Maroon by Kwame Onwuachi

Maroon is Kwame Onwuachi's first restaurant in the western US — the James Beard winner behind New York's Tatiana landed at Sahara in spring 2026 with an Afro-Caribbean steakhouse built around a custom jerk pit burning pimento wood. The name honors the Jamaican Maroons; the 125-seat room opened with Flavor Flav at the party and Las Vegas Weekly's critic in raptures by June.

The menu runs the fusion with conviction: Maroon patties stuffed with oxtail and crowned with caviar ($40), curried goat agnolotti ($32), crawfish mashed potatoes, a 16oz pork tomahawk off the jerk pit ($75), and the Oxtail Wellington for two ($120) as the centerpiece flex. Steaks come from Texas's Rosewood Ranch, rum-aged with a molasses glaze — a genuinely different dry-aging thesis. Plan $90-160 a head.

New-restaurant honesty: the kitchen is months old, so expect opening-year variance; the R&B-forward room runs loud; and the north-Strip Sahara address sits away from the dining corridor. But this is the most original opening of 2026 — book while it's still bookable, because the national press cycle has barely started.