The Tao Las Vegas' Most Popular Dishes

Stretching 62,000 square feet in the lobby of the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, Tao Las Vegas looks like the temple Siddhartha would have built if he'd been a gangsta rapper. The restaurant, which opened in 2005, has high ceilings, a 20-foot-tall Buddha, a pool filled with Japanese carp, lacquered everything, and Quentin Tarantino lighting. It's a restaurant that hires people whose sole job it is to put on a bikini and sit in a bathtub filled with roses—and pays Kim Kardashian to throw its New Year's Eve party.

So it shouldn't be surprising that Tao Las Vegas is also the highest-grossing restaurant in the U.S., by far, according to magazine. In 2009, the restaurant brought in $59,292,345, more than double what the runners-up each made (New York's now-defunct Tavern on the Green, $27 million; Miami's Joe's Stone Crab, $26 million; New York's Smith & Wollensky, $25 million). All this despite the worst recession in the history of Las Vegas. The economics of the restaurant business are so wretched that while Tao Las Vegas has made it to the top of the magazine's list of the highest-grossing independent restaurants for the past five years, folded in April.