Kwame Onwuachi’s Maroon Restaurant Opens at Sahara Las Vegas

“Don’t say anything,” chef Kwame Onwuachi told Observer on Saturday night as we began to compliment him on the wonderful food we were eating at Maroon, his new Caribbean steakhouse at Sahara Las Vegas. “You’re going to make me cry. I’ve been crying all night.”

Onwuachi was overwhelmed by the response he got from guests in his restaurant on Saturday, and he was still riding the adrenaline of Friday night’s grand-opening party at Maroon. 

Friday’s blowout bash brought more than 1,000 guests to Alex Meruelo’s Sahara casino-resort and was punctuated by both a Busta Rhymes performance and a drone show about Onwuachi’s ascent in the culinary world. One night later, Maroon’s kitchen was remarkably on point, even though the staff must have been exhausted after the previous evening. And Onwuachi was encouraging his guests to keep the party going.

“Welcome home,” he said. “I hope you start dancing at the table.”

Everything the James Beard Award-winning Onwuachi has created and accomplished, including Tatiana (named New York City’s No.1 restaurant by the New York Times in 2023 and 2024) and Dōgon (a Washington, D.C. destination that made the inaugural North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list), has led to Maroon. 

Onwuachi did not come to Las Vegas to play. He lives here now and is all-in with his quest to bring Afro-Caribbean flavors to the masses while creating something distinctly new.

“In the back of my mind, I was like, I’m gonna get Vegas what it needs, not what it wants,” Onwuachi said on Thursday as he readied himself for the weekend’s festivities. “What it wants is Tatiana. What it wants is something that I’ve done. But Vegas needs something that’s for Vegas. You have to be in Vegas to come to this restaurant.” 

This is a steakhouse where beef is rum-aged. It’s a restaurant where the jerk chicken and the oxtail fried rice has been outselling the steaks on many nights. It’s a new experience where both the lime pie and mixologist Lu Lopez’s margaritas are powered by soursop. 

Onwuachi wants okra (which he uses in dishes including a green mango salad with deeply delicious tomato choka) and oxtail to be treated like luxury ingredients. He’s filling patties with oxtail, smoked mozzarella, shiitake mushroom and black truffle, and then topping the patties with ossetra caviar and more black truffle.

“It’s very decadent, right?” Onwuachi said. “I definitely wanted something that’s screaming Vegas. So I have that, and then I have oxtail Wellington.”

Needless to say, Maroon is the only place in Las Vegas where you can get filet mignon wrapped in oxtail and jerk beef bacon. It’s also the only Vegas steakhouse with a jerk pit. Onwuachi isn’t just changing the game—he’s creating an entirely different playing field in Las Vegas.

“The jerk pit is one of the dopest parts in the restaurant,” Onwuachi said. “It adds vibrancy. You can hear the crackle and flames. You can smell the food.”

The jerk pit, where Maroon has a custom Grillworks setup and is smoking chickens with pimento wood and also cooking with oak and apple wood, is churning out dishes like beautifully smoky Colorado lamb chops and Iowa pork tomahawks. Maroon’s impressive array of sauces, ranging from herbaceous chimichurri to fierce pepper sauce to tangy barbecue blends, is a choose-your-own-dipping-adventure that enhances every bite of protein.

For surf along with your turf, Maroon has terrific options like head-on curry shrimp, wood-fired lobster and grilled branzino. Banana leaf snapper comes with curried okra and squash.

“I think this is a restaurant that’s like no other on the Strip,” Onwuachi said. “I wanted to create something very unique that’s for Vegas.”

Onwuachi knows the spotlight is on him now. He was embracing it on Friday night, dancing to Busta Rhymes before taking the stage himself to greet and thank his guests. 

During Friday’s party, Macy Gray and Flavor Flav made the rounds in a crowd that also included Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis and hospitality powerhouses like Plaza CEO Jonathan Jossel and Carversteak founder Sean Christie. When we went to the bar of the Sahara Theatre during the Busta Rhymes performance, we ran into DJ Spider, Playback Prodigy’s Jonathan Shecter and Los Angeles nightlife scene-makers Mark and Jonnie Houston. As we walked through Maroon, we saw Michelin-starred chef Phillip Frankland Lee chatting with poker pro Scott Seiver. Then Maya-Camille Broussard, the Chicago baker/Netflix star behind Justice of the Pies, strolled by and reminded us that chefs from all over the country will show up for an Onwuachi opening. 

Friday night was glamorous and fun, but now it’s time for Onwuachi to focus on the important work at hand, every single night, in the city where he lives.

Onwuachi wants Maroon to be a restaurant for everyone, a place that attracts both locals and tourists of all kinds. But he is, of course, a Black chef who wants to cook for the growing number of Black visitors and retirees in Las Vegas.

“There are no restaurants on that Strip that have really catered to that demographic,” Onwuachi said. “I think that it’s important. I think that it’s necessary. I’m hoping, wishing that this is a beacon of light and that some other restaurants can open up the street from us with this type of cuisine. This has always been my mission. I want to shine a light on why this food is important.”

Maroon at Sahara Las Vegas, located at 2535 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV, is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Saturday.