ARIA’s Sage Restaurant will use ingredients from nearby farms for its New American menu

 

Three new luxe hotels enter Vegas’ already dynamic scene (a fourth is due next year) with City Center opening in December. The complex will also bring with it a multitude of new restaurants for everything from quick bites to fine dining.

At ARIA, gourmands will have a choice of many dining options. Sage Restaurant, from Chicago-based chef Shawn McClain (and overseen locally by Richard Camarota), will feature a New American menu with Mediterranean subtexts, using ingredients from nearby farms in California and along the Pacific coast. With 165 seats, Sage is on the casino level and is open for dinner. (For the record: In 2006, McClain was recognized by the James Beard Foundation as Best Chef Midwest. Sage may earn him the recognition in the West.)

Carnivores are never lacking for steak in Vegas, but those who want their meat to be a bit on the swankier side will have a new reason to rejoice: Michelin Three Star Award- and James Beard Award-winning Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten will open a Jean Georges Steakhouse at ARIA. (Robert Moore, formerly of Prime Steakhouse at Bellagio, will be the local manager.) Using meats and seafoods from local suppliers as well as international (think Japan, Argentina and Uruguay), the restaurant will blend the kitchen and the dining room: Steaks will be served on hot lava rocks and presented under domed dishes. The 266-seat Steakhouse is open for dinner nightly.

To book seats at any of the ARIA restaurants, call 702-531-3871.

At Vdara, Silk Road will offer contemporary Mediterranean fare from Chef Martin Heierling, who created Bellagio’s Sensi restaurant. Local ingredients will be infused with Middle Eastern and Asian flavors inspired by the eponymous trade route that connected Asia and Europe.

At Mandarin Oriental, three-star Michelin Chef Pierre Gagnaire will oversee the hotel’s signature restaurant (and his first in the U.S.), Twist by Pierre Gagnaire. The menu will blend classic French cuisine with modern flavors. Tasty touch: Before or after dinner, visitors can stop in at the Mandarin Bar, which will have a team of molecular mixologists to develop customized concoctions upon request. Both bar and restaurant are situated on the 23rd floor of the hotel; the hotel seats 74 and the bar seats 82.

To book seats at Twist or Mandarin Bar, contact Alyssa Bushey ([email protected]).