VEGAS RESTAURANT ROUNDUP: Morgan Wallen Opening Ole Red Clone, Last Roundup for Holsteins at Cosmo

Looks like Blake Shelton will soon no longer be the only one in the country-star-opens-a-restaurant-and-bar-in-Nashville-and-then-Vegas business.

Morgan Wallen — called “the biggest country star of the 2020s” by the New York Times — is opening what is likely to be the second location of This Bar and Tennessee Kitchen at a Las Vegas shopping mall, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal report.

According to Wallen’s website, the first This Bar is slated to open in Nashville this summer as a six-story, 30,000 square-foot bar, restaurant, and live-music concept that sounds almost identical to the four-story, 27,000-foot Ole Red, which Shelton opened in January at the Grand Bazaar Shops in front of Horseshoe Las Vegas.

Wallen’s second This Bar, according to the R-J, would only be 10,000 square feet and occupy the second and third floors of the 63 Las Vegas mall at the corner of Harmon Avenue and the Strip, atop of which sits Ocean Prime.

Wallen is partnering in This Bar with TC Restaurant Group.

The R-J story identified a building permit application that names only a $9.75 million “Vegas Country Music Restaurant” and includes an “ellipse rooftop balcony” that connects to the restaurant.

Dining Ins & Outs

Holsteins, the burger restaurant that opened along with the Cosmopolitan in December 2010, will reportedly close this summer. This news comes from Casino.org’s own Vital Vegas blogger Scott Roeben, who reports it only as “a rumor” provided by an anonymous source.

That source seems to be fairly well informed since they also reported that the restaurant was a victim of a shakeup by new casino owner MGM Resorts, and that its former space will handed over to Clique Hospitality.

Last August, we reported that Bojangles — the franchise that expanded from its first location in Charlotte, NC in 1977 to 800 outlets across 15 states — is building 20 new restaurants in Las Vegas. It looks like the first will be at the Diamond Plaza retail center at the intersection of South Rainbow Boulevard and Blue Diamond Road, more than 10 miles southwest of The Strip. Bojangles operated as Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ’n Biscuits until 2020.

The El Herradero Nightclub, at 3402 E. Lake Mead Blvd. in North Las Vegas, was closed by the Southern Nevada Health District on April 17.