Introducing the 2024 Eater Las Vegas Award Winners

Diner Ross is Eater Vegas’s best new restaurant. | RHC The best new restaurant, best late-night hang, and best bar of the year It’s time again for the Eater Awards, the annual occasion when Eater Vegas recognizes excellence in Las Vegas restaurants over the past 12 months. It’s been an action-packed year for Las Vegas: The city hosted the Super Bowl, the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards centered its event on the Strip, and two casinos earned spectacular send-offs. But beneath the spectacle, Las Vegas locals and even sharp-eyed travelers know it was another banner year for Las Vegas’s culinary scene. Chefs, visionaries, and industry powerhouses hit the city with big ideas, and these awardees represent the best of the best. On the Strip, a genre-bending diner proved that the themed restaurant can deliver both whimsy and expertly rendered, irreverent food. A celebrity got involved with a new bar and — surprisingly — delivered. And among a dozen new steakhouses that opened in a city that already masters the steakhouse as a superlative, one managed to stand out from the rest. Finally, an Italian restaurant with a sleeper side dish is redefining late-night dining, while an understated new bar is offering a reimagined drinking experience for whiskey connoisseurs. Please join us in celebrating Eater Vegas’s 2024 Eater Award winners. Diner Ross: Best New Restaurant Presented by SevenRooms Stepping off Las Vegas Boulevard and into the silver-tiled breezeway of the Linq Hotel is to bore through the center of a disco ball — its mirrored squares glinting on every surface. Just beyond lies Diner Ross, a restaurant plucked from the romanticized New York City of 1970-something and dropped into the Linq, adjacent to the theater for Spiegelworld’s new Discoshow production. Diner Ross is hardly the circus company’s first foray into food and beverage — it has previously merged pasta with performance at Superfrico and churned out a stellar smash burger at the Absinthe concession stand. Diner Ross would be worth a visit just for its grounded approach to the themed restaurant genre — marked by patent orange booth seating, dusky green walls adorned with era-specific album covers and ephemera, and a front-of-house staff clad in paisley and jumpsuits. But it’s so much more than just its design. Chef Anna Altieri skips dinner rolls in favor of popovers like her grandmother used to make, available with butter and jam or plussed-up accouterments like foie gras and caviar. A plate of ham and cheese is as surprising as the show next door: Emulating the dish she and Spiegelworld creator Ross Mollison had at Vin Papillon in Montreal, Altieri dresses thin slices of Parisien ham and cuts of Avonlea cheddar in melted brown butter and a generous crack of black pepper — making for an ideal drinking snack with the sort of oddball presentation one could hope for from a circus company. A dirty martini salad pours all the salty and fatty pungency of a briney olive juice over a stack of Bibb lettuce. And Altieri takes the au poivre route with the burger, coating a bistro-style short rib blend in black pepper, searing it in clarified butter, and layering it with peppery watercress, roasted tart cherries, and Muenster cheese — all poised for dunking in a savory gravy. It’s all the imagination and escapism one could want from the circus company’s diner — but with a measured approach to food that stands up to what one expects from a Las Vegas Strip restaurant. From our sponsor: SevenRooms is the leading CRM, marketing, and operations platform helping hospitality operators increase sales, delight guests, and keep them coming back — automatically. Louiie Victa Diner Ross is so much more than its design. The Pinky Ring: Best Vibes When Bruno Mars set out to recreate the vibes of his personal living room within the Bellagio, no one — least of all the vice president of food and beverage for the resort — thought he would be quite so hands-on. But Mars had a hand in the Pinky Ring’s layout, lighting, music, signature drinks, and even the bartender’s uniforms. “No one expected him to be there after opening,” says Josef Wagner. “But he’s still bringing in talent directly, even jumping on stage.” The result is a style of venue that was much-needed at the resort, and arguably even the Strip at large — a place that threads the needle between lounge, nightclub, and live music venue. Bands take the stage, playing groovy jazz music with driving percussion beats that demand visitors rise from the lush loveseats in the Pinky Ring’s sunken living room and dance — a fact that required the lounge to remove seating from the middle of floor to make space. Drinks like the Hooligan — a banging spicy margarita — and a delightfully rich mocha espresso martini keep spirits high until the band takes its second set and bottle service becomes de rigueur. The bar, conversation pit, Champagne room, and privat