8 of the best new restaurants to try in Chinatown Vegas

Joe Muscaglione, co-owner of ShangHai Taste, the unofficial mayor of Chinatown Vegas and likely the neighborhood’s most important chronicler and booster through his ChinatownVegas.com, was walking by Aburiya Raku, the superlative Japanese restaurant that had debuted about a year earlier in spring 2008 in a strip mall on Spring Mountain Road.

“There were limos outside the restaurant,” Muscaglione recalled over a recent hot pot lunch in the Chinatown Plaza. “I thought, ‘This place has really taken off,’ and then something just clicked. I thought about the popularity of Chinatown in San Francisco, and I thought the same thing could happen in Chinatown here.”

And so it has.

Chinatown lies on or around a 3-mile-or-so stretch of Spring Mountain Road, from just west of the Strip heading west to South Rainbow Boulevard. Today, Chinatown has more than 250 restaurants, mostly Asian, Muscaglione said, adding that at least 70 percent of the visitors to the area are there for food and drink.

And no less a figure than David Chang, one of the most important chefs of the 21st century, declared in 2024 that the best Chinese food in the U.S. is in Vegas.

To celebrate the Lunar New Year that begins Feb. 17, we’re sharing some new and newish Chinatown restaurants, a lucky eight in all, to try during the Year of the Horse.

Ellie’s Chinese Restaurant

This family-owned spot mainly serves Cantonese food, with occasional detours to other Chinese traditions. Start with the lightly baked barbecued pork buns: a soft, gently flaky exterior sheltering a cache of savory filling. The buns feel more like pastry than typical versions. Stir-fried rice rolls are swaddled in the smoky umami of XO sauce. Rich, savory boiled beef hums with the numbing, tingling ma-la heat of Sichuan peppercorn. A signature dish features a dome of crisp fried rice noodles that is sliced open to reveal a stir-fry of noodles, proteins and vegetables.

5740 W. Spring Mountain Road

Gastropub Nisei Bar & Grill

An American gastropub links arms with a Japanese izakaya (tavern) at Gastropub Nisei, which opened late last September in the former District One Kitchen & Bar. The restaurant is a project from 5LV Hospitality and highly regarded chef Winston Matsuuchi, who also created the outstanding Omakase Kyara Sake Bar on South Jones Boulevard near West Sunset Road. Among the top performers: kalbi tacos, a sando layering a marinated soft-boiled ajitama egg and Italian-inspired wagyu meatballs served atop a tangle of ra-pasta (ramen pasta).

3400 S. Jones Blvd., Suite 8, gpnvegas.com

Kao Gang

The brand-new restaurant occupies a small storefront in the same plaza as Honey Pig Korean BBQ and Tous les Jours Café and bakery. Tom yum goong, a familiar Thai standard, is perfectly rendered: fragrant, spicy, sour, packed with shrimp and fresh herbs. Papaya salad can be ordered Laotian style — spicier and more boldly flavored than its Thai-style cousin and scattered with cracked crab. Pad see ew, another Thai mainstay, mingles a nicely sweet-savory sauce and the requisite chewiness of flat rice noodles. Kao Gang also offers an express menu with rice and a choice of one or two sides.

4725 W. Spring Mountain Road, Suite I, kaogangthai.com

Lullabar Thai Fusion & Izakaya

Lullabar combines Isan flavors from northern Thailand with Japanese izakaya small plates — while also embracing Vegas nightlife with live music and hours that run to 6 a.m on weekends. Lunch (Thursdays through Sundays) is quieter, although the mural of Thai and Japanese demons is striking at any hour. Freshly made steamed chicken and shrimp dumplings feature delicate wrappers. Tamarind shrimp are prepared so they’re easily pulled from sticky-sweet shells. The standout? Small clams in a deeply savory, spicy basil broth. Lulla means “joy” in Thai.

3990 Schiff Drive, lullabar-lv.com

Oden Spicy Hot Pot

Build-your-own hot pot stars at this sibling of the Oden Spicy Hot Pot in Riverside, California. You grab a bowl, then fill it at the toppings bar with the items you want in the broth. You can also mix your own dipping sauce for meats, vegetables and other ingredients cooked in the broth. There are four broths to choose from, including spicy beef broth and tomato beef broth. Afterward, slurp up the soup. The hot pot is assembled in the kitchen, then served, instead of diners adding toppings at will to a tabletop cooker. The hot pot price varies by the weight of the toppings.

4525 W. Spring Mountain Road, Suite 103, @odenhotpotusa on Instagram

Pop Café

Although Chinatown mainly showcases Asian cuisines, there are other food and drink spots: fine French food at Partage, the riotous tropical kitsch of Golden Tiki, New American dishes with international grace notes at Sparrow + Wolf, the new Claw World arcade with claw games and ice cream cheeseburgers. Add Pop Café to the list. Pop is a funky mashup of matcha drinks, hojicha lattes made with roasted green tea powder, and pizzas like a prosciutto and burrata kumo with a light crust sporting a blistered cornice (kumo means “cloud” in Japanese).

3910 W. Spring Mountain Road, pop-cafe.square.site

Sen Thai Noodle

You might miss Sen Thai Noodle the first time — it occupies the street-facing side of a mini-storage building. But the unprepossessing exterior hides a charming foyer — displays of Thai art, products and cooking vessels — that leads to a dining room with corrugated wainscoting, wood tables and a brightly chalked listing (in Thai and English) of chef’s recommended dishes. A ground chicken larb salad refreshingly balances savory, sour and spicy. Ground pork and shrimp dumplings wet their bottoms in bracing chili vinegar. Panang curry is creamy, gently sweet and mildly spicy.

3380 Arville St., Suites C and D, senthainoodlelv.com

Shoo Loong Kan Hot Pot

Shoo Loong Kan is one of several U.S. outposts of the hot pot chain that originated in 2014 in Sichuan Province in southwest China. The restaurant takes its name — “Little Dragon Ridge” in Chinese — from a district in Chongqing, once part of Sichuan but now a separate municipality. Broths and toppings are ordered via tablet; dipping sauces are mixed at the sauce bar. A recent lunch features a tabletop cooker divided between beef tallow broth tingling with ma-la spiciness and an excellent tom yum broth. Egg noodles, fish roe balls, pork belly and more slide into the hot pot.

4215 W. Spring Mountain Road, Suite B203, shooloongkan.us

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.