13 Best Restaurants in Paradise Road and the East Side, Las Vegas

If you're looking for a type of place where the waitress calls you "honey," this locals' diner for more than 35 years has an old-fashioned, family-owned vibe. The food is better than most nearby chain places, serving up hearty Mexican specialties, fruit-topped pancakes and waffles, and senior specials. Blueberry Hill has four locations, two of them near each other on the East Side, a couple of miles apart on Flamingo Road. This one is closest to both the Strip and UNLV and is open 24 hours a day.

Like time-traveling to Vegas’s vintage days when upscale restaurants were quiet and atmospheric, venerable Ferraro’s features a dark and decidedly romantic dining room with candles on every table, and a pricey menu stocked with steaks, fresh-made pastas, and Mediterranean-style seafood. Around since 1985 and in this location since 2009, this fine Italian eatery offers a cheaper happy hour of small plates nightly from 5 to 7 pm and bigger feasts throughout the evening. Among the popular entrées not found at most Italian restaurants are the popular stewed rabbit with mushrooms served over polenta, and tripe served in a spicy tomato sauce. And you can’t beat the signature veal osso buco.

As the name suggests, this bistro focuses on small plates that encourage sharing and camaraderie, especially when it's the daily happy hour and/or paired with Firefly's signature sangrias or mojitos, both available by the glass or pitcher. The rough rule of thumb is for each person to order two plates, drawn from four categories: Chilled, Hot, Seafood, or Meat & Poultry. The range of choices is head-spinning, from beet salad and stuffed dates to empanadas, steamed mussels, and even manchego mac & cheese. In 2023, the original location moved a mile or so to a larger building (which some may remember as McCormick & Schmick's) on the edge of the Hughes Center office park. The atmosphere is completely different: plenty of windows and light paint replacing the dark and romantic, folk-art plastered original. There is also a second Firefly in Southwest Las Vegas (7355 S. Buffalo Drive).

There will be no quiet conversations here, just a loud dose of kitsch at this gargantuan offshoot of Munich's most famous brewery. Pair your beer with hearty Bavarian classics, including Schnitzel with mushroom sauce, and marinated pot roast with wine sauce and red cabbage, or updated dishes such as chicken schnitzel salad or vegan frankfurters. For dessert, try apple strudel or Black Forest chocolate cake.The interior beer garden can make you feel like a tourist within a tourist town. As you down a brew in those notorious liter mugs, the drinking contests and strolling musicians somehow become more and more agreeable on too-hot Vegas evenings. Just save room for ... more beer.

The surrounding neighborhood isn't great, so don't walk here from the Paradise Road hotels—but also don't be deterred from this clean and solid Indian establishment, which has weathered the neighborhood's many changes. The Palace's famed all-you-can-eat lunch buffet runs from 11:30 to 3, and the evening menu is a refuge for conventioneers who aren't on an expense account. The menu is packed with tandoori delicacies, crispy rice-crepe dosa, and some 20 vegetarian choices, such as Veg Kolhapuri, a blend of vegetables in a South Indian curry.

The vibe is spelled out in the name of this sprawling indoor-outdoor casual Italian space from Los Angeles restaurateur Nick Mathers. The versatile menu follows the cues of the day, from "green eggs" or avacado toast at brunch to creative appetizers or full entrees in the evening. While a DJ spins beneath a disco ball, you can try the deceptively complex pizzas and salads or delve into more ambitious fare like lobster pasta or branzino. It's a 300-seater with three bars; the atmosphere changes from the bar-centric lounge near the front entry to "beachside" near the Virgin Las Vegas pool area with a lot of low-slung seating to encourage sociability.  

This chain of zero-ambience fast-food eateries serves Hawaiian-style barbecue to a heavily Hawaiian clientele (Las Vegas is known as the "ninth island" to Hawaiians). The plate lunch is the draw here, and considering that it comes with two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad (along with whatever protein you'd like; the choices naturally include Spam), it's no surprise that there are so many guys walking around calling themselves the Big Kahuna. The former Taco Bell on Maryland was one of the first of now many locations in the Valley.

Javier Barajas, the congenial owner and host of this colorful cantina group, named this restaurant after his birthplace in Mexico, where he learned to cook while growing up in the culinary capital of Michoacán. Don't miss such outstanding specialties as the carnitas or cabrito birria de chivo (roasted goat with red mole sauce). Guacamole is made tableside, and the flan is a silken wonder. There's no reason to stick to Mexican-restaurant basics when the menu is so expansive—the lunch menu alone offers 37 choices. This local success story began in 1990 and now boasts three other locations—in Henderson, Summerlin, and in the Palace Station casino—but the original is a singular experience: a dense labyrinth of rooms (with a capacity of around 300) with arched ceilings and brightly colored walls covered in bric-a-brac, and table visits from strolling mariachis.

Fans of the bygone Pink Taco (and then, for a spell, Casa Calavera) will smile in recognition when they see its hotel-operated replacement's layout is much the same, including the convivial center bar; however, as the name change would signal, the decor and atmosphere are subtly more sophisticated now. Expanded outdoor patio seating against the backdrop of the pool area gives it a cool vibe for the daily 5–6 pm happy hour. The tequila menu is more expansive than the food side, which trims things down to creative versions of tacos and burritos with flourishes such as roasted pineapple or kimchi red onions. Every week brings Taco Tuesday's $5 tacos, and a there's a Fiesta Brunch on Saturday and Sunday.

Feel like a pampered pasha as belly dancers shake it up in a cozy Middle Eastern–style "tent" with a fabric-covered ceiling and eye-catching mosaics. The prix-fixe feast is a six-course affair that includes Moroccan-spiced shrimp scampi, a vegetable sampler, lentil soup, beef kabob, chicken with couscous and vegetables, and the tasty dessert b'stilla, which is baked phyllo dough layered with fruit. Moroccan and Lebanese wines flow freely in this upbeat spot, where servers wear Moroccan robes and generations of visitors have been invited to join the belly dancers if they feel the urge. Factor in the short walking distance to convention facilities, and it's no mystery why this has become one of Las Vegas' longest-tenured restaurants (though, in a young city, that means 1979). A significant remodel has kept the restaurant in its time-honored location but with welcome upgrades. 

Executive chef Nobu Matsuhisa helped fuel the popularity of the original Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, so it would have just seemed wrong for the restaurant not to carry over when the hotel transitioned into Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Although there's now a Nobu restaurant at Paris Las Vegas and an entire Nobu sub-hotel within Caesars Palace, this one reflects the decor and menu of the Manhattan Nobu original, with bamboo and wood accents. But those who feel it's somehow a little different now are correct: the decor was spruced up during the hotel's remodeling, and there's a new outdoor space overlooking the pool. The menu comprises small- or moderate-size plates, making Nobu perfect for sharing but also an easy place to drop a wad of cash (as all those artful food presentations add up). Entrées might include the famous black cod with miso, yellowtail tartare with caviar, rock shrimp tempura, and Maine lobster with wasabi-pepper sauce. If you're feeling brave (and flush), opt for the omakase multi-course tasting menu, and let the chef make the decisions for you.

Brothers David and Michael Morton, restaurateurs whose father founded the Morton's The Steakhouse chain back in the day, maintain the tradition at the new Virgin Hotels. This one is quite a bit different than their MB Steak, dividing its seating between the front bar with a bit of a retro vibe and its rear dining room. The former is a little more casual—opening to the casino floor and punctuated with video screens—yet in a way more gorgeous, thanks to a giant acrylic lighting sculpture overhead, which changes colors every so often. The menu still offers more than a half-dozen beef choices including wagyu, as well as the 32-ounce tomahawk or double porterhouse steaks for two. Roast chicken, scallops, or Alaskan king crab pasta are options for the non-beef eaters.

Las Vegas has very few restaurants left from the early 1980s, and none with the legend of Piero's. Located just across the street from the convention center for all but five of those years, Piero's is a blend of "expense account joint" and a classic Vegas mecca for those fascinated by the bygone mob era, having hosted the actual characters depicted in Casino and later serving as a filming site for the movie itself. Little set decoration was needed in the meandering restaurant full of nooks and crannies, low ceilings, and dark paneling with two bars serving giant martinis in the middle of the action. And, oh yes, there's food: The basics are done with detail and served on huge platters, from the osso buco (off menu but usually a special) to pastas such as the "Sunday Gravy" (rigatoni with both meatballs and Italian sausage).