VEGAS DINING NEWS: Ocean One & Done, Another Whataburger

Posted on: November 13, 2024, 06:35h. 

Last updated on: November 13, 2024, 06:39h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Ocean One Bar & Grille, the hands-down cheapest restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip for nearly 20 years, has permanently closed. The temple of frugality had offered lunch for $5.99 and dinner for only a dollar more.

In a note taped to property inside Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile Shops, Ocean One’s management claims that its lease expired and it was searching for new location.

That may be true, but we suspect it’s not the entire truth.

Back in September, an eviction notice was taped to Ocean One’s door on a Friday and the restaurant’s name was removed from Miracle Mile’s website. However, it reopened the following Monday as though nothing was ever amiss.

After it reopened, Ocean One raised its prices to $7.99 for lunch and $8.99 for dinner, which was still an incomparable deal.

However, it’s difficult to imagine how it continued serving half-pound sirloin burgers, Mexican wings, and tortilla salad for the price of a bottle of water at Harry Reid International Airport.

Social Foodie Leaves Las Vegas

Food critic Keith Lee, who reviewed Las Vegas restaurants for eight years on TikTok, is now a Texan. The 28-year-old former MMA fighter first went viral reviewing Vegas eateries in 2021. He got so big, Kenan Thompson impersonated him on “Saturday Night Live’s” October 19 episode.

But Lee had already begun raising eyebrows by reviewing 11 restaurants during trips to Dallas and Houston this year.

“From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank every single person that we ever came in contact with in Vegas,” he said in a video posted last week to his 16.7 million followers.

Dining Ins & Outs

Texas-based Whataburger has applied to open a second Las Vegas, on Nellis Boulevard south of Bonanza Road. Its first location debuted at the Waldorf Astoria in February. The chain has more than 930 outlets in 15 states.

A dining/pickleball complex called Chicken N Pickle opened this week in Vegas-adjacent Henderson, Nev. That may sound silly to you, but not to Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes. The Kansas City Chiefs stars are reportedly investors in the company, which also operates in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Wichita and San Antonio. Its three-acre Henderson complex, at 3381 Saint Rose Parkway, boasts six indoor and eight covered outdoor courts, plus two levels of dining.

Taco Escobarr will open at 509 Fremont St., in the downtown space left open by The Smashed Pig’s May 2023 closure. Because thinking about Colombian drug lord and mass murderer Pablo Escobar always makes us hungry.

The Hush Puppy, a Southern restaurant that opened almost 50 years ago on West Charleston Boulevard, is expanding to the Neonopolis building at 450 E. Fremont St. The restaurant will open next year in Suite 135, the space that housed Banger Brewing, which closed in March 2023 after almost a decade.

Popular Argentinian gelato shop Freddo Gelato Tradizionale has opened its first Las Vegas location on South Durango Drive, near West Warm Springs Road in the southwest.