I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, a premium credit card that comes with a US$795.00 annual fee but makes up for it in cardholder perks. Towards the end of 2025, Chase reworked the Sapphire Reserve give more credits and rebates on certain kinds of spend at certain retailers or websites, in exchange for an increase in the card’s membership fee. Unfortunately, I’m not really a fan of the “coupon book” style of rewards programs where they make you go to a bunch of different places and buy a bunch of different things in order to get full value from your benefits.
For example, I absolutely hate the StubHub credit. I think these ticketing websites are a huge rip-off that charge exorbitantly high fees for providing a service that has minimal value. I am eagerly waiting for someone out there to make a great piece of easy-to-use ticketing software so that it becomes industry standard for venues to install it in-house on their own websites (similar to how my blog is run on a customized version of WordPress) and forego these ticketing monopolies like Ticketmaster altogether. For events that already do have their own in-house ticket selling systems, I checked on StubHub for those same tickets to see if it was worth tapping into the Chase credit for it instead, and tickets on StubHub were literally over double the price compared to just buying it direct from the organizer.
Luckily, Chase does have one new perk that is worth it for me: the OpenTable credit. Although their selection of restaurants that qualify for the credit is fairly limited (i.e., it’s not just any restaurant available on OpenTable), there are some decent options in there. I like going out and trying interesting new spots, and I like taking guidance from curated lists of restaurants because it encourages me to expand my scope of dining outside of my routine preferred cuisines.
The OpenTable credit refreshes every half year, and the cut-off for the first round of US$150.00 in credits was the end of 2025. So, in late December, I decided to try out Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. (Yes, that does indeed mean that these photos are more than two weeks old; I have been short of time lately because I did my “12 Days of Christmas” live streaming marathon event again around Christmas and New Year’s, and I am now finally finding a chance to catch up on blog posts.)
I decided to order the three-course prix fixe menu along with a non-alcoholic beverage. Although often served with predetermined dishes as designated by the chef, this prix fixe menu offered two options, one of which was for the first course.
For my starter, I ordered pan-seared scallops topped with braised short rib and served alongside Brussels sprouts and delicata squash in a celery root puree. Although the presentation seemed a bit chaotic due to the seemingly unorganized and disheveled nature of the individual food items, it was actually quite good taste-wise. The scallop was a good balance of firm and tender, and I thought the flavor combination worked pretty well together.
My friend, on the other hand, opted for something else for his first course—roasted beets and burrata with prosciutto di Parma, Medjool dates, dukkah, clementines, and shallot vinaigrette. He picked this instead of the scallop because he doesn’t eat seafood (and yes, if this sounds familiar, this is indeed the same friend from my blog post from almost 10 months ago with whom I went to Stubborn Seed at Resorts World).
I sampled some of this, just to try it out and see how it tastes, in anticipation of writing about it on my blog. I ate one piece of the beets. I don’t really know how else to describe it apart from “very beets.”
The mocktail I picked was the Hell’s Red Infusion, made from apple, strawberry, rhubarb puree, and simple syrup in ginger beer.
When I took my first sip, I don’t think I mixed it well enough, because it was almost like I took a big swig of a highly-concentrated fruit smoothie. After going back and mixing it more thoroughly though, it became much better—the texture smoothed out, and the drink was sweet but not too sweet.
I’m curious whether the sweetness ended up becoming more subdued overall because I had accidentally taken a big gulp of the sweetest part upfront. Regardless, it ended up being better that way, because I don’t like excessively sweet things anyway.
I guess my friend thought the tasting menu wouldn’t be enough for him, so he ordered an additional bowl of mac and cheese.
This was my least favorite dish of the meal. I think this would probably be fine for someone who likes intensely cheesy and greasy foods, but for me, it was mouth-coatingly cloy. I stopped eating more after a single piece of macaroni in fear that the aftertaste of the cheese would negatively affect the flavor profile of the upcoming course. Luckily, the Hell’s Red Infusion had enough of an acidic fruitiness to it that it cut through that fat and helped reset my palate.
It’s time for a short intermission.
I often don’t eat at celebrity chef restaurants. I have no issue dining at restaurants branded under the name of a chef who got famous simply for being a world-class chef, but I avoid restaurants named after celebrity chefs who earned their fame off the basis of a television show or social media. I’ve grown a significant distrust of online influencers, and with the few examples that I do have from trying out celebrity chef restaurants anyway (like Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar at the LINQ), it just reinforced my notion that I should stick with restaurants run by regular chefs who focus more on their food than on being a broadcast personality.
With that being said, I still wanted to try one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, just for the experience. I vaguely recall joining my friends at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant almost ten years ago when I first visited Las Vegas and before I moved here, but I didn’t order anything, and I don’t even remember which Gordon Ramsay restaurant it was. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of videos about his iconic beef Wellington, so I figured I should try it at least once so I know what it’s like.
Back to the food. Fortunately, although the prix fixe menu came with only one option for the main course, it ended up being the beef Wellington—a black truffle beef Wellington served together with potato purée and a side of glazed root vegetables atop a red wine demi-glace. There were three ways to order it: with a foie gras add-on, with a lobster tail add-on, or with no enhancements. I knew for sure that I wanted to supplement a lobster tail, but I was considering asking whether I could get both add-ons instead of just one; I ultimately just went with the lobster tail as to not make the dish too overwhelming.
Believe it or not, I actually really enjoyed the beef Wellington. The meat was cooked to a great doneness level and was very tender. The puff pastry was nice and flaky, but still had a very subtle dougheyness to it that enhanced the texture. The vegetables were cooked in a way such that they had a good balance of firmness and softness. The lobster tail, although not particularly remarkable, was still a solid addition.
For the third and final course, I was served sticky toffee pudding topped with a scoop of speculoos ice cream for dessert.
The portion size on this was quite unexpectedly large. It was a bit too sweet for my personal preference, but it was still refreshing compared to the very rich beef Wellington that I had just finished. I also particularly enjoyed trying the speculoos ice cream, as that’s not a flavor that I have tried before, and I don’t often have an opportunity to eat even speculoos-adjacent flavors of ice cream in general.
This is a photograph I took of the front entrance area upon arrival. There was a large screen right at the door displaying a video of Gordon Ramsay speaking. Funny enough, I don’t remember a single word he was saying because I was too busy staring at the fact that he was basically wearing running shoes instead of standard slip-resistant clogs or work boots…
This was the bar area right near the entrance.
Deeper into the restaurant, this was the main dining area. My friend and I were seated at an edge table in the left-side area of the photograph, while the kitchen was just off frame to the right of the photograph.
This was the kitchen area. We didn’t pay the extra mark-up to be seated near the kitchen, so we didn’t have a good view of it while we were eating, but this area was wide open enough that I was able to just walk right up to it after we were finished dining and take some close-up pictures without needing to disrupt other customers.
This is a view of the front of the restaurant. Even though this Hell’s Kitchen location is marketed as being part of Caesars Palace and has the same street address as Caesars Palace, they don’t actually share the same building. Hell’s Kitchen is right up to Las Vegas Boulevard, nearby the Caesars Palace fountains in front of their main lobby entrance.
Here’s what the view looks like if you’re standing in front of Hell’s Kitchen and looking westward towards Caesars Palace and the Bellagio (with the Cosmopolitan and a small slice of the Vdara in the far distance).
| Dinner prix fixe menu ×2 | $ 271.90 |
| Lobster tail add-on | $ 25.95 |
| Mac and cheese | $ 17.95 |
| Hell’s Red Infusion mocktail | $ 13.95 |
| Sales tax (8.375%) | $ 27.62 |
| Gratuity | $ 50.00 |
| Total | $ 407.37 |
This table to the right shows how much we paid. This table does not show the aforementioned OpenTable dining credit; you are supposed to pay the full check at the restaurant, and then the US$150.00 gets deducted after-the-fact on your credit card statement.
My final verdict is… I would’ve liked it if I didn’t look at the price. The food was unexpectedly quite good, but not so good that it would warrant paying over US$200.00 per person for the meal. I think if the prix fixe included either the foie gras or lobster tail as part of the menu at no additional cost, and also provided a complementary soft drink, then I think the base US$135.95 pricepoint for the prix fixe would be reasonable. However, with all of those being supplementary, the core prix fixe menu seems marginally underwhelming.
With that being said, it was surprisingly quite packed, even though it was early on in the evening during a weekday when you wouldn’t expect it to be so busy. Considering the popularity of the restaurant, it seems that natural supply and demand has determined these high prices, so I guess there isn’t much I can say about that.
One very interesting phenomenon I experienced at Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen that I have never before seen at another restaurant is how brutally efficient everything was. When you put in an order at a restaurant, you usually have to wait a bit for the food to come out. However, at Hell’s Kitchen, the food came out shockingly fast. I realized that this was probably a side effect of making the prix fixe menu their prominent, flagship option for dinner, and with the high volume of customers ordering it, the cooks can reliably constantly pump out the three core dishes over and over again without concern of the dish not being ordered. Consequently, those three dishes are always readily available to be served to diners with minimal wait time.
Although I enjoyed my dinner, I personally would not dine here again, and I see it more as a one-time-only kind of experience. As for others, I would probably only recommend this to people who either also have the Chase Sapphire Reserve OpenTable credit to use specifically in Las Vegas, or for people who are big fans of Gordon Ramsay who want a fun Hell’s Kitchen experience and are willing to pay a mark-up for the ambiance and the significance of the brand.