For more than 40 years, R&G Lounge has served its garlicky egg noodles, steamed live clams, and famous salt and pepper Dungeness crab from a single address in San Francisco's Chinatown. That's about to change. The family-run Cantonese restaurant is opening a second location on the Las Vegas Strip, inside The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, marking the first time in the restaurant's history that it has expanded beyond San Francisco.
The new outpost will sit in a space adjacent to Zaytinya, chef José Andrés's restaurant, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The Forum Shops itself is a Roman-themed retail and dining complex connected to Caesars Palace that houses more than 160 shops and restaurants, as detailed by Nevada Business Magazine, which first reported the announcement on Monday. Christopher Hung, R&G Lounge's culinary director, called the move an exciting new chapter for his family and the restaurant, saying, “R&G Lounge looks forward to sharing its traditions and flavors with the Las Vegas community and visitors from around the world,” per the Review-Journal's report.
A Basement Restaurant Turned Chinatown Institution
R&G Lounge's story began in 1985, when Chinese immigrant Henry Hung, a former construction contractor, and co-founder Kinson Wong opened a small, single-story basement restaurant at 631 Kearny Street. The restaurant expanded into a three-story venue with VIP banquet rooms in 1998, according to a filing with the city government at SF.gov. Wong left in 2018 to start a new business, and co-owner Joe Ling retired in 2021, according to the same filing.
That same year, Chelsea Hung, Henry Hung's daughter and a former 2016 Miss Chinatown USA titleholder, became co-owner, helping guide the family business alongside her brother, culinary director Christopher Hung. In February 2024, San Francisco officials nominated R&G Lounge for the city's Legacy Business Registry, a program that recognizes long-standing independent businesses that shape neighborhood character, per the SF.gov filing. The restaurant has now served Cantonese standards for more than 40 years, the Review-Journal notes.
From Bourdain's Plate to a Global Following
R&G Lounge's reputation extends well beyond Chinatown. In August 2009, chef Anthony Bourdain featured the restaurant's signature salt and pepper Dungeness crab and lychee martinis on his Travel Channel show No Reservations, an episode that the Houston Press reported turned the dish into one of Bourdain's most memorable San Francisco stops. The restaurant went on to hold Michelin Guide Recommended status for nine consecutive years, from 2009 through 2017.
The San Francisco menu is built around that same crab — live crab chopped and fried in the shell — alongside garlicky egg noodles tossed with prawns, clams, and scallops, steamed live clams with beaten egg, and a full banquet menu, according to the Review-Journal's account. The Las Vegas location is expected to bring that same wok hei, described in the outlet's report as “the savory roasty breath of the wok,” to the Strip.
Part of a Bigger Vegas Trend
R&G Lounge isn't the first Chinatown name to spin off a second concept. After leaving the restaurant in 2018, co-founder Kinson Wong opened Harborview Restaurant & Bar at San Francisco's Embarcadero Center, a 20,000-square-foot waterfront space that went on to earn its own Michelin Guide recommendations in 2019 and 2023, according to the University of San Francisco. Hoodline covered Harborview's opening back in 2018.
R&G Lounge's Las Vegas debut also fits a broader pattern of Northern California food brands landing on the Strip. As SFGATE reported in June, major casino-resort complexes have increasingly recruited heritage West Coast dining concepts to draw regional and international tourists, joining imports like In-N-Out's 8,000-square-foot flagship at BLVD. The Forum Shops complex is managed by Simon Property Group and remains one of the Strip's highest-traffic tourist destinations.
Back home, R&G Lounge has weathered its share of hard times. In February 2021, the restaurant was among three Chinatown businesses chosen for an outdoor dining mural project by nonprofit Paint the Void aimed at supporting local restaurants during pandemic recovery, a moment Hoodline documented when artist Christina Xu painted a Year of the Ox mural on the restaurant's street parklet. Exactly how the Las Vegas menu will handle live crab sourcing in a desert climate, or whether the new location will replicate the multi-level banquet capacity of the San Francisco original, has not yet been detailed publicly.
