VEGAS DINING NEWS: Palms Closing Four Restaurants!
Posted on: August 26, 2025, 10:59h.
Last updated on: August 26, 2025, 12:20h.
The Palms is closing not one but four restaurants from three celebrated chefs.
Mabel’s Bar & Q, opened in 2018 by James Beard Award and “Iron Chef” winner Michael Symon as “Mabel’s BBQ,” will close following its final service on September 12.
The skewery houses one of the largest and most powerful barbecue ovens in Sin City, capable of smoking dozens of briskets and pork shoulders simultaneously.
Also closing is Vetri Cucina. Known for its 56th-floor views, the upscale Italian eatery was also opened in 2018 by another James Beard winner, Marc Vetri, as the Sin City outpost of his celebrated Philadelphia ristorante. The space was previously occupied by chef André Rochat’s Alizé.
A closing date for Vetri Cucina has yet to be announced.
The announcement of two other Palms restaurant closures virtually eliminates the possibility of these events all being coincidental.
Chef Luke Palladino is closing both his Rojo Lounge and Laguna Pool House & Kitchen at Palms Place, the condo-hotel adjacent to the Palms, after October 12. The former has operated since at least 2016 in the Palms Place lobby, while the latter opened only two years ago in the sixth-floor space formerly occupied by the late Kerry Simon’s Simon Restaurant & Lounge.
All three chefs provided typically unrevealing statements to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper, indicating that the closures are the result of mutual agreements with the Palms but not giving the real reason for any of them.
As our colleague Scott Roeben of Vital Vegas often points out, there are only two reasons for restaurants in Las Vegas to close — financial underperformance or a sex scandal. And all three aforementioned chefs are, at least to our knowledge, sex scandal-less.
Our guess is that occupying an off-Strip casino during an off time for Las Vegas tourism does no wonders for high-end dining traffic. No word yet on what will fill any of the vacancies.
A Cote Above
Set to open at The Venetian on October 4 is the first Las Vegas outpost of an acclaimed Korean steakhouse.
Cote Vegas is expected to put on the tableside spectacle of wagyu beef and a rotating lineup of banchan sides that earned chef Simon Kim a Michelin star in New York. Cote outposts have since opened in Miami and Singapore, but this will mark a homecoming for Kim, who got his start managing Shibuya at the MGM Grand.
Cote NYC made the annual list of “The World’s 101 Best Steak Restaurants” — a global list curated by Upper Cut Media House — last year.
Sandwiches to Yelp About
Two Las Vegas spots made Yelp’s inaugural Top 100 ranking of US sandwich shops. The Leatherneck Club came in at No. 25, while the Bronze Café ranked No. 57. The former is a Marine Corp. bar and pub in Chinatown, the latter a vegan-forward eatery in Northwest Las Vegas.
Dining Ins & Outs
Branden Powers, the visionary founder, designer and former owner of the Golden Tiki, has re-emerged to design Pachi-Pachi, the Japanese-inspired downtown restaurant and cocktail lounge opened by owner/developer J Dapper and restaurateur Mark Evensvold last weekend.
Hooters has gone permanently bust (sorry, couldn’t resist!) at OYO. According to sigma.world, it was a victim of the parent company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing earlier this year.
Nom Wah, the celebrated dim sum restaurant, has set September 13 as its opening day at JW Marriott and Rampart Casino Las Vegas.
Two Las Vegas restaurants have changed their names. Diner Ross, the eatery adjoining “DiscoShow,” a dance experience at the Linq, is now Diner Ross Steakhouse. In addition, Nona’s, a sandwich shop at Fontainebleau, is now Nona’s Lobster Shack. No word on what’s behind the changes, though rebrandings are never the result of business exceeding expectations.
Clique Bar & Lounge at the Cosmopolitan will reopen on Friday, August 29, as per Vital Vegas. It had been closed since April for renovations.
Health to Pay
Jipata, at 3460 Arville St. Suite 7, was temporarily closed by the Southern Nevada Health District on August 14 The Thai-inspired gastropub received for 36 demerits for violations including spoiled, contaminated or adulterated food, food not properly cooled, food not protected from potential contamination, food contact surfaces of equipment not properly cleaned and sanitized, inadequate handwashing sinks and ineffective pest control measures.
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