Guy Fieri’s El Burro Borracho Closes Permanently at Rio (Again)

By Scott Roeben, on March 20 2026
2 min read 1 comment
Las Vegas Las Vegas Restaurants

Guy Fieri’s El Burro Borracho had nine lives, but it appears the restaurant has served its final Loaded Trash Can Nachos at Rio.

We first reported the demise of El Burro Borracho back in 2022.

But Guy Fieri’s namesake restaurant had no interest in going quietly into that good noche. Until now. Signage has been removed, and the restaurant has been scrubbed from the Rio Web site.

A este burro ya lo mandaron a pastar.

El Burro Borracho opened at Rio Las Vegas on March 4, 2016.

As Rio struggled (it’s still struggling), so did the drunken ass. No, really, that’s how “El Burro Borracho” translates.

When it opened, Rio was owned by Caesars Entertainment. Now, it’s owned by Dreamscape.

When the pandemic struck, El Burro Borracho closed. It came back in 2022, but the hours were unpredictable.

Since then, it’s chugged along.

Now, it seems the plug has finally been pulled.

Our friend and Las Vegas journalist Ryan Slattery passed along the tip about El Burro Borracho closing for good.

Please tag us in things so we can later take credit for your scoop, thanks.

We’ve reached out to Rio to confirm the restaurant has finally been put out of its misery, but we’ve yet to hear back.

We’re curious to hear what might move into the El Burro Borracho space, and by that, we mean it had better be Italian.

Rio recently opened High Steaks Vegas in the former VooDoo Steak space on Rio’s “50th floor.” It’s in quotation marks because Rio doesn’t have 50 floors. It also doesn’t have 51. It’s just a marketing thing.

Rio also recently opened The Kitchen Table, a breakfast and lunch spot.

Eggslut is also relatively new.

Here’s the full roster of Rio restaurants.

Coming up at Rio is some much-needed pizza, a place called “&Pizza,” pronounced “and pizza.” We refer to it as Ampersand Pizza just to try and get them to change the name prior to opening. There’s still time.

As far as we can tell, Guy Fieri’s El Burro Borracho never really moved any needles for Caesars or Dreamscape, or Guy Fieri for that matter. License deals typically pay 5% of the restaurant’s gross to the celebrity partner. That’s fine if the place is making $70 million a year like Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace. At Rio? It’s cutting into an already paper-thin profit margin.

It was time. Again.