Drink Las Vegas Festival Opens With a Night of Tastings Under the Stars

^{Aria's pool terrace at Drink Las Vegas, where VIP ticket holders gathered before descending into the festival. (Photo: Vanessa Alves-Johnson / Casinos.com)}

LAS VEGAS – Drink Las Vegas kicked off at the Aria Thursday night, setting the tone for a busy weekend of culinary royalty on the Strip. The first-of-its-kind food and beverage festival featured a strong roster of the country’s top chefs, including Wolfgang Puck, Roy Choi, and Michael Mina. The culinary talent was also joined by celebrities including Shaquille O’Neal, Sammy Hagar, Sylvester Stallone, and even Johnny Depp.

This event, held Sept. 24 to 27, featured 4 days of gourmet tasting events at some of MGM’s most luxurious resorts, including Aria, Bellagio, Park MGM, and the Cosmopolitan. You could dine with Sylvester Stallone at Carbone Rivera on Saturday or have a wine tasting with one of the country’s best sommeliers – there were all sorts of unique experiences to be had.

The event also came on the heels of Revelry, another food-and-beverage festival that launched the weekend prior at the Wynn with a similar tasting setup.

Going in, I figured this would be a fairly standard food festival: wander around, try some bites, call it a night. But the setting and the level of chef talent around really elevated the whole experience. I tried things I never imagined sampling in one sitting: mochi fritters, charred octopus, wagyu, panna cotta with caviar… the list goes on! You're living the hedonistic experience for about four hours straight, and then the after-parties continue it with even more food and more drinks. 

 I spent the first two nights orienting myself in the 20+ food booths across Aria’s pool complex while wining and dining my way around all there was to explore. This adventure took me to the pre-party, poolside tasting events, and after-party, with no shortage of chefs and attendees who had just as much fun as I did.

These truly challenge you – how much food can you eat and drink in just a few hours before you get full or run out of hands to carry cocktails? The festival delivered on its promises to show off the best of the best of dining and drinking, and it was one you had to be there to experience to fully appreciate. But if you weren’t there, here's the full recap of the first two nights and everything you missed.

Easing Into the Night, VIP Style

The night started for me at the Aria, with the House of Pernod lounge event to welcome guests in before doors open for the Signature Tasting event at the pool.

I was invited into this luxurious space, a bar pop-up featuring a few brand activations and complimentary spirits to sip on. There were oysters from Jefferson's Ocean, tequila samples from Código 1530, and a Perrier-Jouët setup with rosé and Blanc de Blancs champagne for anyone who wanted it. Servers were running around passing out samples of signature bites from Gymkhana and Catch nearby.

This happened to be in the same spot where the high-class French-Mediterranean restaurant Cathedrale was just about a year ago. It shut down in May 2025, which is a bit sad considering how gorgeous the space is. Probably some tough competition from the Asian seafood restaurant Catch right next door. 

The lounge featured a few different brand pop-ups scattered around, including custom-branded hats, engraved keychains, and bracelets. It was certainly a proper VIP warmup and welcome before the night even really started.

Boozy Bites, Here We Come!

After the soirée at House of Pernod, it was time to head to the signature tasting at the pool. We made our way up the promenade toward the elevator, catching the smell of delicious pastries from the patisserie along the way.

What greeted us at 7:15 pm was a long, long line that turned out to be for VIP entry into the festival. It shouldn't have been much of a surprise, considering VIP was sold out while general admission tickets were still available. The ticket prices ranged from $250 to $300 per event, and VIP tickets provided early access and a special seating area. Honestly, the line looked more like a guest list line at a nightclub than something for a food festival, but it didn’t take long at all to get inside.

VIP holders were led into a special terrace lounge area and treated to drinks from Bar Madonna, based in Brooklyn, New York. We were able to try a Randolini (Bulliet bourbon, lillet wine, sangiovese wine, peach) or Limoncello Milk Punch (Tanqueray Ten, Don Julio tequila, limoncello, shiso herb, genmaicha, clarified milk). Randolini certainly took the cake here!

I started off with thoroughly enjoying pigs in a blanket with wagyu from Flanker (Mandalay Bay) and a sweet banana foie gras dish from Luca Osteria & Eating House in Miami. There was so much more to come at the main pool area though...

Wining and Dining by the Pool

The signature tasting event is the pinnacle of Drink Las Vegas, spread across two massive pools at Aria. There's a long list of restaurants featured each day, and the lineup actually changes, so we made sure to get in our rounds around the pool and wine and dine ourselves right up until the very last minute of the event.

Plenty of restaurants from casinos on the Strip made an appearance, including Catch at Aria, Superfrico at the Cosmopolitan, Spago at Bellagio, and Aria's own patisserie, all of which were at the top of my list going in. But along the way, we also got to try bites from restaurants scattered around Vegas, whether downtown, off the tourist strip, or visiting from around the country.

Here were some of the highlights I tried:

• Pumpkin spice croffles from Aria Patisserie
• Chicken wontons from Din Tai Fung (Aria)
• A Sarti Aperol spritz with prosecco, club soda, and Sarti Rosa apertivo
• Hokkaido scallops from Doanburi (Las Vegas, NV)
• A whole roasted porchetta head from Superfrico (The Cosmopolitan)

The list goes on and will continue to do so throughout the event, which is one of its biggest appeals. You could keep wandering and keep finding something new to eat or drink. Vegas is exactly the perfect place for that kind of experience.

Beyond the restaurants, several brands ran their own pop-ups and activations, including Ciroc, Crown Royal, Red Bull, and Beatbox. Ciroc was the topic of conversation all night, with a pickle-and-banana-pepper martini station that I heard people murmuring about before they finally found it. It wasn't for me, but I could see it being a hit for anyone who loves a dirty martini. Aperol had a booth where you could grab a sip of an Aperol, Sarti Rosa, or Campari Spritz.

Marriott Bonvoy has a build-your-own cocktail activation called the Flight Bar, complete with a "boarding pass" (airplane pun) for your drink. Beatbox also a vending machine set up where you could sample flavors like cherry limeade and blueberry lemonade, which brought back some of my (not so fond) memories of being freshly 21 and grabbing one on the way to downtown for a night out.

Sammy Hagar and Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal were the special guests of the night and said a few words in the center of the pool to kick things off. I did try to hunt Shaq down for a photo, but had no luck.

Last Call at the Reserve

The curtain fell on the festivities at the pool at 11 p.m., and the mass exodus of foodies spilled out into Aria. Being on the Strip this late as a local truly makes you feel like you’re living a tourist life.

Most people may not realize that Bellagio, Aria, the Cosmo, and Park MGM are all connected through a series of walkways and trams. Those make it extremely easy to get from one to another, and luckily, Aria was just a short, air-conditioned walk away from Park MGM.

My guest and I made our way to an invite-only afterparty inside the Reserve Bar at Park MGM — a swank but plush lounge that felt cozy for the end of the night.

Guests were treated to more custom cocktails and small bites here as well. The crispy chicken with caviar was an easy favorite of the night, one that the servers kept bringing around, much to my delight. We left with full stomachs and well-quenched thirsts.

While we were there, I caught up with Gio Gutierrez, one of the event’s featured guests, who was in town from Miami. Gutierrez owns Chat Chow, a food guide and podcast, and was happy to be surrounded by other folks in the industry at Drink Las Vegas. He’d shown off a matcha piña colada (the "Piña Machada" he calls it) at the tasting event. Somehow, I managed to miss it entirely!

We got to talking about food and drink trends, and realized that matcha is certainly all the rage. Which makes sense considering that I noticed more matcha martinis and cocktails than I would’ve thought, even on day one.

By 2 a.m., it was time to call it a night and head home after all the schmoozing and yapping.

As tempting as it was to think one night would be enough, Drink Las Vegas has two more nights of festivities lined up, both back at Aria’s pool. Next up, I’ll be catching up with Roy Choi, who’s hosting the “In the Mix” after-party at On the Record at Park MGM.