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Chris Santos Raises The Steaks In Las Vegas With Stanton Social Prime

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It’s prime time for celebrity chef Chris Santos, who’s debuting a glamorous meatery in Las Vegas. The Chopped judge and Tao Group Hospitality are officially opening Stanton Social Prime at Caesars Palace on Tuesday, March 21, and guests can expect an over-the-top version of the New York City restaurant where Santos made his name.

The original Stanton Social, which opened in 2005 and had a 14-year run on New York’s Lower East Side, was known for its rock-’n-roll attitude and its playful, globally inspired riffs on small plates. So at Stanton Social Prime, which is adjacent to Tao Group’s Omnia nightclub, Santos is bringing back popular mashups like his French onion soup dumplings and his crab cake corn dogs.

The 200-seat, Rockwell Group-designed Stanton Social Prime is also setting itself up “as a modern take on a steakhouse,” Santos says.

The R&D for this restaurant included Santos and two of his chefs working on a Texas cattle ranch for a week. Since then, Santos has put together a menu featuring beef from all over America (alongside some beef from Japan). For a baller large-format experience, Stanton Social Prime is serving a Brandt Beef 103 cut, which is a giant Southern California Holstein tomahawk with the short rib attached. Preparing the 64-ounce cut involves separating the short rib, braising it in sake and serving it with bone marrow. And the tomahawk is hung on a trellis, lit on fire with cognac and carved tableside.

“That’s our signature big wow steak,” says Santos, who’s charging $475 for the tomahawk.

Other menu highlights include 50-day dry-aged bone-in rib eyes from Snake River Farms, skirt steak from Western Reserve and ultra-marbled snow-aged beef from Hokkaido, Japan.

“When you look at it before you cook it, it just looks like a stick of butter,” Santos says of the Japanese beef.

Meanwhile, there’s a 10-ounce Brandt Beef filet mignon that’s called the “pretty in pink” steak and served with pickled red onions, pink oyster mushrooms and pink peppercorn sauce.

Santos (who is also behind Beauty & Essex in New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles) is cooking with a combination of confidence and whimsy as he creates his version of steakhouse sides at Stanton Social Prime.

“It’s really about fun for me,” he says. “My team and I don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re doing tater tots, but we’re calling them dirty tots and they’re quite large. They’re handmade and probably like four times the size of a regular tater tot. And they’re slathered with lobster crème fraîche and caviar.”

The menu also features crispy miso eggplant, chicken Parm, steak tartare that’s served on top of a crunchy comté-filled quesadilla and loaded baked potato puree that’s topped with crispy bacon and crispy potato skins. Seafood options include a chilled shellfish tower, lobster mac-and-cheese and yellowtail crudo that nods at al pastor and is served with grilled pineapple and pineapple ponzu.

Like the rest of the menu, desserts at Stanton Social Prime are designed to be shareable and highly Instagrammable.

“Save room for dessert, because our desserts are really over-the-top,” Santos says. “We’ve got a strawberry milkshake where everything is edible, including the cup and the straw. We’ve got a giant peanut butter chocolate cake that’s got to weigh a pound-and-a-half. We’ve got a very dramatic-looking key lime pie. We’ve got this movie theater sundae that comes in a container that looks like a popcorn box you get at the movies.”

At Stanton Social Prime, the food is the entertainment.

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