When Tao Las Vegas opens September 22 in the Venetian, both gourmands and party folk will have reasons to rejoice. Well known in New York City for its pan-Asian cuisine and giant Buddha, the restaurant's first non-Manhattan branch will also have a lounge and nightclub. Well, what else would you expect for a reported $20 million budget?
No surprise, the entire operation will have an Asian theme, says Noah Tepperberg, who with Jason Strauss, operating partner Louis Abin, and Marc Packer and Richard Wolf, owners of the original Tao, will be running the show. Tepperberg and Strauss are the wunderkinds behind Marquee, a mega-nightspot in New York, and who have done promotions for Jet East, which itself will be making its presence felt across the street at the Mirage on New Year's Eve.
Upon entering the nightclub upstairs from the restaurant, visitors will see the Monk Bar, decorated with a wall of small statues and candles. "About 300 hand-carved monks are on a boat from Thailand as we speak," says Tepperberg. The other eye-catching drama will be "performance vignettes," in a space set aside for performance artists in costumes and makeup. Like the club and lounge, the performers will change "by the season ... by the night ... by the theme."
That mutability is a strategy common to the New York club scene, says Tepperberg.
"We believe in change, and the nightclub and lounge specifically will be—I don't want to say renovated—but they will be refreshed every couple of months," he explains. "We'll remove the banquettes and put in new ones, remove the tables and put in new ones, change the lighting structure, change the seating layout. Those are things we'll do every so often to keep the people coming back because there's something different going on."
That ability to change will also prove valuable in a town that relies so heavily on conventions. The entire facility will be available to be rented out, and will feature multimedia functions for corporate events, with 15 or 20 high-speed Internet connections and a half a dozen large screens that can either be projected upon, connected to DVD players or—gulp—be used for PowerPoint presentations.
The lounge, also upstairs from the restaurant, will cover 4,000 square feet, the club itself, 10,000. Contrary to reports elsewhere, Tepperberg says the proper names are the Lounge at Tao (pronounced Dao) and the Nightclub at Tao. Terms such as the Temple and Emperor's Ballroom will only be used in-house, when private events will necessitate breaking the large spaces up. The restaurant's proper name is the Asian Bistro.
There will be 56 tables and four bars which, if laid end to end, would stretch 120 feet. That's not counting the service bars and five waitress and buser stations, so cocktail servers won't have to run too far to get fresh ice, mixers or fruit.
Yes, fruit.
As part of its European bottle service, both the lounge and nightclub will offer a range of fruit—strawberries, limes, lemons and oranges—and chocolate if you order champagne. Prices will start at between $295 and $300 for Absolut and go up to $895 for Cristal.
The main room has a large dance area with tables right on the floor. "Someone with a table in that part of the club is truly right in the middle of the action," says Tepperberg.
The tables themselves will vary in size, able to handle parties of four to six or 10-15. The banquettes have been built with 10-inch-wide cushions behind them so that guests can perch on the top, the better to see the crowd. Similarly, the skyboxes and railings are made of glass, giving the open-air design an even greater sense of space. "The whole design is really voyeuristic; people can truly see each other from wherever. People can see almost the whole club from any point in the room," says Tepperberg.
For those who have things they'd rather hide from sight, such as coats and purses, the banquettes have drawers built into their bottoms.
The skyboxes, on the second mezzanine level, will have all the usual accoutrements found at other Vegas clubs, with one exception: push-button espresso machines.
The dress code will be fashionable for the club but less formal in the lounge. As well, there will be different table reservation policies, with the lounge not requiring bottle service at tables every night, as opposed to the nightclub. For those not wanting to drop a large wad of cash, there are still those four bars.
"It's a bottle-service club in essence, but if you don't have a table reservation, you can go there and have a great night," says Tepperberg. "You're not stuck at a bar in the corner. There's a bar right overlooking the main dance room. There's also a giant, odd, square-shaped bar right in the middle of the nightclub. There's a bar right when you walk in. We really believe that when someone gets to a nightclub, they don't want to walk through a crowded club just to get to the bar."
Late-night dining will also be available in the lounge, drawing on the expertise of Chef Sam Hazen.
Cover charges are expected to be $20 Fridays and Saturdays, with local women allowed in free before midnight. Tepperberg says he and his partners are still working on prices for other nights, such as Thursdays and Sundays.
"Between the five owners, we have 50 years of experience. We've really taken everything we've learned throughout the world at all our other businesses and put all of the bright ideas into this one place. That's why we think it's the perfect nightclub."