Vegas never takes a day or night off, so finding a Christmas feast here is as easy as finding a blackjack table or a nightclub full of drunk people on a Tuesday. There are fantastic feasts all over the Strip this Christmas, and here are a festive five that are worth booking.
For a Merry Mediterranean Christmas
Cleo at SLS Las Vegas is a contemporary Mediterranean wonderland where you can load up on mezze (like babaganoush, carrot harissa, a Greek salad and lebaneh with feta) and enjoy breads, kebabs and tagines cooked in a wood-burning oven. Cleo is serving its regular menu for Christmas dinner and also featuring holiday specials like a riff on bagels and lox—however, this version is a simit (a greek bread) with Persian cucumber, cream cheese, smoked salmon, red onion and caviar ($20). Another Christmas special is a coffee and cocoa-rub prime rib eye with smoked eggplant cream, Greek yogurt, marble potatoes and pickled peppers ($42). For dessert, there’s sticky toffee cake with butterscotch, walnut feuilletine and vanilla gelato ($10).
For Next-Level Caviar and Lobster Dishes
Michael Mina‘s Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners mean a four-course, $118 tasting menu with the best kind of bonus: the amuse-bouche is a version of the chef’s signature caviar parfait, featuring Pacific sturgeon caviar, a potato-shallot cake, crème fraîche and smoked salmon. Dinner also includes Mina’s lobster pot pie with cognac-and-truffle cream before your choice of entrees, including a Creekstone Farms prime New York steak and phyllo-crusted sole with crab brandade. If you really want to indulge, you can supplement your meal with a chilled seafood platter—or even more caviar.
For Holiday Comfort From the Ultimate Celebrity Chef
Cucina, Wolfgang Puck’s rustic Italian restaurant inside the Shops at Crystals, is serving earthy, hearty, ultra-comforting specials for Christmas. You can start your meal with sautéed veal sweetbreads with sage-hazelnut pesto, crisp prosciutto and roasted garlic aioli ($22). Then choose between wood-oven-roasted quail with chestnut agnolotti, brown butter and rosemary jus ($34) or braised veal osso buco with red wine risotto, baby turnips and black olive gremolata ($36). Cucina is proof that Vegas restaurants can shine at seasonal cooking.
For Prime Rib in a Great New Steakhouse
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It’s prime rib time at MB Steak. Jeff Ragazzo
MB Steak, David and Michael Morton’s glamorous new restaurant at Hard Rock, is serving its entire menu for the holidays and also making things festive with a special prime rib dinner on Christmas Eve and Christmas. Executive chef Patrick Munster is carving up a 20-ounce cut of prime rib roast with butter-braised marble potatoes, herb au jus and creamy horseradish ($49). For a holiday dessert, there’s bourbon pumpkin toffee cake with ginger ice cream and honey Florentine ($16).
For a Trip Around the World
Sugarcane at the Venetian is known for bold, multicultural flavors. Chef Timon Balloo, of Chinese, Indian and Trinidadian heritage, has created an exuberant menu that blends Asian, European and Latin influences. For Christmas, you can enjoy Sugarcane crowd-pleasers like goat cheese croquettes ($12), bacon-wrapped dates ($15) and pig ear pad Thai ($11) as well as holiday specials including pan-seared foie gras with speculoos brioche and candied persimmons ($21), butternut squash and black truffle risotto ( $28) and Roman-spiced heritage porchetta ($30).
Andy Wang, the former real estate and travel editor at The New York Post, has covered West Coast food and drink for more than a decade.
