Night + Market Quietly Rebrands to Chow Fun at Virgin

By Scott Roeben, on July 03 2024
3 min read 1 comment
Las Vegas Las Vegas Restaurants

Virgin has thrown in the towel on its Night + Market, quietly rebranding the restaurant to Chow Fun.

Night + Market’s Thai menu has transitioned to an Asian fusion menu with Chow Fun.

Night + Market at Virgin opened in 2021.

We don’t know if this is how Chow Fun looks, but this is the photo on the Virgin Web site, so we’re going with it.

Chow Fun sits next to the casino’s cashier cage, which also isn’t particularly busy most of the time. We kid because we love!

Much ado was made about Night + Market when it opened. The brand is the brainchild of Chef Kris Yenbamroong, who has several locations in L.A. Now, there’s one fewer location.

Night + Market’s page on the Virgin site now goes to an awkward 404 page.

Richard Branson is involved, but doesn’t have much skin in the game at Virgin.

Following upwards of three minutes of painstaking research, we dug up the new Chow Fun dinner menu.

Vegan Larb was the name of our band in high school.

The Chow Fun menu draws from a variety of Asian cuisines to provide a little something for everyone. Yes, that’s the entire dinner menu. Which means they’re focusing on doing a few things well rather than freaking out the kitchen with 100 things that are meh.

One of the benefits of naming a restaurant Chow Fun is you sort of know what you’re getting. It’s Asian, it’s food and it’s fun.

Chow fun is an actual Cantonese dish as well, stir-fried rice noodles. It’s also referred to as “chow ho fun,” but in Las Vegas, upon further reflection, we have decided not to make this joke because we have already been canceled 14 times this week.

Here’s the lunch menu at Chow Fun.

We enjoy adding honey to our Miso Soup, just so we can say, “Miso Honey.”

Chow Fun has thoughtfully put together a happy hour menu as well, available from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Happy hour menus are especially popular with guests who fear commitment. You know who you are.

Night + Market made a go of it, but we never saw it busy in the three years of its existence.

We tried some of the food on opening night, and it was pretty good, but good doesn’t really cut it in Vegas, it has to be great to keep people coming back.

We’ll definitely stop by Chow Fun, especially since our favorite dish at Virgin, the short rib rigatoni at One Steakhouse, is off the menu temporarily. Gutted.

Virgin is shaking things up in an attempt to turn things around after years of struggle. The resort is taking its casino back from the Mohegan tribe, there are plans for a new Center Bar, and there’s a concerted effort to make the resort feel more lively and integrated, where in the past it’s felt disjointed.

Virgin has one of the best revues in town, “Lady Like.”

“Virgin” is just the brand, not a job requirement.

A Vegas Loop tunnel recently broke through near the off-Strip hotel, too. It could be a year or more before the Virgin station is operational, however.

The seas remain rough at Virgin, despite the glimmers of hope. An ongoing union battle is unresolved. The resort was sued by a former tenant, Money, Baby. And Virgin remains in a challenging location, near the airport but not much else.

During our recent visits, Virgin feels like it’s getting some of its mojo back, largely due to the new president, Cliff Atkinson. (Atkinson was at the helm of Fontainebleau before it opened. Pushing him out was one of many missteps at Fontainebleau.) Atkinson knows what he’s doing, but it remains to be seen if he can perform a miracle at Virgin. Rethinking the restaurant mix is a solid place to start making inroads.