Grand Lux Cafe – Las Vegas

Twenty-one years after The Cheesecake Factory’s first location opened in Beverly Hills, the first Grand Lux Cafe opened as a 24-hour dining option directly next to the casino at Las Vegas’s Venetian Hotel – one of the chain’s eventual dozen restaurants, later joined by a similar option at Palazzo, and non-casino locations in Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Originally pitched as a step up from its older brother, supposedly taking inspiration from global menus and design cues from European and American cafes, Grand Lux ultimately settled into a second-class role, serving Cheesecake Factory-style large plates at above-average prices, minus most of its parent company’s signature cheesecakes.

Living in that shadow hasn’t left Grand Lux without value, though it’s unclear as to how consistently its recipes are now executed from location to location: For example, a memorably elegant and powerfully dressed full-leaf caesar salad offered at its Las Vegas locations was instead served as a plain chopped version at its (now-shuttered) Miracle Mile, Chicago restaurant. Much of the current menu focuses on American and Italian-style salads, pastas, pizzas, burgers, steaks, and seafood, though earlier “global” recipes remain largely intact. While Vietnamese-style spring rolls and shaken beef dropped off the menu, guests can still choose from a variety of Asian-American-ish recipes across items like crispy Thai shrimp, Korean ribs, General Tso’s cauliflower, and Chinese-Indian Indochine shrimp and chicken. If you can put authenticity aside, the flavors and portions tend to be at least solid, and substantial collections of drinks (including refillable lemonades and non-refillable mocktails/cocktails) either create or add to the fun.