VEGAS DINING NEWS: Stubborn Seed Sets Sprouting Date, Boa Steakhouse to Try Again

Posted on: January 16, 2025, 08:52h. 

Last updated on: January 17, 2025, 09:05h.

Chef Jeremy Ford, the toast of South Beach since opening his Stubborn Seed there in 2017, will open the high-end eatery’s second location at Resorts World Las Vegas on February 10, the property announced on Thursday. Grove Bay Hospitality Group will be his partner.

Chef Jeremy Ford is Ford is a James Beard Award semifinalist and the winner of “Top Chef’s” Season 13. (Image: Stubborn Seed)

In Miami, his Michelin-starred dining experience is intimate and focused on an eight-course chef’s tasting menu — nine if you count dessert — that changes seasonally and is meant to be shared, like dim sum for New American cuisine. Right now, its $135 cost buys you…

  1. Nagasaki Prefecture Ishida
  2. Beef Tartare
  3. Celeriac Doughnut
  4. Honeynut Squash & Foie Gras Tart
  5. Housemade Ricotta Gnudi
  6. Pan Roasted Hira-Suzuki
  7. Chawanmushi
  8. Spiced Dry Aged Cresent Farm Duck
  9. Roasted Sweet Potato Mille-Feuille

Whatever is meant by “stubborn” in the name, it seems to reflect Ford’s aversion to compromise. This is normally a good thing in a chef, until — as some of Ford’s critics have argued — it intrudes into refusing to customize orders or offer vegetarian or vegan tasting options.

An à la carte menu will be served in the bar and, beginning in the spring, on the terrace.

An artist rendering of a dining area at Boa Steakhouse, set to open on the second floor of the Palazzo Tower this summer. (Image: Innovative Dining Group)

Dining Ins & Outs

As Vital Vegas reported more than a month ago, Villa Azur closed at Palazzo in late December, after only two years. As Vital Vegas also reported, one-day rent-related closures — like both Villa Azur and Ocean One at Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile Shops experienced last September — are a reliable sign of oblivion ahead.

A South Beach import, Villa Azur tried to be both a fancy restaurant and an exclusive nightclub, and didn’t particularly excel at either.

Villa Azur’s replacement in the 11K square-foot space will be SoCal-based Boa Steakhouse, which is expected to open this summer. And if that name rings familiar, it’s because another Boa closed in 2012 at the Forum Shops in Caesars Palace after seven years.

Boa 2.0, helmed by chef Brendan Collins, will seat 275 and feature three private dining rooms and a new terrace.

Bojangles, famed for its Southern fried chicken and biscuits, will open its first Las Vegas restaurant on January 20 at the southeast corner of Blue Diamond Road and South Rainbow Boulevard.