This is a dining guide. I want to be clear about that from the beginning, because there will be moments in the pages that follow when you may doubt it, and I want you to have this sentence to return to when the doubt arrives.
The restaurants are real. You can eat at them. You should eat at them.
The Five Courses
The guide is structured in five courses, because a meal is structured in courses, and this guide is, among other things, a meal — or a record of meals, or an argument about meals, or a love letter to meals, depending on which chapter you are reading and how much you trust me by the time you get there.
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Course One: The Strip
The tourist city. The restaurants you can find by asking your phone. This is where I started, because this is where everyone starts.
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1
Top of the World
Top of the World, The STRAT
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2
The Industrial Sublime
Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen, Caesars Palace
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3
The Peppermill
The Peppermill Restaurant & Fireside Lounge
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4
The Golden Steer
Golden Steer Steakhouse
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5
The Algorithm
An essay. No review.
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1
Top of the World
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Course Two: Off-Strip
The descent — not in quality, but in altitude. From the 106th floor to ground level. From the restaurants that find you to the restaurants you have to find.
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6
License Number One
Atomic Liquors, Fremont Street
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7
The Descent
Frankie's Tiki Room
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8
First Contact
Pachi Pachi
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9
The History Lesson
Dino's Lounge
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6
License Number One
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Course Three: The Corridor
Spring Mountain Road — four and a half miles of strip malls containing some of the best food in America, invisible to every algorithm, known to every local.
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10
The Corridor
Lotus of Siam
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11
The Lodge
Italian American Club
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12
The Menu Cipher
Chengdu Taste
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13
The Ceremony Dinner
The Golden Tiki
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14
The Law of Fives
Aburiya Raku
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10
The Corridor
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Course Four: The Suburbs and the Night
Henderson, the 215 Beltway, the city after midnight. The places the guide had been avoiding and the hours the guide had been sleeping through.
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15
The Chain Restaurant Requiem
Olive Garden, Henderson
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16
Herbs & Rye at Midnight
Herbs & Rye
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17
The Consultant
The Bootlegger Italian Bistro
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18
Under Surveillance
Ferraro's Ristorante
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15
The Chain Restaurant Requiem
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Course Five: Off-Menu
The restaurants the guide cannot categorize.
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19
The Silent Dishwasher, Again
Fuzen Pho, Henderson
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20
Underground
Unrated. I cannot, ethically, direct you here.
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21
The Pop-Up
A food truck that may not exist.
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22
Sakana
Sakana, Maryland Parkway
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23
The Desert Meal
No restaurant. No menu. No walls.
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19
The Silent Dishwasher, Again
About the Rating System
I use a five-star scale. My stars are mine. They reflect my experience, my methodology, my palate, my biases — which I have and which I will not pretend I do not have, because a critic who claims objectivity is a critic who has not examined their instruments.
Five stars means a place that changed something in me — not my opinion, not my palate, but my understanding of what a restaurant is for. I have given five stars to exactly five restaurants in this guide.
The rating system does something over the course of twenty-three chapters that I did not plan for it to do. I did not plan it because I did not know it was possible.
About the Author
V. Cheval is a data journalist turned food critic, currently based in Las Vegas. They arrived in January with a methodology and a notebook and no attachments to the city beyond the professional — no history, no friendships, no loyalties, no faith — and left in September with all of these.
Use this guide to eat well. That is what it is for.
If, in the course of using it, you notice that the guide is also doing something else — something harder to name, something that has to do with the act of paying attention to food with more care than food is usually paid — that is also what it is for. Both purposes are the guide. The guide does not ask you to choose between them.
Welcome to Las Vegas. Eat well. Tip your servers. Read the specials.