VEGAS DINING NEWS: Steaks on a Plane, Bazaar Meat Announces Moving Day, Health Dept. Closures

Posted on: February 26, 2025, 04:55h. 

Last updated on: February 27, 2025, 09:28h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • A new dining option is flying into Las Vegas’ Area15 by 2026
  • Bazaar Meat has announced its last service date at the Sahara

You might like this airplane food, though.

Dinner at the newest AREA15 restaurant/experience will be served in the fuselage of a Boeing 747. The salvaged jumbo jet chunk was hauled on Wednesday morning from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where it was stored for four years, to its new destination one mile southwest of the Las Vegas Strip.

This artist rendering envisions how an old Boeing 747 fuselage will look tricked out as a new AREA15 dining and nightlife experience. (Image: AREA15)

The unique dining facility, which measures 72 x 27 feet, weighs 20 tons, and also includes the cockpit, was built in 1985 to fly passengers to  and from Brazil before being converted to a cargo plane. After being decommissioned, it served as a popular attraction at the annual Burning Man Festival in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert from 2016 to 2019.

The airplane chunk is shown before being moved from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Wednesday. (Image: KSNV-TV/Las Vegas)

It debuted there as a “mutant vehicle” art installation at the Big Imagination camp, which acquired it from an airplane boneyard for $130K. The plane chunk’s missing lower half was retrofitted with a steel frame and truck chassis, allowing it to be towed around the playa.

The fuselage grew into a full-fledged nightclub and lounge by 2018, which was also the year it got stuck in the soft sand while exiting the playa post-festival, drawing flak for violating Burning Man’s “leave no trace” credo.

The future restaurant, whose name is under wraps, is expected to open at the immersive entertainment district in late 2025 or early 2026. Its menu is also a mystery, but we hope it will include steak so our clever headline applies.

Meat on the Move

José Andrés is taking his Bazaar Meat to the Venetian. (Images: joseandres.com, The Venetian Las Vegas)

Only four months remain to experience Bazaar Meat by José Andrés at the Sahara. Its final day of service there will be June 30. By then, its new location at the Venetian is expected to have opened.

The Sahara has yet to reveal what concept will replace it, but it certainly won’t be as upscale. That’s because Bazaar Meat never intended to open at the Sahara. It opened in 2014 along with the SLS Las Vegas, a failed experiment in transforming the Sahara into an upscale Beverly Hills concept.

Andrés himself is an upscale Beverly Hills concept. His Jaleo, China Poblano and é by José Andrés at the Cosmopolitan, Zaytinya at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, and newly opened Bazaar Mar at the Shops at Crystals are all very highly rated (and very expensive) eateries that don’t cater to the Olive Garden crowd.

So when SLS unbranded back into the plain old Sahara in 2019, it stranded Bazaar Meat in a bizarre situation.

Dining Ins & Outs

Lucia Mexican Grill opened for business on Wednesday at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, in the spot formerly occupied by another Mexican restaurant, Casa Calavera from the Hakkasan Group, which quietly closed in either 2023 or 2024.

A 106-year-old restaurant will replace the Chinglish Cantonese Wine Bar and its offshoot, Kosher Chinglish, which both closed in Boca Park last summer after four years. Café Landwer, which has locations in LA, Miami, Boston, and Toronto, was founded as a kosher-style coffee house in Berlin by Moshe Landwer in 1919.

Health to Pay

The Habanero Grill at 2409 N. Rainbow Blvd. was closed by the Southern Nevada Health District on Feb. 24 for 39 health code violations. On the same day, La Islena Market Snack Bar, its next-door neighbor at 2405 N. Rainbow Blvd., was closed for 28.