Taste

Sahara Las Vegas’ Chickie’s & Pete’s has all the sports bar food and then some

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Chickie’s & Pete’s Ultimate Crab Fries, Classic Philly Cheesesteak, warm lobster rolls, Riverboat Clams and Flyin’ Hawaiian and French & Tonic cocktails
Photo: Wade Vandervort

Historically, our casinos have had no need for the prototypical sports bar. If you were watching a game on the Strip, you were likely betting on it, so the sportsbook and its hot dog cart or deli counter would suffice. If you’re local, you’d be at your favorite tavern down the street watching the football team for which you rooted before you moved to Vegas.

Things change. Even before Vegas got its own major league teams, the Strip had grown into a sports mecca that required bigger, better books and different kinds of venues supplying food and drinks to fuel the fun. Now, the majority of megaresorts offer at least one sports bar; it seems to have replaced the old-school 24-hour coffee shop in the casino portfolio blueprint.

That doesn’t mean locals are leaving their pubs and hitting the Strip to watch the Golden Knights and the Raiders on TV. But we could. And if you want to try, you might not find a better spot than Chickie’s & Pete’s, the Philadelphia transplant recently opened at the Sahara.

First, the renovated Sahara is easily accessible and has free parking. Second, the sports bar space is completely unrecognizable from the previous, unremarkably designed burger joint. It now has an open and energized atmosphere, with lots of bar seating and big, comfy booths. Also, you can bet from inside the restaurant.

Most importantly, the menu hits hard with every bar food favorite imaginable and adds signature seafood offerings to the mix. Onion rings, nachos, wings, burgers, pizza, Buffalo chicken or chicken Parm sandwiches, all are well-represented here. If it’s hard to choose, you didn’t bring enough friends for this watch party.

The “world famous” crab fries ($9) are excellent crinkle cuts with Old Bay-esque seasoning and superior cheese sauce for dipping. You can get them with crab meat, cheese and aioli ($25) or with buttery lobster ($29), but the basic ones are addictive enough, so be careful.

For a Philly joint, the Chickie’s & Pete’s cheesesteak ($17) is a bit pedestrian, but if you’re wild you can get one with lobster on top ($27). Crispy thin-crust pizzas get seafood toppings too, like Lisa’s Blonde Lobster Pie ($39), a great centerpiece for your table.

The sandwich selection goes on forever, from roast pork ($15) to warm or chilled lobster rolls ($29). The Ultimate Tailgate Burger ($27) drops a crabcake atop a thick beef patty with melty American cheese, and it works. And the expansive, rotating beer selection also boasts the full spectrum of flavors, including some favorite local brews like Bad Beat’s A Gose Has No Name, Banger Brewing’s Morning Joe and Able Baker’s Excited State German pilsner.

You can go a lot of different ways at Chickie’s & Pete’s, but one of the best is to share an order of fries and the Crabfeast, a market-price feast including a two-pound Dungeness crab, a pound of snow crab legs and three East Coast blue claw crabs. This is the bar food experience that made this place famous, and it tastes just as great alongside a Las Vegas hockey or football game.

CHICKIE’S & PETE’S Sahara, 702-761-8070. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sunday, 9:30 a.m.-10 p.m.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of managing editor at Las Vegas Weekly ...

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