Eater Vegas’s 10 Most-Read Stories of 2024

Lobster Night at the AYCE Buffet at the Palms. | Louiie Victa A one-woman buffet-a-thon, a whole bunch of restaurant closings, and more of the year’s biggest stories As 2024 creeps to a close, Eater Vegas is looking back at the most-read stories of the year. The most popular stories came from a package all about buffets, with a buffet-a-thon and a seafood by-the-numbers making the year’s top 10 list. Stories about restaurant closures were equally popular, with swan songs for a food hall and a budget-friendly lunch spot. Finally, a story about the #Nachogate controversy rounded out the list. Here are the 10 stories that Eater Vegas readers read the most in 2024. I Ate at Every Buffet on the Las Vegas Strip in One Week The most-read story of the year was Eater Vegas editor Janna Karel’s one-woman odyssey through the buffets of the Las Vegas Strip. The buffet of buffets led to a week of dining at nine casino buffets — inclusive of all-you-can-eat lobster tails, surprises, and tummy aches. A Las Vegas Food Hall Calls It Quits Just One Year After Opening Las Vegas’s biggest dining trend over the past couple years has been the conversion of buffets and mall-style food courts into more upscale food halls — often populated by buzzy outposts from Los Angeles and New York or with celebrity-adjacent restaurants. One of the pioneering off-Strip food halls, the Sundry at Uncommons, called it quits on the food hall model just one year to the day after opening. The quick shuttering was a sticking point in Vegas’s meteoric food hall rise — in a year when Caesars Palace imported five celebrity chefs to its food hall and both the Venetian Resort and the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood announced plans to open food halls in 2025. Uncommons The Sundry food hall. The Strip’s Newest Casino Charged $21 for Six Nacho Chips — And So NachoGate Was Born It all started when an X user posted a photo of a very sad-looking plate of six tortilla chips for which he paid $21 at the Fontainebleau’s then-brand-new sports bar. The paltry chicken adobo nachos launched the hashtag #Nachogate, which ruled Vegas social media long enough for the Fontainebleau to do the unexpected — they revamped the nacho plate into something more deserving of a $21 price tag. Still, the nacho kerfuffle will live on in Vegas memory — and infamy. A Beloved Burger Spot on the Las Vegas Strip Is Closing After More Than a Decade Known for its over-the-top burgers and equally extravagant shakes, Holstein’s Shakes and Buns announced that it was closing shop at its home in the Cosmopolitan. (But fear not: Holstein’s is reopening in downtown Las Vegas next year.) 900 Lobsters, 5,000 Pounds of Shrimp: Inside the Palms’ Wild All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Photographer Louiie Victa chronicled the mind-boggling volume of lobster, shrimp, and prime rib that the AYCE Buffet at the Palms goes through on its rollicking seafood nights. Gluttonous customers work through 1,750 lobster tails per day and about 11,000 miniature desserts each month. Louiie Victa AYCE Buffet at the Palms. That Multi-Million-Dollar Adults-Only Mini Golf Course Opens This Fall The Swingers mini golf course is now open at the Mandalay Bay. But all year, readers have been eager to track updates on the 40,000-square-foot carnival-style high-tech golf course, which has courses themed to hot air balloons and clocktowers, an arcade, and pizza from New York’s Emmy Squared. Wynn Las Vegas Closes Its Gorgeous Lakeside Restaurant Sitting right on the Lake of Dreams and in view of the singing frog perched atop the waterfall, Lakeside at the Wynn had been a popular fine-dining destination for its Alaskan king crab pasta and dry-aged bigeye tuna chop. The Wynn announced that the restaurant would be replaced early next year with James Beard Award-winning chef Fabio Trabocchi’s Mediterranean restaurant Fiola Mare. Wynn Las Vegas The Lake of Dreams. [UPDATE] The Las Vegas Strip’s Best Value Restaurant Has Reopened Ocean One Bar and Grille closed for good on November 13. But just two months before management posted closure notices on the doors, the restaurant — known for its $6 lunches and three for $12 cocktails — abruptly closed for just one day with little explanation. The Codfather Fish and Chips Has Finally Reopened Over the summer, the beloved British chip shop closed, leaving Las Vegas without one of its best destinations for crispy fried fish and baskets of salty golden-brown fries. Three months later, the Codfather reopened in the larger restaurant space just four doors down from its original location. Italy’s Famous All’Antico Vinaio Sandwich Shop Opens Soon in Las Vegas The opening of All’Antico Vinaio was one of Las Vegas’s most anticipated restaurant openings in 2024. Known for its round-the-block lines in Florence, Italy and sandwiches piled with cured meats and cheeses on squares of schiacciata bread, the sa