It’s hard to grow old gracefully in Las Vegas, a city that worships “newness,” where the latest is usually considered the greatest. In other places, when a hotel gets tired or worn around the edges they refurbish it - here they blow it to smithereens, restaurants and all. Barely a century old and still one of the nation’s youngest cities by tourism standards, Vegas has nonetheless amassed an impressive list of long defunct grand hotels, casinos and restaurants. One of the hottest see-and-be-seen power dining spots of Vegas’ golden fifties era, the Hickory Room, was replaced by a Burger King.
Surviving in Sin City is tough, which is why the few true Vegas classic eateries that have lasted are so impressive. Longevity in the restaurant business here is something to brag about, and the tried and true usually stays that way for very good reasons. While there is always another plane of tourists unloading, many of them repeat visitors looking for what’s new, Vegas locals are notoriously finicky about food, making their loyal choices very significant.
Whenever a new restaurant opens in Vegas it gets lots of advance buzz, especially if it involves a celebrity chef, or just a celebrity - and whether it is good or not. Anyone remember the very brief life of House of Flavor, the fried chicken eatery brought to Sin City by rapper Flavor Flav? When kitschy Lynyrd Skynyrd BBQ delivered surprisingly good real barbecue to the Strip, a place totally bereft of a standout version of one of America’s favorite foods, it seemed like a slam dunk, but instead closed quickly. Kokomo’s in the Mirage, one of the longest running Strip standbys, closed last year, along with celeb chef Michael Mina’s NobHill in MGM Grand, plus Valentino, PoshBurger, PJ Clarke’s, Meatball Shop, Diego and many others - about two dozen notable Vegas eateries were shuttered in 2013 alone.
So what does it take to stand the test of time and become a Vegas classic? It helps to have Rat Pack street cred, like the Golden Steer, the city’s oldest steakhouse. Yep, the Chairman of the Board himself, Sinatra ate here, as did Elvis and DiMaggio and Ali, but more than a half a century after it opened, this off the beaten path standalone is suddenly in the middle of the hottest new part of town, and 2013 was its best year in history, with new 21st century regulars like Mario Andretti and Nicholas Cage.
Being Downtown also helps, since it is where what little left of colorful “Old Vegas” survives, and remains home to venerable and still thriving institutions such as Top of Binion’s Steakhouse and Hugo’s Cellar. It helps if your signature dish is part of Vegas lore, as is the case at Du-par’s, the 24-hour coffee shop in the city’s oldest casino, the Golden Gate, which gave us a Sin City icon, the 99-cent shrimp cocktail. Playing a formative role in Las Vegas history helps, which is what makes Wolfgang Puck the only celebrity chef in town to achieve true classic status - he was the first to see the fine dining potential here on a national scale, and the restaurant industry scoffed when he opened his flagship Spago. More than 20 years later, the city’s entire emergence as a world class food destination can be partially credited to pioneering Puck, whose success attracted dozens of high profile and often Michelin-starred followers.
So in no particular order, here are the 10 Most Classic Restaurants of Las Vegas:
Michael’s Gourmet Room: The best kept fine dining secret in Las Vegas, Michael’s is super old school, with tuxedoed waiters and captains doing tableside presentations like deboning Dover Sole and igniting bananas Foster flambé, while serving up hard to find forgotten classics like veal saltimbocca and Coquille St. Jacques - even the signature sorbet intermezzo is topped with Dom Perignon. Michael’s has been doing its thing since 1979, and was the anchor for the late Barbary Coast Casino. It was relocated along with its most famous fixtures, an enormous entry door, the Tiffany glass domed ceiling, and its career waiters, to the South Point Resort, a large casino hotel catering mainly to locals and equestrians a few miles south of Mandalay Bay on Las Vegas Boulevard. It seats just 50 in plush banquets, dinner only, and to step in is to reenter the city’s Golden Age - it is absolutely worth the trip, though very expensive (the Zagat Survey gave it one of the best scores in the nation’s history on its 30-point scale, 29-28-29 for food, décor and service).
Sterling Brunch: Vegas is famous for buffets, and also loves Sunday Brunch, and for nearly 40 years the two have deliciously collided at Bally’s, in what is now BLT Steak (the revamped Bally’s Steakhouse). When the Sterling Brunch, always voted the city’s best, returned in May following the renovation of the space, it was expanded to Saturdays as well, great news for visitors since it is a terrific way to launch a weekend of over-indulgence and usually sells out (reservations a must). The space is nicer but the signature touches are the same: it is one of the few “champagne” brunches in the country actually serving real champagne, Perrier-Jouet, unlimited and poured generously by excellent wait staff, along with bottomless mimosas and Bloody Mary’s. The food signatures are whole lobster tails with drawn butter, the caviar station, and the raw bar with fresh shucked oysters. There is a lot more too, from Stone crab claws to rack of lamb, dim sum station, sushi station, hand carved meats and made to order desserts including crepes, all in an elegant setting. Anything that takes time, like eggs or desserts cooked to order, is delivered to your table, a really nice touch. Lots of brunch buffets boast omelet stations but how many serve up a house specialty omelet of lobster, cognac and boursin cheese?
Du-par’s: Most locals actually flock to this 24-hour coffee shop in the Golden Gate hotel downtown for its famously beloved pancakes, perennially rated the best in town, along with a vast slate of homemade pies. In true diner style, it has a huge menu, from breakfast to blue plate lunches to all sorts of dinner entrees, and a bakery list that goes on and on, but its classic status comes from one singular item, the shrimp cocktail. The Golden Gate was Las Vegas’ very first hotel (different name in 1906), and was assigned the first telephone number in Las Vegas (simply 1), sits at One Fremont Street, and among its many historic firsts was the 50-cent shrimp cocktail, launched in 1961 as part of a San Francisco/Fisherman’s Wharf rebranding theme. Shrimp was still widely considered a luxury at the time, and the affordable indulgence eventually gained fame worldwide when it reached 99-cents, taking its place alongside free drinks for gamblers as an icon of Las Vegas value and hospitality. It remains a steal at the 21st century price of $2.99, still a huge portion of small boiled shrimp served in a deep ice cream sundae glass with very spicy cocktail sauce. To eat this is to taste Vegas history.
Spago: When Caesar’s Palace announced its intention to build a shopping mall connected to its casino, they were widely ridiculed, the mantra of the time being “no one goes to Vegas to shop.” When America’s original celebrity chef, the LA-based Wolfgang Puck, decided to open an outpost of his flagship fine dining eatery, the beloved Spago here, it was met with similar derision: “People go to Vegas for buffets and free drinks.” Pundits were totally wrong on both counts, and along the way Vegas got reinvented. The Forum Shops went on to become one of the most successful retail centers in the nation, and Spago has been in its center, sitting on a large, faux-open air piazza complete with fountain for nearly a quarter of a century. Everyone goes to Vegas to shop now, and everyone goes to eat, with Puck pioneering the way for just about every other famous chef in the world. Spago just got a big facelift, and is still bustling and still a great place, with its signatures of “California cuisine” like Puck’s famous pizza with smoked salmon and caviar.
The Golden Steer: No food is as loved in Sin City as steak, and The Golden Steer has been the place for beef since 1958. It has an odd strip mall location a block off of Las Vegas Boulevard, north of the Strip, and has always been a pilgrimage, but suddenly this is the hottest part of town, down the street from the just opened 1,600 room upscale SLS Resort, while MGM’s $20 million outdoor City of Rock is being built across the street, and the biggest thing in Vegas’ foreseeable future is the nearby $4 billion casino resort project from Malaysian gaming giant Resorts World. The bad news is that it’s now hard to get in all of a sudden - but make the reservation. Everyone who is anyone in the past five and a half decades of Vegas history has been seated in one of the dark wood and red leather banquettes, surrounded by Western art, including an odd portrait of one late beloved regular, Magnificent Seven star Charles Bronson. While the tuxedoed staff, many of them here their entire careers, are consummate professionals, serving big steaks with classic steakhouse starters and sides like jumbo shrimp cocktail, crab cakes and hash browns, the place has a decidedly local, neighborhood tavern feel, especially in its incongruously downscale bar room, complete with video poker. The Golden Steer is a high-end steakhouse, and not cheap, but noticeably less expensive than its Strip hotel and celebrity chef competitors.
Top of Binion’s Steakhouse: No property in the city offers more Vegas lore and history than Binion’s casino, the fabled Horseshoe, which among other things, invented the World Series of Poker, introduced comps for low rollers, debuted the highest limits in the city to attract huge bets, and created free drinks for slots players - once deemed less desirable business and now the city’s cash cow. Binion’s even comes with the rumored baggage of classic Vegas family intrigue, featuring murder, scandal and a legendary silver fortune buried in the dessert. It is home to another old school classic steakhouse, predating the moon landing (and relocated within Binion’s in 1994), on the top floor, reached by private elevator and boasting great views of Fremont Street. The menu is simple, with sides like iceberg wedge salad and creamed spinach anchoring a list of 28-day dry aged, grass-fed, corn-finished steaks, but there is a notable exception that puts the place on the map - the legendary one of a kind signature dish, Chicken Fried Lobster. Developed as a special dish for country music star Merle Haggard, it gained a cult reputation among cowboys visiting for the Rodeo world championships, and is now a staple. A large whole lobster tail is shelled, flattened, dredged in milk and flour, and then of course deep fried.
Hugo’s Cellar: Another old school masculine steakhouse buried in a cellar, with tuxedoed wait staff, tableside presentations, and a menu unchanged for years, Hugo’s Cellar sits in the bottom of the otherwise easy to overlook Four Queens casino in old Downtown. Its signature is a huge salad cart wheeled to the table where your salad is theatrically assembled to order. It has a more traditionally Continental style than the steak-centric Top of Binion’s Steakhouse, another classic just down the street, with forgotten dishes like duck flambé and seafood en papillote. There’s a cozy cocktail lounge where they serve pate and crackers, nothing has changed here in forever, and locals pack the place, especially on weekends.
Market Street Café: To Vegas regulars this will seem like the oddest pick on this list, but it dovetails with a niche bit of Vegas history and also has become a huge local draw for its house specialty - oxtail soup. When the California Hotel opened in old Downtown Vegas forty years ago, it focused heavily on the Hawaiian market. With a long tradition of cheap charter flights, package deals and passionate fans from the Aloha State, Vegas is so popular with Hawaiians that it is nicknamed “The Ninth Island,” and no place is as synonymous with this phenomenon as the California, where at any given time, the majority of guests come from Hawaii. The California actually has several Hawaiian-esque eateries, but the Market Street Café is notable as the hotel’s 24-hour coffee shop, a prerequisite in Las Vegas, and dispenses all the usual fare, from pancakes and French toast to chef’s salads and patty melts. The atmosphere is sterile Formica without a hint of kitsch or Polynesian art, but it offers a big slate of Hawaiian dishes as both menu standards and scheduled daily specials that attract fans - who line up - on particular days of the week. Prices are low and options include chicken long rice, lau lau, Kalua pig, island short ribs, many noodle soups, and the biggie, oxtail soup. The strong meaty beef broth has big chunks of oxtail, cooked on the bone, crunchy peanuts, and is served with an array of dressings for customization, including spicy sambal chili sauce, fresh ginger and parsley. The soup is on the late night menu, from 11PM, but guests start ling up two hours earlier, and they go through at least 800 pounds of oxtail daily. To locals, the Market Street Café and oxtail soup have long been one and the same.
Peppermill: “Las Vegas’ original ultra-lounge?” Maybe, maybe not, despite this self-proclaimed status for the Pepeprmill’s attached Fireside Lounge, pouring cocktails - think martinis - for the past 40-plus years. While the Peppermill looks sort of like Denny’s, what makes it special is that it is one of very few old freestanding restaurants on the Strip, not associated with any casino, and its past clientele is a Vegas Who’s Who that includes Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis. While every casino has a 24-hour coffee shop/diner, this is the Vegas model for the genre, a place that never closes where you can see every side of the city while enjoying generous portions at very reasonable prices. Both the restaurant and lounge are Vegas icons, where regulars and tourists flock side by side. This true classic has so much frozen in time atmosphere it has been used in many movies and television shows, from Casino to CSI.
Chicago Joe’s: After more than 30 years, Chicago Joe’s turns out to be at the forefront of two hot Vegas trends, both unintentionally. Downtown Vegas has experienced a huge rebirth in recent years, and its East Downtown subsection is especially trendy in a Brooklyn way, attracting artists and quickly gentrifying, and this suddenly hot neighborhood is where you will find Chicago Joe’s in a former single family brick home that hasn’t changed much except for a sign. After decades of focus on regionality and “authenticity” in fancy Italian food, suddenly Italian American “red sauce” cuisine is back, and coast to coast, but especially in Vegas where its rebirth has been ushered in by New York imports Rao’s and Carmine’s. Chicago Joe’s was here long before those upstarts, serving big portions of its hearty fare to deeply loyal local fans at very reasonable prices. Think linguine with clam sauce, spaghetti and meatballs, and eggplant, shrimp or chicken parmesan, all accompanied by rolls and a simple house salad with creamy Caesar.
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