Celebrity chef Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, which features the vibrant Southwestern-inspired cuisine that made Flay famous, opened this week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. It is the first Flay restaurant outside New York City. An award-winning chef, television personality, popular cookbook author and successful restaurateur, Flay is known to millions of fans as the resident chef for the “Early Show” on CBS. He also hosts three popular television series for the Food Network—“Hot Off the Grill With Bobby Flay” (named for the third of his five successful cookbooks), “Food Nation” and “Boy Meets Grill.”

Spanning nearly 9,000 square feet (including kitchen and support areas), Mesa Grill at Caesars Palace seats 200 in the main dining area and 50 in its private dining room. An additional 28 seats are available at the bar and lounge, where the full menu is available. Designed by David Rockwell of Rockwell Group, the restaurant’s focal point is a massive rotisserie towering 20 feet above the dining room, which crowns a giant grill and quesadilla oven.

The menu features an exciting array of dishes including a mix of the classics from Mesa Grill in New York and a number of items that Flay has created expressly for the Caesars Palace location. Making full use of the dramatic rotisserie, Flay has created Coffee Spice Rubbed Rotisserie Filet Mignon with Wild Mushroom-Ancho Chile Sauce and Green Chile-Corn Pudding, along with a Sixteen Spice Rotisserie Chicken with Caramelized Mango Sauce and Buttermilk-Chive Mashed Potatoes. In a nod to his new outpost in the west, Flay has unveiled the Buffalo Ribeye with Mustard-Habanero Barbecue Sauce and Cayenne-Sour Cream Onion Rings.

Like its New York counterpart, Mesa Grill at Caesars Palace boasts a notable tequila and wine program. Las Vegas’ proximity to Mexico gives the restaurant access to some of that country’s highest-quality tequila and mezcal offerings.

Located a few steps from the resort’s Colosseum theatre and prominently positioned along an expansive new pedestrian thoroughfare leading from the Caesars Palace front door, Mesa Grill is a convenient choice for lunch, dinner or weekend brunch.

The restaurant is the latest addition to the celebrity chef dining establishments at Caesars Palace, joining Bradley Ogden, the namesake restaurant of the famed Bay-area chef, Jean-Marie Josselin’s Pacific Rim-inspired 808 (“eight oh eight”) and Wolfgang Puck’s Spago. Opening in The Forum Shops at Caesars in late October 2004 will be Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab (of South Beach fame), New York’s renowned Greenwich Village Italian restaurant Il Mulino New York and popular Los Angeles sushi destination Sushi Roku—which will bring the resort’s total number of diverse restaurants and cafes to 24. In the second half of 2005, Caesars Palace will join with three-star Michelin Chef Guy Savoy to debut the acclaimed French chef’s first restaurant outside Paris. Named for its award-winning chef, the restaurant will be located on the second floor of the resort’s new 949-room/suite luxury hotel tower. The hotel tower and its culinary crown jewel are fast-rising at the property’s south property border.
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