Vegas Eats: Luke Combs’ Category 10 Storms the Strip, a $20,000 Metallica Steak and a Gastropub That Never Closes — Volume 4

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2026 — This is the Tuesday edition of Vegas Eats, our twice-weekly run through the food spots Las Vegas is actually talking about — what opened, what it serves, and whether the line is worth it. This week the Strip went country twice in five days, a steakhouse attached a signed guitar to a dinner check, and the most useful new room in the valley is a gastropub in North Las Vegas that simply never closes. Volume 4:

02 Country Just Took the Center Strip

Category 10 — Flamingo Las Vegas, 3555 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Luke Combs’ Category 10 opened October 15 in the old Margaritaville space at the Flamingo — the brand’s second location after its 2024 Nashville flagship, named for “Hurricane,” Combs’ breakout No. 1 single. The scale is the story: 34,000 square feet across three floors, seven interior bars, two stages and 800 seats, holding about 2,000 people. Hurricane Hall runs the first-floor main stage and dance floor, The Still pours bourbon on the second floor, and The Eye Rooftop stacks a DJ booth and 3,000 square feet of Strip views on top, with a walk-up Hurricane Bar serving the LINQ Promenade outside. A hat wall mixes caps from Combs’ own collection with ones sent in by fans. The menu is made-from-scratch and Appalachian-inspired: Carolina Smoked Ribs, Deep Sea Señorita Shrimp Skewers, a Smoky Mountain Chicken Sandwich and a Carolina Bar-B-Que Chicken Flatbread, plus a Hurricane cocktail and a Beautiful Crazy Sangria. Programming is already chasing the city’s calendar — WWE, F1 and NFL weekends, starting with a Buffalo Bills fan party tied to the Raiders weekend.

Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Bar — 63 CityCenter, 3716 S. Las Vegas Blvd. The Strip’s other country room answered the opening the way Vegas rooms do: with a new reason to show up in the morning. Jason Aldean’s just launched Boots & Brunch, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., built around $28 bottomless Bloody Marys and mimosas and live country music. The menu puts a Southern spin on the midday classics: Shrimp ’N’ Grits ($25) with blackened shrimp over yellow stone grits, Chicken Fried Steak ($25) under peppered country gravy, Biscuits & Gravy ($24) with house-made cheddar biscuits and a sunny-side-up egg, a Farmhouse Frittata ($19) and Blackened Salmon Tacos ($19). Two country rooms, one center-Strip weekend — Category 10 took the opening headlines, and Aldean’s took brunch.

03 The $20,000 Steak Night

Carversteak — Resorts World Las Vegas. Metallica’s Sphere residency is the loudest ticket in town this fall, and Carversteak built the pre-show dinner to match it. The limited-run Carve ’Em All menu runs on Metallica show nights — this week, Thursday October 22 and Saturday October 24 — and every dish is a song title with a plate attached: Giant Bone Fuel, wagyu beef tartare with truffled egg yolk and crispy shallots on a giant bone marrow with grilled sourdough; …And Striploin For All, a 12-ounce New York strip with a smoked peppercorn crust, potato gratin and bordelaise; Ride the Lightning Upstream, blackened crispy salmon over basil potato purée with black garlic beurre blanc; and Whiskey In the Jar, a sticky toffee pudding with whiskey caramel and pecan nougatine. The headline number, though, is the Fade to Grand package: $20,000 buys a guitar signed by all four members of Metallica with a letter of authenticity, plus The Master — a cocktail by Carver Road Hospitality beverage chief Francesco Lafranconi built on Michter’s 25-Year bourbon, Grand Marnier Quintessence, Okinawan kokuto black sugar and aromatic bitters over diamond-cut ice — served with seared foie gras finished in 24-karat gold. Casino.org did the city’s math for everyone: figure a customary $4,000 tip on top. The residency runs through March 13, 2027, so the menu has a long runway — but the photos coming out of that dining room this week say the spectacle is already working.

04 Off-Strip, On the Locals’ Clock

Render Modern Kitchen — Aliante Casino + Hotel + Spa, 7300 N. Aliante Pkwy., North Las Vegas. The rarest format in Las Vegas right now is a kitchen that never closes, and Render — open since October 1 as part of Boyd Gaming’s property-wide refresh of Aliante — serves around the clock, seven days a week. Boyd calls it a 24/7 contemporary gastropub: a central bar with a performance stage beside it, brick walls, steel and dark walnut, and street-culture artwork. The menu runs the full day without changing rooms. Breakfast is served all day — an island breakfast with Portuguese sausage or Spam, country-fried steak and eggs, a farm loco moco, strawberry shortcake French toast and buttermilk pancakes with Vermont maple syrup. The shareable run is the social-media order: poke nachos on crisp wonton chips, candied bacon with a maple bourbon dip, wagyu sliders and hand-stretched 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizzas, plus a hot honey chicken sandwich on a potato bun. Dinner plates go bigger — roasted prime rib, Cajun pasta, Scottish salmon, beef short ribs — and dessert is banana pudding and a seasonal fruit cobbler with Lappert’s vanilla ice cream. Prime rib at 4 a.m. is a format this city used to own; Render is bringing it back.

Hedary’s Mediterranean — The Gramercy, 9275 W. Russell Rd., Suite 180. Some openings are really homecomings. The Hedary family’s story starts in Beirut in 1960, moves to Texas in 1976, and reaches Las Vegas in 2004, when Frank Hedary opened a restaurant on West Sahara. This month his sister Mariz Khoury brought the name back at The Gramercy in the southwest valley, with a grand opening celebration on October 2. The room is built around an open kitchen where pita is baked fresh and served warm to the table. Start with the mezze — hummus, baba ghanoush, falafel — and order the signature Frarej, baked chicken with potatoes, carrots, garlic and lemon; a Dinner for Two covers the broader menu if the table wants the full tour. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. In a month of celebrity square footage, this is the opposite bet: a family table, a familiar name, and a neighborhood that remembered it.

Almond & Oat — shareDOWNTOWN, 1300 S. Casino Center Blvd., Arts District. The morning end of the locals’ day now has a new anchor downtown. Almond & Oat, the coffee bar from Kyle Cunningham and the team behind The Coffee Class, opened its third Las Vegas café inside shareDOWNTOWN in the Arts District — nearly 1,400 square feet, more than 30 seats, open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The program is oat-milk-forward and vegan-friendly, built on specialty coffee and house-made syrups: a Honey Sea Salt Latte, an Oatmeal Cookie Latte, a scratch-made Horchata Latte and a Banana Matcha, with pastries and savory items alongside. The brand started in Henderson in 2023 and added a southwest Las Vegas café in December 2025; the Arts District room is the one that puts it on the First Friday map.

05 The Previously Ruling

The Previously ruling: The Strip’s loudest food story this week is a format fight — two country rooms trading openings and brunches on the same blocks, and a steakhouse selling dinner with a $20,000 guitar attached. But the meals Las Vegas will still be eating in six months are the locals’ ones: a 24-hour gastropub in North Las Vegas, a Lebanese family name back on Russell Road, and a 7 a.m. coffee bar in the Arts District. Spectacle books the weekend; the locals’ clock books the year. Volume 5 lands Friday.