VEGAS RESTAURANT ROUNDUP: R.I.P. Trevi, Robert Irvine’s Public House, Nightmare Café

Posted on: March 25, 2024, 02:54h. 

Last updated on: March 25, 2024, 05:42h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

When the Tropicana closes on April 2, it will take with it a Las Vegas restaurant that, much like the casino resort itself, has seen more culturally relevant days.

Robert Irvine generates stunt publicity for his Public House at the Tropicana in 2016. (Image: Las Vegas Review-Journal)

When Robert Irvine, former host of the Food Network shows “Restaurant: Impossible,” “Dinner: Impossible,” and “Worst Cooks in America,” announced the launch of his Public House at the Trop, he did it in no small way.

On May 16, 2016, the English celebrity chef rappelled 22 stories down the face of the Tropicana’s Paradise Tower.

When Irvine’s Public House opened a year later, its namesake arrived by helicopter. He told reporters that his restaurant would serve as the subject of not one, but several upcoming reality shows and that its servers would “do something servers never do.”

Irvine never explained what that something would be, and no reality shows were ever shot at the Public House, which seemed to lose its buzz about as quickly as Irvine himself.

When the Public House drops along with the Trop, Irvine’s sole remaining restaurant will be his Fresh Kitchen by Robert Irvine inside the Pentagon.

Nightmare Scenario

The Nightmare Café opened 18 months ago in Las Vegas’ soon-to-be even more thriving Arts District neighborhood downtown. (Image: Happy Cow)

The horror-themed Nightmare Café has closed its doors after only 18 months of business in the Las Vegas Arts District.

“Unfortunately, we had some setbacks, not just financially, but mentally and physically,” Estrella Martin, who co-owned Nightmare Cafe with her husband, told KVVU-TV/Las Vegas.

In a stroke of nightmarishly bad timing, the decision to close came before an article on CNN Travel declared the Arts District “Las Vegas’ hottest neighborhood.” The national story, which is certain to increase tourism in the downtown subdivision, even name-checked the Nightmare Café.

Dining Ins & Outs

Trevi, the Italian spot in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, has closed suddenly and without explanation. This is according to Las Vegas Locally, a reliable social media news source.

Trevi is no more, according to a reliable social media news source. (Image: Trip Advisor)

So far, neither the restaurant’s own social media feeds or website mention the development.

As for a reason? This column will keep you posted. However, most restaurants that close in Las Vegas never offer one. And, at the same time, there is usually only one reason. And that’s because financially successful Las Vegas restaurants don’t close.

A second Blue Ribbon Sushi from chefs/brothers Bruce and Eric Bromberg of Manhattan’s Blue Ribbon Restaurants will open in Las Vegas at the Green Valley Ranch on March 29. The first opened across town at Red Rock Resort, another Station Casinos property.

Actually, the first operated at the Cosmopolitan from the resort’s 2010 opening through 2015. (It was replaced by the Japanese restaurant Zuma.) Blue Ribbon Sushi began almost 30 years ago in Soho.

Locals’ Hawaiian favorite L&L Hawaiian Barbecue will open its 17th Las Vegas location at the Decatur Commons shopping center near Summerlin at 450 S. Decatur Blvd. Last October, L&L’s competition, another popular Hawaiian restaurant chain called Zippy’s, opened its first Las Vegas location, which was also its first off the island.

A second Las Vegas location of the gluten-free fast-food chain PowerSoul Café opened in Chinatown last week at 3501 S. Valley View Blvd.