The Biggest Names in Fine Dining Now Have Rock-Star Residencies

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The Biggest Names in Fine Dining Now Have Rock-Star Residencies

From Las Vegas to the Côte d’Azur, high-profile chefs are taking their cuisine on the road.

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For a residency of the Chicago restaurant Alinea at the Maybourne Beverly Hills last summer, remodeling the space alone cost “close to $400,000,” according to the restaurant’s top chef.

Credit...

Frank Wonho Lee

By

Matthew Kronsberg

March 28, 2026,

8:00 a.m. ET

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The biggest Las Vegas residencies are reserved for apex celebrities, performers that can pull in new audiences week after week.

This year will bring Phish and Metallica at the Sphere, as well as Kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton at Caesars Palace’s Colosseum. Then there’s the much-anticipated arrival of Alinea at the Bellagio.

Alinea is not the latest spectacle from Cirque du Soleil. It’s the name of the groundbreaking Chicago restaurant where the chef Grant Achatz fuses technically sophisticated cooking with (literal) flights of fancy: think edible helium balloons and dessert that’s served drizzled and splattered on diners’ tables, Jackson Pollock-style.

The temporary presence of the Chicago restaurant in Las Vegas is the latest example of a trend sweeping the world of fine dining: Chefs and restaurants are undertaking rock star-style residencies, even tours. And foodies with cash to burn are jockeying to land reservations.

At a time when high profile chefs command global audiences, and a K-shaped economy has the wealthiest consumers spending confidently,

these roving restaurants add an additional element of spectacle to dinners that are priced like big ticket concerts. In a 2025 global survey of people who earn at least $50,000 a year by American Express Travel, 60 percent of respondents said that they planned to book a trip around entertainment or sporting events that year. Dining experiences increasingly fit into that category.

For six weeks this spring,

Achatz will take over the restaurant Michael Mina in the Bellagio for a stint nearly as eagerly anticipated — and in some cases pricier — as Metallica’s. Dinner at the Alinea x Bellagio residency, the final stop on the restaurant’s 20th anniversary tour whose stops included Brooklyn, Tokyo, Miami Beach and Beverly Hills, costs $595 per person, before wine, about four times the starting rate for Metallica seats.

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