The EDO Hospitality Group didn’t build its Las Vegas reputation on a Strip casino floor or a celebrity chef partnership. It built it from a single tasting-menu restaurant in a suburban shopping center, earning recognition through cooking quality alone in a market where location and branding typically do as much work as the food itself. That founding story shapes everything worth understanding about Braseria by EDO, the group’s third concept, which opened on February 24, 2026, at The Collective on Paradise Road, steps from the Sphere.
EDO Hospitality is owned by Joe Mikulich, Chef Oscar Amador, and Roberto Liendo. The trio debuted Braseria, a Spanish-French brasserie, at The Collective on Paradise Road, just steps from the famed Las Vegas Strip. The restaurant represents the group’s most ambitious space yet, a 110-seat dining room with vaulted ceilings, a chandelier-lit interior, and murals that signal a departure from EDO’s original intimate tasting-menu format toward something built for scale and spectacle while maintaining the culinary seriousness that made EDO worth following in the first place.
EDO’s new Braseria debuted near the Sphere with theatrical tableside service and muraled, chandeliered dining room. Instead of the tight tasting-menu format that made EDO a local favorite, this one leans into a bigger, shareable menu and a room built for spectacle and polish. It is billed as the group’s boldest space yet, a restaurant trying to merge classic brasserie charm with unapologetically Vegas scale.
The group took a long-empty suite at The Collective down to the studs, building the space from scratch rather than inheriting someone else’s design. This level of investment in a non-casino, non-Strip property reflects confidence in both the location and the concept that the opening’s strong reception has begun to validate.
The Geographic Logic of The Collective
Paradise Road has developed an interesting identity in recent years. The Collective, a mixed-use retail and restaurant complex within direct sightline of the Sphere, occupies a position that is geographically close to the Strip without being on it. This proximity creates access to tourist traffic without requiring the casino adjacency that most Strip-adjacent restaurants depend on for volume.
The Sphere’s visual dominance over the surrounding area changes the neighborhood’s experiential character in ways that are still being understood. Its nightly exterior programming creates a backdrop visible from The Collective’s outdoor areas that no amount of conventional signage or lighting could replicate. Restaurants at The Collective are, in effect, dining with one of the world’s most spectacular light shows visible overhead, which is an environmental advantage that costs the restaurant nothing to offer.
EDO’s original location, a tasting-menu restaurant that built the group’s local reputation, was in a suburban shopping center. Braseria represents the group’s first move toward the visitor corridor, bringing their culinary approach to an audience that includes both the loyal local following they built and the Strip-adjacent tourist and convention traffic that The Collective’s location captures.
This transition from neighborhood to visitor-adjacent dining is a common inflection point in Las Vegas restaurant group development, one that many operators navigate poorly by abandoning the qualities that built their reputation in pursuit of volume. EDO’s approach to Braseria suggests they’re attempting something more careful: scaling the physical space and the menu format while maintaining the culinary ambition that defines the group.
The French-Spanish Synthesis
The conceptual premise of Braseria, merging French brasserie tradition with Spanish culinary heritage, has genuine geographic logic behind it. Co-Founder Roberto Liendo explained the thinking directly: “With Barcelona so close to Southern France, the dishes from that area really reflect a delicious mesh of both cuisines that we’re excited to bring to Vegas with our first brasserie.”
The Catalan region of northeastern Spain borders southern France at the Pyrenees. The culinary cultures on both sides of that border share ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic sensibilities that differ meaningfully from both classic French haute cuisine and the boldly flavored cooking of central and southern Spain. Catalan cuisine, already one of the most internationally respected regional traditions in Europe, reflects centuries of exchange with its French neighbor in ways that make French-Spanish synthesis a genuine culinary tradition rather than a marketing concept.
Corporate Chef Tayden Poha-Ellamar articulated the menu philosophy: “I’ve always loved French cuisine and brasserie fare. When our team started talking about a French and Spanish restaurant here in Las Vegas, I thought a lot about what the food should look like. Our goal was to combine French and Spanish technique and flavors with global ingredients and influence to reinterpret brasserie food.” Poha-Ellamar trained at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, giving him direct experience with one of the most technically demanding French kitchen environments in Las Vegas, which informs the precision visible in Braseria’s French preparations.
The specific menu items that emerged from this synthesis demonstrate genuine creative thinking. The beef tartare cart, with Joe Mikulich torching bone marrow before scraping it into the preparation tableside, represents the kind of theatrical service moment that makes the brasserie format specifically suited to Las Vegas dining culture. The Parisian gnocchi with Parisian ham, comté cheese, and roasted scallions is unambiguously French. The lobster Thermidor updates a classic without abandoning its character. And the French onion soup with cappelletti, the Italian filled pasta appearing in a French classic, gestures toward the broader European synthesis that gives Braseria its culinary identity.
The Beverage Program as Differentiation
Braseria’s beverage program, led by Sommelier and EDO Hospitality Co-Founder Joseph Mikulich, features a blend of Spanish and French wines and a cocktail program focused on fresh ingredients and classic French cocktails. Diners can enjoy a tableside Champagne cart and Chartreuse on draft, a first in Las Vegas.
Chartreuse on draft is a specific and interesting commitment. The French alpine liqueur, produced by Carthusian monks since the 18th century, has experienced a significant revival in craft cocktail culture over the past decade, moving from obscure bartending specialty to mainstream interest. Putting it on draft rather than serving it from a bottle signals serious commitment to the spirit and to the theatrical service format that defines Braseria’s overall approach.
The tableside Champagne cart creates a service ritual that connects directly to brasserie culture, where Champagne is a social lubricant rather than a special occasion drink. In Paris, Champagne appears on brasserie tables as naturally as wine does in Italian trattorias. Bringing this sensibility to Las Vegas, where Champagne service is typically associated with nightclub bottle service rather than casual dining, repositions the beverage within a different cultural context.
Mikulich’s sommelier credentials, as a co-founder who handles beverage alongside the culinary team, ensure that the wine program receives the same serious attention as the food. Many restaurant groups treat wine as a profit center managed by whoever is available. EDO’s structure, with a sommelier as founding partner, produces the kind of beverage program where Spanish and French selections are chosen with the same care that goes into menu development.
The Cocktail Names as Cultural Signal
The cocktail names at Braseria deserve specific attention as cultural communication. Cigarettes After Sex, named after the ambient music artist, is a smoked old fashioned that uses tobacco bitters and wood chips inside a glass smoked by a cigarette wrapper. What’s Love uses vodka, pineapple, and orgeat foam in a contemporary tropical preparation. Señor Coco combines tequila, Italicus, and verjus in a citrus-forward build.
These names signal cultural awareness that the restaurant’s French-Spanish culinary heritage doesn’t immediately communicate. They tell the cocktail-savvy Las Vegas diner that the bar program is contemporary and culturally plugged-in, not simply executing classic French cocktail canon because the restaurant happens to be French-inspired. This distinction matters for attracting the younger, cocktail-forward audience that Las Vegas hospitality increasingly needs to cultivate.
The Cigarettes After Sex preparation, specifically, demonstrates bartending craft that goes beyond mixing ingredients. The tobacco bitters selection, the wood chip smoking technique, the cigarette wrapper as delivery mechanism: each element reflects choices made by someone deeply engaged with cocktail technique rather than simply following a recipe.
EDO’s Three-Restaurant Portfolio Logic
With Braseria, EDO Hospitality now operates three Las Vegas concepts serving three distinct dining experiences: the original intimate tasting menu, a gastropub format with elevated takes on approachable dishes, and now the brasserie. This portfolio spans from chef’s counter intimacy to 110-seat theatrical dining without any two concepts competing directly for the same occasion.
This diversification serves the group’s business sustainability in ways that single-concept operators can’t match. A diner who loves the tasting menu experience can refer friends seeking group dining to Braseria without cannibalizing their own reservation. Corporate clients planning different event types can find EDO options across their full range of needs. And the group builds brand equity across multiple dining contexts, reinforcing their reputation for quality regardless of which specific concept a new customer encounters first.
The challenge of the three-concept portfolio is operational bandwidth. Each concept requires executive attention, quality control, and ongoing development that a single restaurant allows the entire team to concentrate on. EDO’s founding team of three, with each partner bringing specific expertise in culinary, beverage, and operations, provides more management depth than many restaurant groups at a similar stage possess.
Notes and Key Takeaways
For Restaurant Operators:
EDO Hospitality’s expansion from suburban tasting-menu specialist to multi-concept group with a Strip-adjacent flagship demonstrates how homegrown Las Vegas culinary talent can scale without losing the quality commitments that built their reputation. The key is expanding the format rather than diluting the standards.
For Diners:
Braseria by EDO offers French-Spanish brasserie cooking executed by a team with genuine technique credentials, in a space designed for theatrical group dining near the Sphere. The tableside preparations, Chartreuse on draft, and Champagne cart create service rituals that distinguish the experience from other French-influenced restaurants on the Las Vegas dining landscape.
For Las Vegas:
EDO Hospitality’s growth from a single suburban restaurant to a three-concept group with its boldest venue steps from the Strip represents exactly the homegrown culinary talent development that the city’s dining ecosystem needs alongside celebrity chef imports and casino property investments.
Important Insights:
The Chartreuse on draft commitment signals genuine beverage seriousness that positions Braseria within the serious cocktail community’s awareness in ways that standard spirits programs cannot achieve. Chartreuse’s limited production and specific cultural cachet within craft cocktail culture makes its prominent placement a deliberate choice with community resonance beyond casual drinkers.
Poha-Ellamar’s training at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon provides direct lineage to one of the most technically demanding French kitchen traditions represented in Las Vegas. This training background gives Braseria’s French preparations an authenticity that chefs without direct exposure to that level of technique cannot claim regardless of how extensively they’ve studied classic French cooking.
The tableside tartare preparation, with Mikulich torching bone marrow and incorporating it into the beef, creates a service moment that guests photograph and share without any prompting from the restaurant. This organic social media generation is more valuable than staged promotional content because it arrives with the credibility of genuine customer enthusiasm rather than marketing packaging.
The space transformation, taking a long-empty suite at The Collective down to the studs, represents a significant capital commitment that demonstrates EDO’s confidence in both the location and their own ability to generate sufficient volume to service the investment. Empty retail spaces in otherwise-occupied developments often resist tenants because prior failures create reputational damage. EDO’s willingness to invest in this space suggests they saw opportunity where others saw risk.
The Sphere’s visibility from The Collective creates an environmental advantage that compounds over time. As the Sphere’s programming calendar fills with high-profile events and the surrounding neighborhood continues developing, Braseria’s location within immediate sightline of the exterior will generate foot traffic from Sphere-adjacent activity that it didn’t need to earn through its own marketing.
