Immersive restaurant will allow diners to dive ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’

A new fine dining restaurant at the arts and entertainment complex Area15 promises to take customers under the sea — no scuba diving gear necessary.

Lost Spirits Distillery said its Jules Verne-inspired “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” restaurant will offer guests a 16-course dining experience located at its Area15 tasting room. The immersive experience is expected to open March 12, according to a news release.

“It is an honor and pleasure to announce this very special space,” Lost Spirits creator and CEO Bryan Davis said in a statement. “Immersive dining experiences, at this level, are so few and far between that we are delighted to add one to the growing number of options in Las Vegas.”

Las Vegas has been a beacon of themed restaurants since the 1990s with concepts like the former Dive! restaurant that was spearheaded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steve Wynn. Lost Spirits’ concept is reminiscent of that era, but elevated to the level of immersive theatre.

The restaurant will only seat 12 people and is limited to weekend reservations only.

Meals will be prepared by Chef Taylor Persh and include on-theme dishes like uni crème brûlée and nori bonbons.

Besides the plate, visitors can enjoy the dining room’s decor inspired by French illusionist Georges Méliès and performances within Lost Spirits that includes acrobats, burlesque performers, jazz singers and clowns.

A $240 per-person reservation covers cocktail pairings, admission to Lost Spirits and Area15 and gratuity, according to the website.

Davis told the Review-Journal he wanted the fine dining experience to go beyond satiating the palate by also incorporating themes of the performance, and the book it’s inspired by, into the meal.

“The book is centered around the extraordinary cuisine and the incredible luxury of (the characters’) prison,” Davis said. “If you’re getting this $240 dinner you clearly have spending power. You can do something this extravagant, right? But at the same time, we’re all prisoners to the government regulation that we run our businesses under. And so, it’s sort of like this fun, playing with the idea of our pampered prisoner lives.”

Persh and Davis say the concept is a sequel to its Los Angeles-based Fish or Flesh restaurant, a former dining experience from Lost Spirits that played up a science fiction theme based on the novel “The Island of Doctor Moreau” by H.G. Wells.

“As a chef who eats, drinks, and sleeps fine dining, the hardest part of creating a new restaurant is imagining what I am going to do that hasn’t been done before,” Persh said in a statement. “I’m delighted that in all my research, I have never seen anything quite like this experience, outside of our former restaurant Fish or Flesh in Los Angeles.”

McKenna Ross is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Contact her at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.