Michelin-Starred Korean Steakhouse Cote Debuts in Las Vegas With Wagyu Omakase and a DJ Booth
Michelin-starred Korean barbecue restaurant Cote is finally making its Las Vegas debut. After much anticipation, the restaurant from Simon Kim and his restaurant group, Gracious Hospitality Management, opens Saturday, October 4, in the waterfall atrium in the Venetian. Kim is also behind New York’s wildly popular Korean fried chicken joint Coqodaq.
Kim opened the first Cote in New York’s Flatiron District in 2017 as a high-end Korean steakhouse with a focus on wagyu and dry-aged meats. Just a year later, in 2018, Cote gained its Michelin star. The restaurant combines the experience of Korean barbecue with an American steakhouse, offering smokeless tabletop grills and an acclaimed wine list curated by beverage director Victoria James. In addition to its original location in New York, Cote has expanded to Miami and Singapore.
For Kim, Cote’s expansion to Las Vegas is a homecoming — he studied hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his first restaurant manager job was with MGM. “The DNA of Las Vegas has always been present in the Cote brand,” Kim says. The restaurant’s signature dark walls and club-like atmosphere drew inspiration from Las Vegas; as soon as Cote opened in New York, Kim knew he eventually wanted to bring it to the Strip.
With this expansion, however, Kim wanted to do more than just open another Cote that would be a clone of the original in New York. “I wanted to make something that’s actually iconically Las Vegas,” he says. Kim sees the Las Vegas market as a unique opportunity for him as a restaurateur to create something more immersive than in other cities. “[In Las Vegas] we get an opportunity to really utilize the level of budget and level of creativity and level of immersiveness that is otherwise not really feasible anywhere,” he says.
Cote’s main offering — the meats — remain mostly the same as its New York counterpart. The signature Butcher’s Feast with a parade of USDA Prime and American wagyu cuts is available, priced at $88.88 a person. The set meal comes with banchan, scallion salad, gyeran-jjim (steamed egg), kimchi stew, doenjang stew, and vanilla soft serve with soy sauce caramel. A decadent steak omakase, priced at $225, made the menu, alongside a la carte cuts like dry-aged rib-eye, Cote galbi, and filet mignon. Japanese A5 wagyu is sourced from the Miyazaki, Sendai, and Kobe provinces. New dishes for the Las Vegas Cote include a Blackjack Sandwich with A5 wagyu, black truffle, and truffle aioli on milk toast.
The luxe approach continues with starters and shareables: Find a build-your-own gimbap priced at $198 with caviar, uni, and bluefin tuna, alongside Caesar salad and steak tartare. An expansive raw menu offers oysters, shrimp cocktail, caviar, and a $325 platter with caviar, sashimi, oysters, prawns, and lobster “escargot.” Any table can be rounded out with black cod served in a kimchi jjigae sauce, bibimbap, kimchi wagyu paella with kkakdugi (radish) kimchi, and somyun in a hot anchovy broth. Cote’s executive chef, David Shim, will oversee the menu at the Las Vegas location.
Cote Las Vegas’s extensive drinks menu includes cocktails, soju, beer, and wine. Try an Elvis-inspired King with bourbon, peanut, banana, sherry, and grape, or the Nectar of the Gods, a whiskey cocktail with lemon, honey, ginger, and shiso. Wine from Italy, France, Germany, California, and more is available by the bottle or glass, plus a handful of premium options starting at $75 a glass. Brooklyn Lager is on draft, while Echigo Koshihikari and Ballast Point Sculpin IPA are available by the bottle. A handful of soju options include Khee; the menu also offers a concise list of zero-proof drinks. For those looking to make it a late night, Cote offers Red Bull, Celsius, and a ginseng-based drink.
David Rockwell continued his work with Kim to design Cote’s 17,000-square-foot Las Vegas location. A high-ceilinged dining room is bathed in gold with a sculpture on the ceiling that resembles an unfurling lotus. Raised booths encircle the bar, situated in front of two columns of plants. A staircase, lit in icy blue and bright red, leads up to a glass-encased skybox that overlooks the dining room. This will be the first Cote to have a DJ box, which is just part of Kim’s plan to lean further into Vegas’s iconic clubstaurant scene. “Club restaurant has a bad reputation for some, because the food and the hospitality are lacking,” he says. “The idea is we carry on the Michelin star New York and Miami seriousness, where our beef is confidently, the best quality beef that money can buy. [It has] caviar, a wine list, our hospitality, our attention to detail — we turned up the club level without necessarily compromising.”
Las Vegas’s Cote will be the biggest one yet — Kim estimates it has cost more than his four other restaurants combined — and have a team of 150 people. While he doesn’t rule out future projects in Las Vegas, Kim says he’s now just focused on getting the restaurant open and running.
Cote opens in Las Vegas amid a difficult year for the Strip. Multiple publications have reported a slump in tourism and empty venues even during peak hours. But Kim has faith in the city and in the influx of restaurants opening now. “As a restaurateur, I love creating memorable experiences that include space usage, the colors and textures, and lights and music — that experience that surpasses hospitality and the culinary profession,” he says. “Vegas really allows that creativity to fruit.”
Cote opens on October 4 at 3355 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV 89109. Reservations are available on Sevenrooms.
