Local restaurants and bars alike debuted beautiful new spaces in Las Vegas over the past year, and many embraced original artwork and murals to anchor them.
Restaurants found ways to incorporate trees indoors, pay homage to the Amalfi Coast, and even add some plants in the form of cacti, whether live or on the wallpaper.
Creative uses of LED remained a powerful Vegas motif, as did lush colors and fabrics for chair and banquette design.
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Emporium Arcade Bar
Emporium Arcade Bar opened at Area15 in February filled with two floors of classic arcade favorites, pool tables, pinball, foosball, basketball, and more spread over 10,000 square feet. Co-founder Daniel Marks tapped local art consultancy Unravel Artistic Consulting to bring on 13 artists, mostly from Las Vegas, to decorate the space with murals. Works feature UNLV students Brian Martinez, Sam Rose, and Sonny Tsoi, as well as UNLV graduate Chris Mempin and adjunct professor Erik Beehn. Other Las Vegas artists include Pasheone, Krie, Cerissa Lopez, Mr. Gums, Bronson Taylor, and JW Caldwell. Two notable non-local artists, Allison Bamcat and Rif Raf Giraffe, also have worked at the venue.
One Steakhouse
The new 9,000-square-foot steakhouse at Virgin Hotels practically blends into the casino floor with an inviting open entrance, dreamy lighting in the lounge that morphs colors through the night, and a handsome dining room with distinctly feminine touches to give it a whimsical air. One Steakhouse features a stunning LED light over the lounge with more than 3,000 pieces of glass that gradually change from white to pink to purple and more. The dining room melds handsome woods with whimsical pieces of art, including cloches with mystical pieces inside.
Amalfi
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay’s Italian seafood restaurant at Caesars Palace takes its inspiration from his trips to the Amalfi Coast. The restaurant, Amalfi by Bobby Flay, spans 9,000 square feet right off the casino floor. Flay tapped Olivia Jane Design & Interiors to create the look of Amalfi with a natural palette and touches of greenery throughout. Organic fabrics, stone, and wood materials decorate the four spaces inside. Flay’s favorite touch, though, is the 30-seat bar and 40-seat lounge area that practically glow with a limestone mosaic floor and teak wood beams. “Don’t miss the Amalfi Coast-inspired blue and white chairs in the lounge, which are a nod to the swarms of striped umbrellas and chairs sprawled across the beaches there,” he says.
Stadia Bar
Stadia Bar at Caesars Palace pays homage to basketball, football, and baseball with room for 120 in a 2,186-square-foot space designed by Rockwell Group. The floor uses recycled basketball court wood, while five VIP domes come wrapped in leather that looks like a vintage leather football helmet. The domes are lined with a metal mesh and artwork by San Francisco-based artist and mural painter Apexer. Other sports-inspired design details include net-like chandeliers, sconces that look like deconstructed baseballs, and glove-like leather banquettes.
Brezza
Brezza, Italian for the breeze, embraces that ambiance with a patio with room for 100 overlooking the Las Vegas Strip at Resorts World. The restaurant features mosaic tile flooring imported from Italy and olive trees on the terrace salvaged from the Stardust, which once stood on this spot. Inside, the restaurant features rustic stone walls and floor-to-ceiling windows with views from the 200-seat main dining room. A small patio at the indoor entrance offers a prime view for people-watching.
Viva
Celebrated Los Angeles chef Ray Garcia’s Mexican restaurant ¡Viva! at Resorts World used Celano Design Studio to create the look of the space in conjunction with local architect Marnell Companies. A large mural by artists Chalk & Brush anchors the indoor patio, while outside, diners can sit on the people-watching patio that overlooks Las Vegas Boulevard. Some of the beautiful touches to the space include an exploding flower infinity mirror that doubles as an art installation. Behind the main bar sits a bottle display influenced by the architecture of ancient ruins around Mexico. Anchoring the dining room, a dazzling driftwood sculpture resembling a tree in bloom. On the indoor patio, a vibrant mural designed by Miami-based Chalk & Brush, inspired by the culture, landscape, architecture, and patterns of Mexico, acts as a backdrop for the bar. A private dining room showcases ¡Viva!’s exclusive tequila and mezcal collection.
Delilah
One of the most anticipated restaurant openings of 2021 offers a stunning design that transports diners to an opulent 1950s supper club. Delilah, from L.A.’s H.wood Group at Wynn Las Vegas and Eater Vegas’s Eater Award winner for design of the year, brings a decadent supper club that tips its hat to the golden era of entertainment and dining. Todd-Avery Lenahan, president and chief creative officer of Wynn Design & Development, created the look of Delilah, taking cues from the original location in Los Angeles, regal supper clubs of the past, and a safari trip to Africa. At the front, Little Bubble Bar, a 34-seat intimate lounge with settees upholstered in vintage Hermès fabric. A sweeping set of staircases adorned with bronze sculptures that were commissioned for Delilah funnel down to the Anchor Bar with its view of the stage, brass palms trees, and vintage feel. Overhead, the ceilings use more than 30 hand-finished plaster molding segments. Seating uses embossed silk velvets, French linens from Pierre Frey and Hermes Rich, piano-finish walnut burl with ebony inlay on the walls, and more than three dozen commissioned paintings and sculptures along with vintage cubist works from around the world. Outdoor courtyards use lanterns for lighting and 75-year-old magnolia trees.
Money Baby
Virgin Hotels combines a sportsbook with food from Food Network star and culinary director chef Beau MacMillan and an experience courtesy of industry veterans and co-founders Justin Massei and Mikis Troyan of Clive Collective. Davis Ink created the look of the 15,000-square-foot space that serves as an adult playground with a mid-century modern style. Customers walk through a tunnel adorned with hexagon lights before reaching a magical pink tree forest with custom cutout leaves, happy face graffiti, funky geometric fencing, and a graphic ceiling. The space features a 5,500-square-foot patio overlooking the property’s resort pools. Diners can play cornhole and lawn games or sit by the firepits.
Saffron, The Vegetarian Restaurant
Restaurateur Tony Nguyen and chef Louross Edralin, who appeared on Season 4 of Hell’s Kitchen, offer vegetarian dishes at Chinatown’s Saffron. The atmosphere brings together serenity and stability in the 90-seat dining room with a private dining area. A pond flowing through a hand-made basin anchors the room, crowned with a statue made in Vietnam exclusively for the restaurant. East Asian wood-carved accents and large murals decorate the space.
Valencian Gold
Jeffrey Weiss transformed Valencian Gold into a posh Spanish tapas restaurant filled with ornate gold features and vintage accents. He stokes the fires with holm oak, almond, and orange woods ignited by a rifle-shaped flamethrower for the restaurant’s paella. Artists from Las Vegas-based ISI Group and Valencian street artist Xolaka, a notable muralist who traveled from Spain to Las Vegas just for the commission, created the murals. Diners can find the visage of Salvador Dalí through, along with paella pan art by local Las Vegas artist MoreEnvyOne.
Peyote
Peyote, a 2021 opening in Downtown Las Vegas from Corner Bar Management, brings a laid-back vibe, desert modernism, and pastel pops of color that seem like they’re right out of a psychedelic version of Coachella-esque Southern California. The patio comes dotted with more than 200 cactus and succulents, light mint green tables, bubblegum pink chairs, and the centerpiece: a firepit surrounded by a semi-circle of pink seating and wooden Adirondack chairs. A custom 3D-mapped LED bistro-light installation created by San Francisco-based artist Keegan Arthur Olton brings the patio to life by night. Inside, the 3,400-square-foot interior brings together a neon sign that says, “You’re a daisy if you do,” a fashionable phrase that dates back to the late 1870s. An eclectic collection of paintings from artists such as Brazilian artist Rafael Silveira and French contemporary artist Bruno Pontiroli decorate the walls with a cyclops carrying a woman, a hippo practically swallowing a person, a blank man’s face with a pink flamingo, a tree with parrots, a woman with blue hair and flowers on her face, and more. More boxes with succulents, floral displays, a mosaic tile under the bar, exposed vents, and metal and wood stools outfit the space.
Superfrico
Walking through Superfrico feels like a trip to a museum. The new Italian-American restaurant at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas combines the wit of Opium, the show next door from Spiegelworld, and the imagination of a supper club. Art consultant Heather Harmon worked with Superfrico’s creative team to expand Spiegelworld’s art collection and fill the restaurant’s walls, reflecting the company’s circus roots and its passion for handcrafted, repurposed, and one-of-a-kind works. Inside the Artery, a collection of art includes Adehla Lee’s Psycho Pop Party, a candy-colored acrylic painting and the first work to be commissioned for Superfrico. Paranormal Activity by Tiza serves as a neon companion piece to the Purple Lodge, the Twin Peaks/Lynchian-inspired entrance to the Opium Theatre next to Superfrico. Diners can also find more than 20 action figures created by Morgan Philips (also known as The Sucklord) based on the Opium characters.
Boom Bang
From Top Chef alum Elia Aboumrad-Page, Christian Page, and Tony Angotti brings a fun pop of the desert to Henderson. Evolve Interior’s Corri Backman, a longtime friend of the married chefs Aboumrad-Page and Page, designed Boom Bang’s interior with vibrant cactus wallpaper and a palette of green, orange, and bright yellow. A green ceiling makes the space feel full and finished while dialing in on that cactus green color. A long, cushioned banquette lines the perimeter to soften the space with bare wooden tables and wood floor, and Aboumrad-Page covered the tabletops in buttons from her father’s haberdashery in Mexico City.
Source: Vegas Eater