Las Vegas, Stubborn Seed will incorporate seasonal and local ingredients and a robust drinks menu.