This Hidden ‘Omakase Speakeasy’ in Vegas Has a Waitlist of Thousands

The opulent six-seat counter sits inside Tetsuya Wakuda’s first restaurant in America.

Las Vegas is sensory overload. Everything on the Strip is a caricature of a defining landmark like the Eiffel Tower or Venice’s Grand Canal, assembled like LEGO blocks, one butting up against another. It’s a city you slip off to when you want to escape — and there’s a different escape everywhere you turn.

Stepping into The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort, I wasn’t surprised to see Renaissance-style columns framing indoor piazzas (complete with statue-clad fountains, of course). And I purposely sought out the quarter-mile-long canal snaking its way through the shops, striped-shirt gondoliers crooning for the crowd gathered along the “terraces” on either side of the water. The day of sightseeing in Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas should have prepared me for the evening ahead—and the reason why I made the five-and-a-half-hour flight from Miami.

I was there for a preview of one the most exclusive private dining experiences on the Strip: two Michelin-starred chef Tetsuya Wakuda's speakeasy omakase at WAKUDA, inside The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort.

Las Vegas is home to nearly every type of cuisine and tons of celeb chef-driven restaurants (even Martha Stewart opened her first and only spot here). WAKUDA, which debuted last summer after four years of development, is the Japan-born chef’s first restaurant in the country — and one of ten eateries on the Strip with a Michelin chef backing. But the restaurant’s hidden omakase room — which already has a waitlist of thousands — is like having the PDR of your dreams.

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The fully stocked private bar and bartender are yours throughout the meal (welcome drinks include Krug and LOUIS XIII, plus freshly shaved jamón ibérico), and a separate room with a six-seat counter serves up an omakase (starting at $500 per person, sans drinks) influenced by what's found at the auctions and markets in Japan.

“It took such a long time to put together because we wanted it to be different from the other omakase places here,” explains corporate brand executive chef Christopher Shane Chan Yai Ching, who was part of the opening team of Nobu Melbourne and has spent more than 14 years working at restaurants around the globe. “We wanted to push the limits and try something different — we didn’t want to copy anything.”

A stark contrast to the high ceilings, crystal, and cream-colored Italian marble in The Palazzo, WAKUDA is modeled after the hodgepodge of drinking dens dotting Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. As you’re guided through the neon sign-lit entrance, past glowing lanterns and cherry blossoms, you pass through narrow halls mimicking the six alleyways of Shinjuku’s mazelike Golden Gai, each with a different concept: The sultry cocktail lounge is illuminated in pink and purple neon with leather and velvet banquettes adding an element of privacy to the handful of Japanese oak tables.

A DJ spins on the terrace — the largest of any restaurant on the Strip — while two larger-than-life-sized marble sculptures of sumo wrestlers watch over the main dining room space, flanked by an open sushi counter.

Keep walking past the dining room, and the last passageway seems to come to a dead end. The graffiti-clad steel door looks like a service exit. But push through and inside the first room is an onyx, crescent-moon shaped bar. Sake and wine sommelier Aaron Hopwood handed us glasses of Champagne before trays of delicate hors d’oeuvres like flower-shaped foie gras toast with plum sake gelée and dollop-sized white truffle choux with a sprinkling of gold leaf were passed around.

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Behind the bar, head mixologist Daniel Yang poured cocktails based on our individual preferences, like the Son of Harajuku, a twist on a Manhattan with Nikka Coffey Grain Whisky, Aperol, fortified wine aperitif Byrrh Grand Quinquina, and chocolate mole bitters. When it was time for the meal to start, two large wooden doors shielding the omakase counter dramatically pulled apart like a scene from Indiana Jones.

“Omakase is more about the chef — you need to have someone who can engage and explain each item,” Shane Chan Yai Ching says. “Every omakase experience will be different.”

As each of the expertly prepared plates was presented, Hopwood poured sake into small, Japanese crystal edo-kiriko glasses. If you’d rather go the wine route, you can choose from a selection of bottles ranging from legends like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti to more obscure labels and small-production Japanese wines, like Matsuzaka Green Vineyards MGVs “K1” Katsunuma Koshu.

“I would like to show guests something that they haven't experienced, something that everyone is a little taken aback by in its quality and rarity,” he says. “In the world of sake, I think it’s important to show the diversity of a beverage that many think is ‘all the same.’”

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The multi-course menu of wagyu salad, sashimi, and small plates (think lobster risotto and fish torched on a block of Himalayan salt) shifts with the seasons and availability of products. The meal was about three hours long, and ours had 15 dishes — some of which were more traditional, like tuna nigiri sliced off a 15-pound slab of bluefin from Japan, while others were more molecular, like the dome-smoked salmon hand roll.

Hokkaido sea scallops were sliced paper-thin and served with finger lime salsa and ogo nori, and spiny lobster from Spain was topped with buttery Hokkaido Bafun uni and WAKUDA’s own hand-selected oscietra caviar. (The chef presents the tightly packed tray of sea urchin before prepping each piece.)

It’s Las Vegas, after all, so the theatrics continue right up until dessert, the aptly named yuzu garden. The citrus sponge cake with yuzu mousse and curd sat on pistachio crumble and chocolate miso stones, dry ice giving the illusion it was floating on a cloud of fog above the table. In a town where every spot tries to top the next, it’s hard to keep the shock factor going strong. But WAKUDA didn’t fail to live up to the hyped reputation, which has made it one of the hardest tables (or counters, rather) to score in Sin City.

WAKUDA’s Omakase Room & Bar offers reservations at 6 and 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; the omakase menu is $500, and the wine or sake pairing is $250 per person.

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