Way back in the Stone Age (six years ago), before America became a post-literate society, we wrote a guidebook about Las Vegas’s 52 Essential Restaurants. These days the internet is awash in clickbait, ragebait, and videos telling you where to eat. Rather than engage with influencers and idiots (pardon the redundancy), we prefer to revert to our wheelhouse and highlight the restaurants that count — those eateries forging their own path, founded on passion and pride, delivering the goods daily, and dedicated to their customers, not algorithms or Insta-fame. Restaurants that have made a mark (or are in the process of making one). Restaurants that stand for something.
Rather than bore you with actual reviews which dive deeply into what makes a restaurant good (Who has time for those anymore when we’re busy doomscrolling?), our list will have capsule summaries appropriate to a society with the attention span of a goldfish.
Fair warning: if you’re the type who lusts for Carbone, pines for chicken parm, or swoons for a res at Golden Steer*, stop reading now — these restaurants are too good for you.
DOWNTOWN:
ADA’S
As good as food and wine gets in our humble burg.
BAR BOHEME
French food downtown once made as much sense as fine wine on Fremont Street. Because of BB, it now fits right in. Vastly improved, with a killer happy hour.
CARSON KITCHEN
We’ve always loathed the space, and loved the cooking. But every DTLV restaurant owes a debt of gratitude to this one.
ECHO TASTE AND SOUND
Go for the vibe; stay for the food.
ESTHER’S KITCHEN
The major domo, the big cheese, the granddaddy/pioneer of all good things to eat on Main Street — now so busy no one goes there anymore.
*GOLDEN STEER
The food isn’t worth the wait, but there’s no denying its iconic status.
LETTY’S ON MAIN
Leticia Mitchell is a force of nature, her tacos are great, and she single-handedly rescued the Old Sombrero building on Main Street. The City of Las Vegas should name a street after her.
MAIN STREET PROVISIONS
A restaurant run the right way. Where the customer comes first, and the owner is there every night, taking care of everyone.
OSCAR’S STEAKHOUSE
We wish we loved the hotel as much as we do Ben Jenkins’ steaks, chops, fries, and cheeseburgers.
MAE DALY’S
Old Vegas decor, oodles of charm, and foie gras worth fighting for.
PUBLICUS
Eye-popping pastries, sumptuous coffee, and serious savories in the worst location in the history of Sin City.
1228 MAIN
Next-level breads, croissants and cookies, with a menu that doesn’t always excite, but never disappoints.
WINNIE & ETHEL’S
The best diner food in town and it’s not even close.
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CHINATOWN:
AMADOR
The Food Gal® considers Oscar Amador Edo the best chef in town, and you won’t find me arguing with her. You’ll find me arguing a lot every week with the fangirl pictured above on Las Vegas’s favorite food podcast: Eat. Talk. Repeat.
AROMA LATIN AMERICA COCINA
Steve Kestler’s move to Chinatown is not without its challenges, but the inventive, pan-Latin menu he cranks out is in a league of its own.
CHENGDU TASTE
We knew Sichuan food was here to stay when this SoCal import showed up.
CHINA MAMA (main location)
Xie xie for teaching a Chinese culinary backwater all about xiao long bao.
8 OZ KOREAN STEAKHOUSE
Until COTE arrived, the only Korean beef emporium worth its sirloins.
IZAKAYA GO
Popular accessible, and the perfect intro into izakaya eating (and drinking).
LAMAII
Our go-to Chinatown Thai…with remarkable wines.
KABUTO
Our last visit felt very formulaic (the price of popularity, one supposes), but there’s no denying its impact on our sushi scene.
KAISEKI YUZU
Kaoru Azeuchi’s food is by turns subtle and spectacular (no mean feat that), and a seasonal meal at his Spring Mountain Road hideaway is one of the most unforgettable experiences you can have in Las Vegas.
MONTA RAMEN
Our first authentic ramen restaurant is still one of the best. (Pro tip: go at mid-afternoon for easy seating; peak times are a bitch.)
NAKAMURA-YA
Kengo-san’s waafu (Tokyo-style) pasta is the best budget meal on Spring Mountain Road, with noodles that beat some Italians at their own game.
PARTAGE
It’s no secret I’ve had it with tasting menus, but that doesn’t sway me from saying Yuri Szarzewski’s creations set a new standard for local restaurants. (You’ll usually find us in the champagne bar enjoying his equally stunning small bites.)
PHO SAIGONESE
Packed with fellow travelers right out of the chute– our best Vietnamese also excels at service, and easy ordering off a wonderful picture menu.
RAKU
If chefs were warriors, Mitsuo Endo would be the Seii Tai-Shōgun of Chinatown — which means “barbarian-quelling generalissimo” — because he single-handedly brought Japanese refinement to the vulgarians of Vegas.
SHANGHAI TASTE
Get the XLB soup dumplings, and the noodles and the pan-fried dumplings (Sheng Jian), and the cold ox-tongue, and the spicy wontons, and any of the soups and thank me later.
SPARROW + WOLF
There are two restaurants in town that the long -suffering Food Gal® is always nagging me to go back to, and this is one of them. (Amador, above, is the other.)
YEN VIET KITCHEN
Our Viet hidden gem is in hiding no longer (thanks to a Michelin Bib Gourmand recommendation), but the pho, banh xeo, and goi cuon are as righteous as ever.
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(Gino and Rosalba Ferraro haven’t aged a day)
THE ‘HOODS
AMARI
Almost overnight, Nicole Brisson turned this also-ran into a contender.
ANIMA BY EDO
The only thing wrong with this restaurant is it’s too far from my house.
CAFE BREIZH
Still the champion pastry-maker in the valley. No one does the French classics as well. Great crepes, sandwiches and galettes, too.
FERRARO’S
When the rest of Vegas was drowning in meatballs and cheap cheese, the Ferraro family showed us the way — and have been doing so, at a mind-boggling level of consistency, since 1985.
ELIA AUTHENTIC GREEK TAVERNA
More authentic Hellenic than Hera herself, and as Greek as Zorba — Elia is a gem of a taverna, cooking washed down with remarkable Retsina….or if you wish…. a superior Assyrtiko.
HAYWORTH
Alex Reznik has brought Henderson back from the brink. And why “back from the brink” we mean saved it from its consignment as a complete culinary catastrophe.
LA STREGA
Gina Marinelli took a chance in franchise-land (amidst the godforsaken west Flamingo chain restaurant jungle) and stuck the landing.
LOTUS OF SIAM (both locations)
Despite all the legal sturm und drang, still the most famous Thai restaurant in town, and maybe America, with authentic northern Thai food that never falters.
MILPA
Las Vegas is lousy with leoparding these days, overflowing with ferment nerds and consumed with cornicione. But twenty years ago, people were still getting excited over double-stuffed crusts, and other such nonsense. Then Settebello showed up and showed us how it is done. And we’ve never looked back.
SIGNORA PIZZA
Wood-fired pies from an award-winning master pizzaiolo Floriana Pastore. What Settebello started over twenty years ago, this signora has taken to eleven.
TAMBA
Game changer. Indian cooking like Vegas had never seen before. So good every galloping gastronome in town now makes multiple pilgrimages to Tommy Bahama land to eat there.
THE BLACK SHEEP
Jamie Tran’s Asian-fusion food is everything you want in a local restaurant: personal, intriguing, eye-catching, lip-smacking and moderately-priced.
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THE STRIP:
BAZAAR MEAT
Our best steakhouse.
CIPRIANI
Best service in town.
COTE
Incredible Korean ‘cue that doesn’t break the bank (unless you go nuts).
DELMONICO
An institution that, unlike most institutions, shows no signs of age. Also, open for lunch!
‘e’ BY JOSÉ ANDRÉS
Every budding epicure should experience this cozy little molecular cooking show at least once.
ESTIATORIO MILOS
Still the best seafood restaurant in town, which is sort of like being the best surfer in Kansas. Srsly….the fish are all top notch and as fresh as desert seafood can be….at a price.
L’ATELIER DE JOËL ROBUCHON
(I was a lot taller then)
Everything changed in ‘o5 when Joël and his brigade de cuisine arrived at the MGM. Methinks he’d still be proud of their performance.
JOËL ROBUCHON
Chef Eleazar Villanueva and GM Sean Christopher still run the tightest, friendliest, most extravagant ship in the haute cuisine business.
MAROON STEAKHOUSE
Somehow, the Sahara Hotel did the impossible: found the ideal replacement for Bazaar Meat — a charismatic Nigerian-Caribbean-American chef with critically-praised street cred, willing to challenge steakhouse preconceptions, and blow your socks off with curried goat agnolotti, jerk chicken and rum-aged steaks. Now if only they’d turn the f**king music down.
MATTEO’S
An almost perfect Italian ristorante, featuring handmade pastas so astonishing you’ll think you’re in Italy. The analogy is a bit strained (since both are large, successful hotel restaurants), but the food at Matteo’s is to Carbone what the competing ristorante were to each other in “Big Night.”
MOTT 32
Big box Asians aren’t our thing, but there’s no denying the pulchritude of this Peking duck.
PETER LUGER
Pro tip: the “Steak For Two” really feeds four, and the “Steak For Four” could feed an NFL offensive line.
RESTAURANT GUY SAVOY
A French haute heavyweight, still a marvel of refinement, with similar gastronomic chops to Robuchon. Perhaps a bit less over-the-top than its competitor, but with a treasure trove of a wine list. When GS and JR finally leave us, the Las Vegas Strip will revert to having all the destination dining cache of Orlando, Florida.
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Soooo not necessarily a “best of” list, although you’d be hard pressed to leave any of these off such an undertaking. Some of our faves didn’t make the cut (Wild Fig, ENDO, Toridokoro Raku, Ellie’s, Good Pie, Brezza, Stubborn Seed… ) as we can’t summon the argument for them being as “important” to our dining scene. But maybe you can and we’d love the debate.
What also grabs us is a total lack of interest in most of the Strip. Entire hotels that used to be culinary powerhouses (Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Palms, et al) these days don’t merit much more than a shrug. Perhaps we are destined to become another Orlando, albeit one with bigger sports books and better slot machines.
We have lived through extraordinary times. Las Vegas’s restaurant revolution was unlike anything any American city had ever seen. For almost two decades (1998-2015), our hotel/casinos were in a gourmet arms race, trying to outdo each other to see who could make the biggest splash with its flashier lineup of chefs and dining rooms. But entropy was inevitable. Leases expire and tents get folded. Boomers fueled this revolution and they too are riding into the sunset. Enjoy these 56 “restaurants that matter” while you still can. None of them will be around forever.
Cheers!!
(…and we’ll have the A-5 wagyu that tastes just like the U/15 shrimp…)
(Vetri & Trees sounds like a haberdashery)
(Quesotacos FTW)
(It says right here: I owe $14.72 because you had the salad with the dressing on the side)
