Chyna Club at Fontainebleau Las Vegas

Chyna Club sits on level 1 of Fontainebleau Las Vegas, the $3.6 billion resort that opened at the north end of the Strip in December 2023, positioned next to the casino floor and the high-limit gaming area. The restaurant is a concept from Alan Yau, the restaurateur behind Wagamama and Hakkasan, with Richard Chen as executive chef cooking modern Cantonese; The World's 50 Best has singled out both the kitchen and the bar as among the best in the city. The room is designed for evening service and reads accordingly: business-casual attire, reservations recommended, dinner Wednesday through Sunday from 5:30pm.

The beverage program is overseen by Juyoung Kang, Fontainebleau's director of beverage development, who is responsible for the drinks across all thirty-six of the property's food and beverage outlets and has created roughly three hundred original cocktails for it. Kang arrived at bartending sideways — she was studying filmmaking and marketing at Temple University in Philadelphia, took a restaurant job, and got pushed behind the bar mid-shift at a busy wedding with the words "we need you behind the bar, you're smart, you can figure it out" — then taught herself spirits, sharpened the craft in Los Angeles, and moved to Las Vegas to help open The Cosmopolitan. What matters here is that she applies the same construction logic to zero-proof drinks that she applies to spirited ones, reaching for teas to supply tannin and umami, starches to supply the mouthfeel that alcohol otherwise provides, and oils that coat the palate. The signature non-alcoholic build, Heaven, is made from a rice-water tea infusion, oleo-saccharum, fig jam and Supasawa; Made You Look pairs jasmine pearl and green tea with cucumber and watermelon and takes its lilac colour from a colour-shifting butterfly pea tisane. Kang has framed the category's growth as a matter of confidence rather than demand, telling Las Vegas Weekly that "we raised the conversation and we raised their awareness, [so] people are more confident in ordering it."