Carbone Riviera Brings a Seafood-Ahead Method to the Bellagio

At Bellagio Resort & On line casino in Las Vegas, sure rooms include mythology hooked up. For practically three many years, the house that housed the legendary Picasso restaurant was one of many Strip’s most storied eating locations — the form of place that didn’t want to clarify itself. Picasso closed in August 2024 with the retirement of chef Julian Serrano, after virtually 26 years on the helm. 

Now, that very same tackle begins its subsequent life as Carbone Riviera, a restaurant designed to really feel unmistakably Carbone, however calibrated for what this specific location, with its front-and-center view of the Bellagio fountains, calls for: seafood, ceremony, and a way of event.

Mario Carbone, the chef and Main Meals Group cofounder behind the idea, says the concept wasn’t a sudden pivot a lot as a long-held itch that lastly discovered the best stage. 

“I’ve all the time wished to play with the concept of a extra fish-forward menu,” he says. “It is a very historic house. And it’s, in my view, the perfect location, the perfect house in all Vegas. I attempted to place the best factor in the best place, and this house wished that.”

A brand new steward for a legendary room

To know why Carbone Riviera is being positioned as a brand new chapter, you need to perceive what Carbone is within the first place: an Italian-American restaurant constructed as a high-glam homage to mid-century New York eating, the place the classics hit laborious and the room does its personal form of theater. The unique Carbone opened in New York Metropolis’s Greenwich Village in 2013, and its founders modeled the menu, décor, and environment on the mid-century Italian eating places that when outlined the town.

It’s additionally one of many brightest gems of Main Meals Group, the hospitality firm Mario Carbone cofounded with Wealthy Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick. Since its founding in 2011, Main Meals Group has grown into a formidable portfolio of eating places identified for high-end experiences and elaborate design, with greater than 50 eating places and personal eating golf equipment around the globe.

Carbone Riviera isn’t making an attempt to shed its identification. It’s making an attempt to refocus it. As Carbone places it, the objective was to protect the model’s emotional frequency — the swagger, the polish, the pleasure — whereas giving the Carbone components a seafood-first backbone. 

“I wished [the diners] to nonetheless really feel Carbone,” he says. “It nonetheless wants to return from the identical form of place and level of origin. It’s an Italian-American restaurant — Italian-Individuals’ fine-dining restaurant. It must be enjoyable. It must be scrumptious.”

The distinction is that Carbone Riviera begins on the waterline. Contained in the Martin Brudnizki-designed room leans into that lakefront power: mild catching on glassware, captains transferring with objective, tables settling into the rhythm of a flowing house constructed for lengthy dinners and massive reveals.

The Riviera rhythm: Begin uncooked, finish with fish

As an alternative of positioning one single dish because the headline, Carbone describes Riviera as a menu you’re meant to maneuver by means of, like a playlist the place the pacing issues. “I’d advocate that folks contact all of the classes of the menu,” he says.

The primary cease is “Delicacies of the Sea,” a well-defined part that emphasizes the pure fantastic thing about the fare. “The primary class we name ‘delicacies’ is sort of totally uncooked,” says Carbone. “It’s both uncooked or very frivolously cooked.”

From there, Riviera performs a balancing act between what Carbone loyalists need — Caesar salad, the well-known rigatoni — and what this new kitchen desires to indicate off. 

“Equally, if you get to pasta, in case you haven’t been right here earlier than, actually have your rigatoni,” says Carbone. “However then, together with that, you could need to have a lobster fettuccine. We make the gnocchi with caviar. We do a good looking shrimp ravioli.”

After which comes the purpose of all of it: the fish.

The entire-fish second

Carbone describes Riviera’s whole-fish program because the restaurant’s signature act, the half that’s meant to really feel “Riviera type” the best way spicy rigatoni feels “Carbone type.” 

“We put quite a lot of effort into our whole-fish program right here,” he says. “So, as your principal course, in case you’re actually doing it in Riviera type, I’d encourage that you simply contact the whole-fish class.”

The small print are deliberately visible and deeply chefy. The lineup ranges from smaller fish meant for grilling to bigger, table-cracking shows. “The smallest complete fish we’ve are dorade from Spain,” says Carbone, noting that “it’s a good looking fish to grill” and the fish’s excessive fats content material helps the pores and skin “get actually crispy.”

Then it scales up. “It goes all the best way up in measurement to love a four-and-a-half-pound wild branzino that we bake in salt crust,” says Carbone. “The salt crust that we do, we mix herbs into the salt crust and the crust is inexperienced.”

That inexperienced crust issues as a result of it’s the place the flavour begins. The herb-salt crust locks in moisture and seasons from the skin in. “Because it bakes, it additionally perfumes the entire fish after which it will get cracked tableside,” says Carbone.

It’s the form of dish that is sensible in Las Vegas, not as a result of it’s a spectacle, however as a result of the second reads immediately: the salt crust cracking, the push of steam, the clear reveal. You don’t need to be a seafood obsessive to get it when a captain breaks open that shell tableside. You simply need to be paying consideration.

From Scotland, Hawaii, and Portugal… to the Strip

Behind the present is the unglamorous actuality of provide chains, and Carbone is direct about how particular the logistics are. 

“It may well solely occur in sure cities,” he says. “This restaurant, with this ingredient listing, can solely occur in a metropolis that has main worldwide routes of supply. We get langoustines alive from Scotland. I’ve tiger prawns alive from Japan. I’ve dorade and branzino from Spain, turbot from Portugal. We now have oysters from Montauk. We now have fish from Hawaii.”

That degree of ambition has sensible calls for, which incorporates literal infrastructure. “Okay, we’ve stay king crab — we’ve to maintain the king crab alive,” says Carbone. “Okay, we want a fish tank. Okay, put a fish tank within the kitchen.”

Past components, there have been loads of different logistics to contemplate when constructing the restaurant out. Getting the house prime-time prepared required apply and persistence, together with mock companies, role-switching, and apply runs that lead as much as opening evening. 

“It takes a couple of yr, in case you embrace the time spent within the kitchen right here,” says Carbone. “It begins with simply the beginnings of coaching the workforce. You’re not cooking for anyone.”.

A wine listing constructed to maintain the desk ingesting

If the menu is seafood-driven Carbone, the wine listing is supposed to match the setting: celebratory, versatile, and never needlessly hostile to anybody who doesn’t need to drop 4 figures on Burgundy.

Douglas Kim, Grasp Sommelier and govt director of wine for MGM Resorts Worldwide, says the listing begins with a novel benefit: it “falls from Picasso,” that means the cellar and the requirements had been already robust. 

“We had form of a terrific base to begin off with,” he says. “However we form of took pages from what Carbone did at Aria.”

The objective isn’t to impress you with obscurity — it’s to maintain the desk ingesting. Kim constructed the 1,400-strong wine listing round seafood (extra whites) with out turning it into a distinct segment tome. 

“We need to be sure that everybody feels inclusive when it comes to meals and wine,” he says. “It’s all the time troublesome and form of laborious if you go to a restaurant when the bottle begins at $500… We would like individuals to drink wine right here, proper? I imply, particularly in case you’re sitting on that dock, who doesn’t need a glass of Champagne? For me, at any time when I take into consideration Vegas, it’s all the time like, let’s have one thing for everyone.”

He places it much more plainly. “When somebody opens a wine listing, it shouldn’t be overseas to them. We would like them to see some labels that they’re accustomed to.”

There’s additionally a wink-to-the-regulars layer, together with a Champagne that features like an in-the-know handshake. “We now have the Billecart-Salmon, the Cuvée 2015 Rosé, which is completely for Carbone Riviera,” says Kim. “We purchased all of it that was out there.”

The Carbone promise, waterfront version

With the mid-century glamour, the “enjoyable,” the captains and the eating room choreography, Carbone Riviera remains to be clearly Carbone, however pointed seaward, designed for a eating room that already has a built-in spectacle outdoors the home windows. It’s nonetheless the identical guide, only a totally different chapter. 

“It’s very mid-century,” says Carbone. “It has an previous world appeal, an previous world aptitude to it. And it’s simply pulling extra from the form of aquatic place of the seafood cookbook than the normal Carbone menu. However I would like individuals, actually these which can be very accustomed to the Carbone model, to go away and really feel like it’s a contemporary model of the model that we all know so nicely.”