Scott Sartiano isn’t just opening his Zero Bond members club at Wynn Las Vegas early next year. He’s also betting on a restaurant that will bear his name. Sartiano’s Italian Steakhouse, the sibling of New York’s Sartiano’s at the Mercer, will debut adjacent to Zero Bond at Wynn in the winter.
“Like everything I do, it’s based on much more than just food and beverage or hospitality,” Sartiano tells Observer. “I really try to create everlasting brands and experiences. Sartiano’s is something very near and dear to me, with my name and my family history.”
His family is from Naples and Calabria, so Sartiano and culinary director Alfred Portale will offer classic dishes like meatballs, fritto misto and Sunday sauce in Las Vegas. They’ll have their crowd-pleasing caviar cannoli, a signature at Sartiano’s in New York. And they’ll go big in their new Vegas steakhouse with a 40-ounce Double R Ranch dry-aged bistecca alla fiorentina. That colossal steak will be carved tableside and served with Brunello beef jus and salsa verde.
Portale is also looking forward to serving wagyu prime rib and making all of the restaurant’s pastas in-house. He’s ready to play the hits and simultaneously expand the repertoire.
“We play around with some classics like linguine and clams,” Portale tells Observer. “But we also do Alaskan king crab in a light lemon butter with osetra caviar. It’s sort of a broad approach to the Vegas market, and I’m excited about that.”
Chef Michael Rubinstein (who previously cooked at Momofuku and Vetri Cucina) will lead day-to-day kitchen operations and give the restaurant a local Vegas perspective as it serves beef from around the world, showcases seafood from the Mediterranean, and cooks with produce from California. Expect dishes like baked clams, truffle-topped wild mushroom lasagna, a riff on a Caesar salad (with tahini), and Dover sole piccata alongside large-format paccheri with Sunday sauce.
Todd-Avery Lenahan, president and chief creative officer of Wynn Design & Development, worked closely with Tihany Design principal Alessia Genova on interiors inspired by Milan as they reimagined mid-century modernism. Sartiano’s Italian Steakhouse will feature an arched ceiling and a terrazzo floor; it will feel quite different from Italian restaurants that are draped in red velvet and decorated with dark colors.
“The room does not have a drop of red in it,” Lenahan tells Observer. “The room has really wonderful earth tones, exquisite woodwork, beautiful stone. The color is going to come in the food that’s on the plate and in the beverages. The room is a neutral sort of framework.”
The restaurant, with a terrace overlooking Wynn Golf Club and a new sculpture garden, will be part of a new era for the casino-resort. “We’ve created essentially a hotel within a hotel at the eastern edge of our property,” Lenahan says.
Zero Bond and Sartiano’s Italian Steakhouse are next to Wynn’s Fairway Villas. The resort is creating a private valet area for Zero Bond members, who will be able to gamble at the club’s private casino and eat at the club’s private grill. Sartiano’s Italian Steakhouse will be open to the public, but also be a bridge of sorts to the more exclusive experiences Wynn and Sartiano are creating.
“It creates this mini ecosystem, and Sartiano’s plays a part in that,” Sartiano says. “That was really important, making it feel like it’s boutique and artisanal and personal.”
The restaurant is 4,500 square feet, though Lenahan says that it will “feel smaller than that, which is our goal.” Building something big is the obvious way to go in Las Vegas, so Wynn likes to do things differently.
“The ethos at Sartiano’s really is that you’re being hosted in someone’s home with amazing legacy recipes,” Lenahan says. “We find it way more complex and way more rigorous as experience makers to create intimate environments that really make customers feel like they matter and they’re not just one of a thousand. Within the room, there are spaces where you can see and be seen. But then there’s also those really intimate, cozy spaces where you can just sort of recede into the background and take it all in, which is a big part of what a lot of our celebrity clientele really like about our restaurants.”
Sartiano knows he could have come to Vegas and opened a huge, over-the-top restaurant. But right here at Wynn, with this footprint and this vantage point, is exactly where he feels he should be.
“I’m very careful with my brand and very calculated about where I want to go,” he says. “This restaurant fulfills that dream scenario of where I want the brand to be and how I want to be perceived. Being at Wynn is like being at the Mercer in New York. Or being on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I got to experience these things as a young person and feel like I was in a special place that I would always want to go to. To be part of the actual places themselves feels like it’s full circle and a dream come true.”
