Vetri Cucina’s reopening at Palms almost didn’t happen

To Strip or not to Strip? If that is the question, the answer for chef Marc Vetri was always to keep his chef coat on — off the Strip.

Over the years, the chef received multiple offers to open a Strip outpost of his Vetri Cucina in Philadelphia, often called one of the most influential Italian restaurants in America. But when the James Beard Award winner finally debuted in Las Vegas, in November 2018, it was on the 56th floor of the Palms, west of the Strip.

After being closed since March 2020 because of the pandemic — and after some uncertainty about whether it would even reopen — Vetri Cucina is resuming service Wednesday.

The other morning, as he glanced out the windows of the restaurant, across lowland warehouses to the towers of the Strip, Vetri offered a cheerful, Us vs. Them scrappiness.

“It reminds me of Philadelphia and New York. Philadelphia restaurants are as wonderful as New York restaurants, but it was always kind of looked at as secondary. That’s New York,” he said, pointing to the Strip, “and we’re over here, right next to it, in Philadelphia, doing our thing.”

At first, it was no

In late 2021, it didn’t look like Vetri was going to do his thing again in Vegas. The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians was finalizing its purchase of the Palms, and the new owners had decided to replace Vetri Cucina, the chef said.

“We were hoping to reopen. We were only open 16 months before we had to close, and the last three months we were rocking and really starting to make a name for ourselves.”

The chef touched on especially personal points of connection at Vetri Cucina: the wood floors he selected, the golden chandelier he designed, the same water glasses and flatware as at Vetri in Philadelphia. “20 Faces of Philadelphia Greatness,” a large-scale painting by Philadelphia artist Timothy Curtis, hangs on one wall. On the reverse, it’s inscribed to Vetri.

“I was very sad when they said no about reopening.”

A casual sibling across town

But this past spring, a reprieve: Palms officials had decided Vetri Cucina would return after all.

And in important ways, the restaurant remains as it ever was: the same look, a seasonally changing menu in which alta and rustica cooking creatively commune, the splendid vistas that enhance the experience of the plate, not prop it up (as at so many rooms with a view).

In summer 2020, the chef opened Osteria Fiorella, an expanded version of his Fiorella pasta bar in Philadelphia, at Red Rock Resort in Summerlin. Now, with Vetri Cucina reopening at the Palms, the two restaurants form a culinary complement, much as the chef’s two restaurants do in the mother city.

“There’s Vetri on one side of town, more formal, and Osteria, more casual, on the other side of town,” the chef said.

That balance works for him in a way the lights of Las Vegas Boulevard South would not. “I’m right where I belong. I’m always on the outside looking in. That’s my mojo; that’s my mantra. Not for nothing.”

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ItsJLW on Twitter.