Despite being in the desert and hundreds of miles from the ocean, Las Vegas is a major hub for international and domestic seafood distribution, which allows for high-end dining experiences, such as at the Bacchanal and Wynn dinner buffets, the Palms twice-weekly lobster buffet, South Point's Friday seafood buffet, and the many top-tier seafood restaurants like Mastro's Ocean Club, Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, Michael Mina, and Estiatorio Milos. One source we found said Las Vegas has 280 "seafood-focused" restaurants as of late 2025.
To supply its enormous appetite for seafood, Las Vegas sources the high-quality products primarily through daily, rapid, direct air shipments from major coastal hubs, including the Pacific Northwest, Maine, and Canada, with some items arriving within 12 hours of being taken from the water.
Major suppliers deliver fresh (within 36 hours) and frozen products to local casinos, restaurants, and markets, much of it imported from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Ecuador. More than 90% of seafood products are shipped from abroad to the U.S., the largest importer of seafood in the world.
Illinois-based third-generation Supreme Lobster, for example, has a wholesale location here and claims to supply 25,000 pounds of shrimp every day to Caesars properties alone. In fact, Las Vegas is famously said to consume about 60,000 pounds of shrimp or 30 tons -- per day. If that's anywhere near accurate and we tend to believe it, that's nearly 22 million pounds or roughly 11,000 tons every year. We've also reported that the Palms A.Y.C.E. Buffet consumes 900 whole lobsters or 13,330 pounds and 1,750 lobster tails or 7,000 pounds on Wednesday nights and Thursday nights each.
Pacific Seafood is one of the two biggest suppliers, with 41 facilities in 11 states, including Vegas. It operates a fleet of fishing vessels and works with more than 800 independent commercial fishing boats; it also runs 20 processing facilities and its own distribution division.
Santa Monica Seafood is the largest distributor in the Southwest, serving the region since 1939. It, too, operates from a hub in Vegas to supply more than 600 fresh and frozen items. Their buyers are on the docks in San Diego when the sun comes up and their trucks can deliver fresh seafood to Las Vegas in six hours.
In short, Las Vegas orders a monumental amount of seafood and a number of distributors and suppliers are only too happy to fill the demand.
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Very interesting facts about how food is distributed. Not just passengers arrive at the airport but tons of products of all kinds and shapes!!
Alan CanellisFeb-14-2026
Incredible!
Excellent article! Thank you. This question never fails to come up on every visit to Las Vegas, usually while dining.
Kevin LewisFeb-14-2026
Prices?
How much have Trumpiffs affected the cost of all that imported seafood, and what proportion of that added cost is passed on to the customer?
asaidiFeb-14-2026
No as fast as if you're near the ocean
That's really fast to get seafood for a city several miles from any ocean but if but it's nothing like living near an ocean. There are seafood restaurants in Malibu that can serve seafood that was caught less than 3 hours before you eat it. In Massachusetts or Maine I've heard that at some high end restaurants you can eat seafood about an hour after it was caught.
Jon MillerFeb-14-2026
No fish in the desert....
is a rule I live by on my visits to Vegas :P. That being said I have enjoyed lots of (previously frozen) shrimp cocktail and steamed (previously frozen) snow crab legs, etc. so I guess it's more that I avoid "fresh seafood in the desert"
