Yahoo Finance At Formula 1 Las Vegas, celebrity chefs will feed you for $11,000
By Hannah Elliott
(Bloomberg) — For three days in November, Las Vegas will be the center of the food universe.
Alain Ducasse, Mario Carbone, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Masaharu Morimoto, José Andrés, Christina Tosi, Rainer Becker, Bryan and Michael Voltaggio, David Chang, and Michael Mina are each creating unique menus of signature dishes for the new Bellagio Fountain Club during the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix on Nov. 16-18. The club, which sits immediately trackside along the main straight of the 3.8-mile F1 circuit, will provide expansive views during the race and will host the three podium finishers after the race for interviews and celebration.
Tickets, which are all-inclusive for the race’s duration, cost $11,247 per person. Packages for the temporary club include three-day event tickets; food, beverages and entertainment in the club space; and access to book accommodations separately at MGM Resorts’ portfolio of rooms and suites, which are within walking distance.
A pop-up space that was erected over roughly three months, the club sits in front of the glittering water jets immortalized in Ocean’s 11 and offers views of the fountain and the racing. At a total space of nearly 173,000 square feet, the size of three football fields, it will accommodate 3,600 ticket holders, including those in the adjacent grandstand and stage built along the Las Vegas Strip. After the race, the top three drivers will head to the winner’s stage at the Fountain Club for post-race interviews, so fans in the club will be able to watch closely.
“Vegas always has a lot of energy, but Formula 1 is even more perfect for Vegas because it's a night race, so it's gonna be fun,” says Vongerichten. The F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023 will start at 10 p.m. local time. “It's very exciting to see everybody coming together—coming up with [their own] menu—and seeing friends from all over the world,” Vongerichten adds. “I love these type of events.”
Hospitality on Tap
Some local residents have complained about street closures during construction of the race circuit, which has stymied traffic and restricted views and access along the Strip. The track winds through the center of town and features a long stretch where drivers can reach speeds of more than 210 mph.
The road immediately in front of the Fountain Club has remained open during construction, with a few lanes blocked at times, a Bellagio spokesperson confirms. Executives at MGM Resorts International, which owns the Bellagio, view the non-permanent club and any associated growing pains as an additional notch in the belt of a tourist-driven city that’s rapidly becoming a global sporting—and sports-betting—capital.
The Vegas Golden Knights professional hockey team debuted in 2017. Three years later, the Raiders NFL team relocated from Oakland, California, to be followed as soon as 2028 by the Oakland Athletics baseball team. The Wynn Las Vegas hotel is holding a high-end car show on the weekend preceding the F1 race. And in February, Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, will host Super Bowl LVIII, the first football classic held in Nevada. Paradise sits next to Las Vegas and its boundaries incorporate much of the Strip.
“Las Vegas continues to solidify its position as a sports destination," says Andrew Lanzino, vice president of citywide events at MGM Resorts and one of the leaders working to develop the Bellagio Fountain Club. “Between football, hockey and basketball, we're starting to be an amazing travel destination for sports fans all over the world, and F1 is extremely complimentary to that.”
Las Vegas is well-suited to such events. The hospitality and retail infrastructure already services hundreds of thousands of people on any given day. Many other F1 locations are located in areas removed from the cities touted as hosts. The Circuit of the Americas track used for the Austin Grand Prix, for instance, sits 20 miles from the Texas capital’s center; the Miami Grand Prix track is in Miami Gardens, Florida, 15 miles outside Miami. Silverstone Circuit, the home of the British GP, is in rural England.
For the crew that developed the Bellagio Fountain Club, the Grand Prix will be just another weekend in Vegas.
“You’ll have some cities or races where this is something that they have to really logistically plan for, but the city of Las Vegas, from an infrastructure standpoint, logistically, does this every single weekend,” Lanzino says. The city sells an estimated 12 million show tickets annually. “We just want make sure the experience is great for all of us. I want this to become a staple in the F1 schedule, like Monaco—where every year people plan their calendar around coming to Vegas for Formula 1.”
What’s on the Menu
The chefs themselves will each will be on site at the Fountain Club, rotating during the three days of the Grand Prix and introducing new menus daily. Vongerichten, who owns restaurants in Miami Beach, Las Vegas, London, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and São Paulo, will serve such variations of his French-Thai cuisine as egg toast and caviar, prime beef and chocolate cake.
“It’s going to be a lot of eating and drinking and the smell of gasoline, the whole thing mixed together,” says Vongerichten, a Frenchman who has served similar meals at the Grand Prix in Singapore. He watched his first F1 race as a child in Monaco. “I’m a big fan of the sport.”
Mina, whose Mina Group includes dozens of restaurants nationwide, including Bourbon Steak Los Angeles and Sorelle in Charleston, South Carolina, will serve a decadent parfait with layers of potato pancake, deviled eggs, smoked salmon, crème fraiche and caviar on top. He’ll also serve a version of lobster pot pie, a favorite of Mina acolytes who have followed him since he started developing his business in San Francisco more than two decades ago.
“It’s a brandied-lobster cream filled with baby vegetables, Morel mushrooms and, of course, plenty of lobster, then topped with a flaky pastry crust,” Mina said in an email. “There will be a few more surprises on the menu that we’re cooking up. I can’t wait for people to experience it.”
Chang, the founder of the Momofuku restaurant group and a self-described Lewis Hamilton fan, will offer the type of food expected at a sporting event— a burger, fried chicken, a tuna hand roll—but done his way, he said via email. The burger will have foie gras, the fried chicken will come with caviar, the tuna will be bracingly fresh. It all must be easy to eat by hand, for efficiency’s sake.
“Simplicity is key,” he said. “We're trying to make something tasty and quick so people can get back to watching the race.”
Guests can book Club packages by calling MGM Resorts’ Luxury Travel Services team at 1-866-931-7117.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
