Palms Cleans House: Three Restaurants and Lounge to Close

By Scott Roeben, on August 27 2025
2 min read 0 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Bars Las Vegas Restaurants

The San Manuel tribe is refreshing its restaurant offerings at Palms, which is the delicate way of saying four venues are closing and well-respected chefs are being shown the door.

Mabel’s and Vetri Cucina will soon close at Palms, Laguna Pool House and Rojo Lounge are scheduled to shutter at the adjoining Palms Place (a condo tower next door).

Why are these venues closing now? Palms isn’t saying, other than confirming contracts aren’t being extended. Basically, the tribe feels it can make more money finding new partners or bringing the venue operations in-house. Successful restaurants don’t close in Las Vegas (sex scandals notwithstanding), it’s the law.

Station Casinos was like, “You want this?” San Manuel was like, “Ew, no.” Station was like, “We’re leaving it.” San Manuel, “Kaos.” Station, “That was mean.”

Laguna Pool House and Rojo Lounge at Palms Place close Oct. 12, 2025. Mabel’s Bar & Q closes Sep. 12, 2025 at Palms. No closing date has been announced for Vetri Cucina.

First word of the Mabel’s closure came from @LasVegasLocally, with perfunctory confirmation by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. As if you thought we’d miss the opportunity to take a poke at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Do you know this blog at all?

Some things are just for us. Go on about your business.

Why are we so mean to the Las Vegas Review-Journal about lifting stories from social media without attribution? Because it’s embarrassing.

The restaurant writer at the Review-Journal, Jonathan L. Wright literally follows three accounts on Twitter, further evidence the “paper of record” uses the work of content creators as a free news feed.

Reminder: Never do a full-body cringe without warming up first.

The Review-Journal did get the scoop about the other venues closing, but that doesn’t really support our narrative, so just keep moving.

Back to the matter at hand.

Mabel’s from Michael Symon won’t be missed, but Vetri Cucina was a well-regarded effort from Marc Vetri.

Laguna Pool House and Rojo Lounge are concepts from Luke Palladino.

You can count the number of places in Las Vegas with good BBQ on one hand. The closure of Mabel’s does not impact that number whatsoever.

Ending all these contracts and partnerships means Palms leadership is taking a hard look at the bottom line, especially important during a time of a Las Vegas visitation dip.

Palms isn’t your typical Las Vegas casino resort, mainly because the San Manuel tribe (possibly the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, it changes occasionally) doesn’t need the money. Palms has modest financial goals, and was a way for the tribe to dip their toes into the Vegas market without too much risk.

The tribe whipped up a whimsical “governmental instrument,” the San Manuel Gaming and Hospitality Authority, to operate the resort and avoid regulatory scrutiny of tribe leadership, then settled in to make a modest profit ($25 million or so a year EBITDA) while giving its California customers a perk for their loyalty. The Yaamava Resort & Casino prints money.

No announcements have been made about what will be replacing these restaurants, but you’ll hear about them when we do.

While the closure of restaurants and lounges is tinged with sadness, endings bring with them new beginnings, and we are a big fan of new and shiny things.