The Hottest New Restaurants in Las Vegas, October 2023

Executive Chefs Isidro Marquez-Castillo’s and Daniel Arias introduce a refined vision of regional Mexican cuisines through small plates, tostadas, tacos, and entrees. The cocktail menu leams toward tequilas, with food and drink available into late night. Look up to see the pink monkey dangling from an oversized disco ball in the rafters.

Located on Fremont Street, across the street from Downtown Container Park, the Mexico-based restaurant has appetizers like corn ribs topped with cotija cheese, Tajin, cilantro, and Pop Rocks candy. A sushi bunker piles shrimp, crab, cucumber, and avocado into a stack with eel sauce. Enchiladas come filled with duck confit, and Chinese-style pancakes are topped with smoky chilhuacle sauce. For dessert, maiz ice cream comes with berries and cinnamon popcorn.

A managing partner with Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group opened 1228 as a bakery, bar, and restaurant. The bakery bakes crunchy sourdough and lattice-scored dark bread. The lunch menu highlights sandwiches like grilled cheese on sourdough with tomato soup, a prosciutto sandwich on a baguette, and a croissant egg salad sandwich. Dinner is a more formal affair and the bar is open late.

Tucked away in the Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel, just off the Las Vegas Strip, this new restaurant has all the makings of a Las Vegas steakhouse. In addition to bone-in filet mignon and Tomahawk ribeye, Joel’s Chophouse has two seafood towers — a chilled option for $105 with whole Maine lobster, jumbo shrimp, oysters, clams, and mignonette. The hot platter ($115) has whole Maine lobster, sautéed Mexican white shrimp, mussels, and seared scallops sautéed with garlic, basil, sherry.

Ever since Daeho Kalbijjim first opened in Japantown in San Francisco in 2019, it has consistently attracted hours-long waits for its namesake kalbijjim — a huge shareable bowl of spicy-sweet short rib stew that is covered in melting cheese and flambéed tableside. Its hot stone bibimbap bowls sizzle when brought to the table, with layers of rice and vegetables, and generous banchan vegetable dishes on the side. Its kalbi tang soups marry a savory broth with tender meat and satisfyingly chewy glass noodles.

Chef Eyal Shani conjures words like “vibration” and “energy” when talking about his food, describing vegetables as “mysterious creatures” that need to “seduce” him. His Las Vegas outpost of New York clubstaurant HaSalon takes over the 11,000-square-foot space where customers are invited to dance on the tables, DJs blare high-tempo music, and the house lights give way to strobes and fire.

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. The velvety and gem-toned restaurant boasts 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.

The new burger joint inside Absinthe’s Green Fairy Garden opens an hour before showtime to serve a tight menu of burgers, vegan burgers, and tots.

A Mexican restaurant has moved into the long-empty restaurant space on the casino floor of the Palms Casino Resort. La Popular CDMX offers traditional Mexican favorites, cocktails served in fun barware, and updated decor inside the space that used to be Bobby Flay’s Shark. There’s an all-day breakfast menu, 80 labels of tequila, and a dedicated taco bar.

Guy Fieri’s new restaurant celebrates all things sports under the deep-fried sheen of the type of food Food Network star has become known for. There’s the trash can nachos also found at El Burro Barracho, though the Flavortown version is cheeseburger-inspired with pickles and burger sauce. Also on the menu are pretzel bites loaded with cheese and bacon. And the doughnut burger is tempura-battered, deep-fried, and glazed.

With rooftop views, smoking seafood towers, and three bars, the city’s newest steakhouse is the anchor tenant in the new 63 building, located near the Cosmopolitan at Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue. The 14,500-square-foot restaurant cost $20 million to develop. Inside the stylish dining room or on the wrap-around terrace, indulge in steak, smoking seafood towers, and sushi.

Retro by Voltaggio is open for a one-year residency at Mandalay Bay in the multi-level space that opened as Aureole in 1999. The Top Chef stars, Bryan and Michael Voltaggio, are pulling on references from their childhoods — with elements of both technique and whimsy — in creating Retro. To build the menu, the celebrity chef brothers are revisiting aesthetics from days gone by, plating pot roast inside of Corningware dishes with blue flowers and serving octopus in a cafeteria-style lunch tray.

This casual omakase restaurant on the corner of Jones Boulevard and Russell Road offers sushi and temaki and other traditional Japanese dishes grouped in four, six, seven, or nine course tasting menus, including an all-vegan option. For lighter appetites, sushi and sashimi is also available a la carte, and the specialty nigiri selections with caviar, truffles and foie gras are not to be missed. Guests can also indulge in the extensive list of sake, wine, and beer.

The new restaurant and store are the work of Patrick Littlejohn, the 15-year general manager of Il Mulino, and Le Petit Café & Bakery’s Emily Palmer. The restaurant offers coffee and pastries, quiche, crepes, and cold-pressed juices. Its lunch menu has paninis, salads, and Neopolitan-style pizza. The market sells products such as fresh bread, eggs, and fruit as well as imported mozzarella, Tomahawk steaks, foie gras, and truffles.

Located within the 40-acre-wide Uncommons complex in the Southwest, Amari is quickly becoming a culinary hotspot for lunch and dinner daily. The expansive, indoor-outdoor space serves salads, pizzas, and pastas alongside their twist on classic Italian entrees such as chicken parmigiana and veal piccata. The wine list includes hard-to-find but easy-to-enjoy bottles sourced from Italy and beyond, and their signature cocktails alone make the restaurant worth the visit.

The massive, 18,000-square-foot modern food hall at the Uncommons in the southwest valley features an international selection of more than a dozen restaurants. They include local favorites such as SoulBelly BBQ and Saint Honoré next to celebrated California-based chefs such as Oakland’s chef Matt Horn and LA’s chef Ria Dolly Barbosa.

The artfully designed treats at this Henderson doughnut and coffee shop are filled with scratch-made cream fillings and fruit compotes. The menu offers photo-ready Korean-style milk creams — yeasted doughnuts filled with sweet mascarpone cream and chocolate or strawberry compote. Croffles are prepared with croissant dough rolled in raw sugar and cooked in a waffle maker, so the outside caramelizes. And the doughnut sandwiches are savory, filled with eggs, bacon, and sausage with panko breading, arugula, and sauce.