The iconic and beloved Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge on the north Strip celebrated its 50th anniversary the day after Christmas 2022. It was one of six restaurants in the U.S. singled out earlier this year by the James Beard Foundation for an America’s Classics Award. The Foundation cited the Peppermill’s “welcoming atmosphere” and the long-time waitresses who know customers’ names. Indeed, the general manager started as a waitress in her teens and has been there for nearly the whole five decades of the restaurant’s history and her son is executive chef.
It’s a pilgrimage site for visiting old-timers who remember when it was one of the in places on the Boulevard and it garnered the number-one spot in two of our recent polls: the best restaurant for first-timers and the best breakfasts in the resort corridor.
Several items remain from the offerings on opening day 51-plus years ago, such as the fabulous fresh fruit salad (that comes with ice cream, house-baked banana-nut bread, and marshmallow sauce), the sinful French toast ambrosia, and of course the half-pound Peppermill burger. The adjoining Fireside Lounge is as cozy as it gets and that 64-ounce Scorpion starts or ends your Vegas party with a sting.
The Vegas Peppermill is one of six in Nevada; the other five are hotel-casinos: the flagship in Reno, Western Village in Sparks, and three in Wendover. They’re unmistakable for their design and décor, including big video screens with scenes from around the world, myriad concrete tree trunks and lush plastic foliage, Tiffany-style lamps, and pink and purple border tubing above the counters and along the walls. This restaurant also has big windows looking out to the Strip.
Even seating 232, it’s unbelievably busy. There are 32 parking spaces in front and 50 in back and they’re almost always full.
We hadn’t eaten there in a while and though we’ve done so countless times, we’d never reviewed it! In honor of the America’s Classics award, we went back for a late breakfast at noon on a Thursday.
It was an hour wait for a table, so we immediately seated ourselves at the 18-seat counter. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing meal, with 10 cooks bustling around the kitchen, eight waitresses rushing to and fro, loading up their hands and arms with a dozen huge heavy plates of food, clanking dishes and scraping silverware, but it sure beat waiting an hour for bacon and eggs.
Prices have crept up over the years, of course, but shrinkflation hasn’t come anywhere near the place; you either take half your meal back to your hotel room or finish for your one splurge of the day. These meals aren’t cheap, and note that the prices on the restaurant menu are different than the ones on the online menu, but if you want huge portions, the Peppermill is the place to get them.
We had the basic breakfast: three eggs, bacon, hash browns, and bagel ($23) and an a la carte raspberry-lemon muffin ($4.95), which came to $29.15 after tax and before tip. Hefty for breakfast for one, but It was also and lunch and dinner was necessarily light.
In 2015 in conjunction with the next-door Riviera closing and imploding, rumors swirled that the Peppermill might be in jeopardy from the LVCVA’s expansion juggernaut. But it was learned that the lease runs through 2027. So it’s not going anywhere anytime soon and there’s plenty of time to experience it anew.
