Vegas Doubles Down on Chefs

Enthusiasm, on the face of servers, and on the plate, has been finding its way back to the Vegas dining scene of late. Even as prices rise and tourism numbers fall, driven by politics, fuel costs, and competition from online gaming that keeps once-comped diners gambling at their own kitchen table, a new wave of chefs and restaurateurs are engaged in westward expansion, and all eyes are on them. It wasn’t always like this. For decades, restaurants existed to keep gamblers in the building between hands and a place to spend their winnings. Today, casinos are increasingly asking restaurants to do something much bigger: Fill hotels, define brands, attract younger travelers, and justify billion-dollar investments that have less and less to do with slot machines. Las Vegas is still a city built on gambling. It’s just making bets somewhere else, too.

The table next to me at Maroon was packed with a team of Fontainebleau executives, fresh off opening the last of its inaugural restaurants, Gabriela Cámara’s Cantina Contramar, 30 months after the hotel opened its doors. And that was only the biggest opening in Vegas since Scott Sartiano opened his eponymous steakhouse, beside the latest outpost of Zero Bond, at the Wynn, a few weeks earlier.

Sartiano said the steakhouse wasn’t always in the cards to be part of a “package deal” with Zero Bond at the Wynn, where members can choose to take their meals in house all day long, from the same kitchen, if they prefer. But he’s quick to point out that a members club for founders and executives is “not about replacing the energy of Vegas, but offering a more intimate layer within it,” including formalized legal gambling meant to appeal to the members of the New York club’s poker groups.

The night after my dinner at Maroon, I sat down to drinks at The Vault at the Bellagio with Patric Yumul, Senior Vice President of Food & Beverage Strategy at MGM International, who was still sore about losing out on Onwuachi’s Maroon, despite Yumul’s recent successes with the opening of Carbone Riviera at the Bellagio, Gymkhana at Aria, and an Alinea residency that sold out Bellagio’s Michael Mina restaurant for six weeks. Next up: An oversized Corner Store from Catch Hospitality opening this fall.

“The Sahara beat us to the punch on [Maroon],” Yumul confessed, claiming he would have made room for Onwauchi somewhere, possibly at Park MGM or Mandalay Bay. “We always have space to play with, it’s like the Golden Gate Bridge—we’re constantly repainting.”