Over the years, Las Vegas has become the role model for many other gambling destinations. Savvy casino owners and investors have remodeled the city’s popular Strip area into a capital for luxury and recreation of all kinds. In the last decade, Las Vegas has moved from its humble culinary position as buffeteria for the masses to that of a culinary capital.

From Casinos To Resorts

Las Vegas was initially built on the business of gambling. Food was ordinary and cheap. Visitors came for the casinos not for fine food.

Over the last twenty years, a few significant social changes within the American society have perhaps inspired casino owners and investors to reexamine their priorities in the desert. As far as gambling goes, what was once the exclusive right of Nevada is no longer and has not been for quite some time. State-sanctioned lotteries were just the beginning. Indian casinos have become attractive weekend jaunts for many where gamblers spend millions annually. Flamboyantly decorated riverboat casinos troll the midsection of the country’s water ways.

In the interest of diversifying, Las Vegas has since become one of the most sought after destinations and not just for the mere casinos. For many visitors, the casinos are just an afterthought to the spectacle of hotel/resorts such as the Bellagio and The Venetian.

Arrival of the Chefs

If the breathtaking artifice and engineering of the new resort hotels and casinos does not sufficiently entertain and amuse, then there are the superlative legion of upscale restaurants spawned by celebrity chefs from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Italy, Asia, France and New York. Every cuisine is represented. Fresh fusions of antithetical tastes have been married together in the kitchens of new restaurants.

Caesar’s Palace, alone, has nearly two dozen fine dining restaurants. The Bellagio has a handful more of the most upscale food Las Vegas can offer. Besides the familiar Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck establishments, chef Joachim Splichal’s Pinot Brasserie in the Venetian is now present and accounted for. There is Todd English’s Olives, with its Mediterranean-infused American dishes, Sensi, a melding of the complexities of Asian with Italian grilled specialties. In fact, the crowning jewel of culinary validation is the new restaurant of Alain Ducasse’s in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, known simply as Mix.

There are still the inexpensive buffet meals present among the casinos, but those are for the visitors who just go to Las Vegas to gamble.

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