A new Italian-inspired bakery cafe called Picassa is set to open in late November inside Fashion Show mall on the Las Vegas Strip, taking over Suite 1540 on the first floor from a space long associated with sit-down pizza. The concept comes from the same owners behind Donutique, the high-end doughnut shop inside The Venetian, and will bring doughnuts, croissants, croissant sandwiches and affogatos to one of the mall's most well-traveled storefronts.
Picassa is owned by the team behind Donutique, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Johnathan L. Wright, who detailed the bakery cafe's menu and Strip location. That ownership traces back to Elad Assayag, a Las Vegas hospitality investor who established the luxury doughnut boutique concept at The Venetian Resort, according to a release distributed by EIN Presswire. Donutique itself first opened in August 2023 near the Waterfall Atrium and the “LOVE” sculpture inside the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian, as Las Vegas Weekly reported at the time, and it quickly built a following for its chef-driven gourmet doughnuts. Its menu includes a $12 doughnut, handcrafted coffees and matchas.
A Storefront With a Long Pizza History
Suite 1540 has seen plenty of turnover before Picassa's arrival. The space was occupied for about a decade by coal-fired chain Grimaldi's Pizzeria, according to Las Vegas Magazine, before a brief run as Ambrosia Cafe & Bar, an authentic Italian eatery that shared ties with Zeppola Cafe at The Venetian. Picassa now replaces that lineage entirely, moving the suite from sit-down pizza and Italian dining toward a fast-casual bakery and cafe format.
The new cafe will share updates on its Instagram account @picassacafe, where fans of Donutique's visual branding can expect a similarly photo-friendly approach. The menu, as outlined in the Review-Journal's report, leans heavily on both sweet and savory options built around croissants and doughnuts.
What's On the Menu
Picassa's doughnut lineup includes sprinkles, cinnamon sugar and vanilla glazed varieties, alongside muffins, a fig and brie danish, a mixed berry danish, and both traditional and rolled croissants. The bakery case will also carry gelato, overnight oats and açai bowls for guests looking for something lighter.
On the savory side, the cafe will offer ten sandwiches, including bacon and scrambled egg with chives on croissant, smoked salmon and cream cheese with capers on croissant, and ham, brie, fig and green apple on baguette. The beverage menu rounds things out with tea, lattes, hot chocolate, smoothies and affogatos, including a classic version with vanilla bean gelato, a biscoff version topped with a biscoff cookie, and a mocha version made with chocolate gelato and cocoa dust.
Part of a Bigger Strip Bakery Trend
Picassa's arrival fits into a broader pattern of Italian bakery concepts clustering around the Strip. The Venetian resort area has already become something of a hub for the category, home to Zeppola Cafe, which opened in 2022 in St. Mark's Square as an offshoot of a Midtown Manhattan bakery specializing in “Cube” and “Rolly” croissants, according to Chowhound. Donutique's original home, the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian, spans 875,000 square feet and has 160 signature stores, giving the brand a very different retail backdrop than the one it's now expanding into.
Fashion Show, where Picassa will open, has its own long history as the Strip's retail anchor. The mall opened in February 1981 as the Strip's first major shopping center and now spans nearly 1.9 million square feet with more than 250 retailers and 30 restaurants under Brookfield Properties management, according to Brookfield Properties and Wikipedia. That scale has made it a testing ground for new food and beverage concepts looking to catch high foot traffic on Level 1.
Visitor Spending Still Favors Dining
Las Vegas welcomed 38.5 million visitors in 2025, while total arrivals fell 7.5%. That pattern suggests high-margin, photo-friendly cafe concepts like Picassa can still find an audience even as overall tourist numbers soften.
Picassa's late-November opening also lands amid a wave of Level 1 leasing activity at Fashion Show. Gen-Z retailer Edikted was planning to open its first Nevada store in Suite 1040 in fall 2026, part of a broader reshuffling of tenants on that floor of the mall. Whether Picassa can establish long-term staying power in a suite that has already cycled through three very different concepts in recent years remains to be seen, but the bakery cafe's debut adds another high-profile name to Fashion Show's growing roster of dining destinations.
