Michael and Bryan Voltaggio’s Retro by Voltaggio restaurant will close on June 29, 2024 at Mandalay Bay.
The restaurant was planned as a “one-year culinary residency,” a concept nobody really understands, but that’s what’s in the news release.
Retro was in the former Aureole space. No, Aureole isn’t pronounced like “areola.” What is wrong with you? The biggest difference between Aureole and areola is we have actually seen an Aureole.
The ’80s and ’90s-themed Retro by Voltaggio was well-reviewed.
Michael and Bryan Voltaggio are Food Network famous and very well-known chefs in circles have been rudely excluded from, sometimes by means of civil orders sometimes referred to as “restraining orders.” As first, we were looking forward to being restrained, then realized it was a different kind entirely, so awkward.
While we never got a chance to dine at Retro, we passed through and loved how they decked the place out with throwback goodies like bikes, roller blades, vinyl records and other goodies like rotary dial phones which our fellow kids just stare at endlessly and laugh until they dislodge an earbud.
The menu was whimsical. You still have a couple of weeks to check it out in person.
We haven’t heard what’s moving into the space now, and if we haven’t heard, nobody has.
Retro bought Mandalay Bay some time to figure out what it wants to do with the massive Aureole space. Massive Aureoles aren’t uncommon, and nobody’s calling you a freak, so settle down.
Culinary pop-ups are much less common than massive Aureoles in Las Vegas (sorry to milk this joke), but they could be the next big thing given the success of this offering. Then again, if it were super successful, it wouldn’t be closing, so there’s that. A residency concluding sounds a lot sexier than a restaurant shuttering. Casino PRs are hella tubular.