I’m going to get straight to the point: Carbone has a miniyacht. Its name is Fortuna. Its port of origin is the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas, whose 8.5 acre chlorined waters reach thirteen feet at their deepest point. A captain named Mike technically could floor it, but he’s not gonna, because that would make you spill your glass of champagne, or your potato chip loaded with Petrossian caviar. There’s also olives and bloody-mary spiced cashews, but that feels like less precious culinary cargo in the grand scheme of things.
And the schemes are indeed grand: the Fortuna sails for forty five minutes to an hour as the fountains Bellagio erupt behind you in a choreographed sky-high water dance to a soundtrack of your choice, which can be anything from Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk” to Frank Sinatra’s “Luck Be a Lady” to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. Is the latter an odd choice for a boat ride? Yes. Did I still make it? Also yes.
The boat is invite only. I was invited because I was writing about it, but in general, you need to be some sort of celebrity, influencer, a Bellagio V.I.P. or a F.O.M.C. (Friend of Mario Carbone.) The kitchen can whip you up a bunch of different things, but they suggest champagne and caviar, because the yacht experience is best before dinner or after dinner. And that dinner will presumably be at the soon-to-open Carbone Riviera.
Carbone Riviera isn’t your typical Carbone. It’s not dark and clubby but rather maximalist and airy: blue and gold stone mosaics adorn pillars and a ceiling is painted with tan and taupe swirls. (The interior designer is Martin Brudnizki, who designed Annabel’s in London as well as Fouquet’s in New York City.) In the center of the room sits a cornucopic arrangement of roses, oranges, and artichokes. A cherub holds up a bowl of lemons. On the walls hang Mirós, Renoirs, and a Picasso.
About that Picasso: it’s from the restaurant that used to be here, which used the artist as its namesake. Picasso was a legendary fine dining staple on The Strip for 26 years, before it closed in 2024. After the chef, Julian Serrano, retired, MGM Resorts (which owns the Bellagio) knew it had tough kitchen whites to fill.
Enter Mario Carbone. He’d already opened a Carbone at the Aria (another MGM Resorts property) and it’s been packed every night, just like his eleven other Carbones in cities like New York, Dallas, Miami and London. So Bill Hornbuckle, C.E.O of MGM Resorts, asked if he’d like to take over the iconic space.
Carbone agreed while also knowing this location needed to offer something different than Carbone’s traditional red sauce heavy meat-focused menu. Vegas already had one of those. So this time he decided to lean into seafood—a nod to the Bellagio itself, which is a campy interpretation of the Lake Como town. Like a lot of seafood: “It’s 90% new content,” he says of the menu, which is so under wraps it takes multiple proddings for him to get to reveal some of his dishes: crudos, whole roasted fish, surf and turf with steaks from Snake River Farms, as well as a spicy lobster fettuccine. This, he predicts, is gonna be the thing to order, much like how spicy rigatoni is at regular Carbone. “It’s the aquatic version of the spicy rigatoni,” Carbone tells me. He expects the fettuccine will go “toe to toe” with the rigatoni.
“As the inventor of the spicy rigatoni, I’m allowed to say it,” he adds. He’s half-joking: Carbone’s spicy rigatoni caused a bajillion (rough estimate) other restaurants to add copycats to their menus. Which is likely why they’re being so secretive about this one as there are still a few weeks until its November opening.
But back to the boat. It’s the brainchild of Carbone but also Hornbuckle, who took a Riva boat a few summers ago while vacationing on the Amalfi Coast. It was a great time but also an a-ha moment: Why didn’t they have this in their little Italy of Vegas? So they bought one. A specific one: number 11 of the 18 limited-edition Riva ‘Anniversario’ yachts. In Early October, they craned the 33-foot, six-person vessel into the lake as tourists filmed on.
Both Carbone and Hornbuckle attended its christening ceremony this October, where they broke bottles of Dom Perignon on its hull before taking a maiden voyage around the lake as Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” played. A number of executives watched on the dock, where tables were set with white tablecloths and Riva-upholstered chairs. (This was a big coup, I learned, as Riva usually only does interiors for private clients.)
Afterwards, Hornbuckle and I sit in Carbone Riviera. The Renoirs and their gilded frames are in the corner of my eye. All of this—the restaurant, the art, the boat—is about romance, he explains: “The romance of Bellagio, the romance of the lake, the romance of a great experience.” Is he happy with how it turned out? “19 million dollars speaks for itself,” he says.
Although $19 million may soon feel like chump change for Carbone. Every concept he does seems to be getting bigger and bigger: in the past few years, he’s opened a private club in New York City called Carbone Privato that costs $30,000 to join. He’s held Miami Grand Prix dinners on the beach that cost $3,000 a head and attract the likes of Jeff Bezos and Ivanka Trump. In 2023, news broke that Carbone’s parent company, Major Food Group, was developing condos in Florida City’s Edgewater district—months after Carbone lost its Michelin star. (Carbone remained nonplussed: “I didn’t ask for it to begin with. So take it!”) With 2025 came Vegas and its boat. And on the eventual horizon? “You’re going to see Carbone hotels at some point,” he says, noting that he’s looking for heritage sites in several American cities. “Something that I can hold onto, something that has great texture that we can work off.”
There’s no firm plan in place yet but he’s feeling confident. Confident about it all: “Lucky number 13,” he tells me of Carbone Riviera, his 13th official Carbone. “Put it on black tonight.”
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