On Monday night, Martha Stewart debuted her new cooking competition show “Yes, Chef!” on NBC with co-host, chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés. The show, from the creators of “Top Chef,” reads as part competition, part therapy session. The contestants are all talented cooks, but their egos and personalities are holding them back, and the two hosts are there to help them surpass their challenges.
Stewart is, of course, known for her entertaining and lifestyle prowess — and for building a multimedia empire that has spanned TV shows, cookbooks, magazines and an Instagram account with 2.6 million followers, where she regularly posts incredible thirst-trap selfies. But until relatively recently, she hasn’t exactly been in the restaurant game.
That changed in 2022, with the splashy opening of The Bedford by Martha Stewart, right on the busy Las Vegas Strip. Now that Stewart is going to be mentoring professional restaurant chefs, I wanted to check out The Bedford to see how it measures up.
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An interior view of the Bedford, located inside Paris Las Vegas on the Las Vegas Strip.
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A variety of Martha Stewart’s cookbooks are for sale inside The Bedford, her restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip.
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A server takes an order from customers inside the “Brown Room” of The Bedford by Martha Stewart.
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I’ll preface all of this by saying that I’ve long been a Stewart stan. I watched her recent Netflix documentary pretty much the moment it came out and laughed out loud when she said things like, “She’s dead now, thank god”; I cheered when she became the oldest cover model in the history of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue; I followed her and Snoop Dogg’s Paris Olympics frolics this past summer with glee. Stewart is, and always has been, unapologetically herself. She’s a strong, no-nonsense mogul who built brands based on her lifestyle and sensibilities. As her documentary stated, she really is the “original influencer.”
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The Bedford is located in the Paris Las Vegas resort, in a dim stretch of restaurants off the main casino floor (next door is fellow TV personality Lisa Vanderpump’s Vanderpump à Paris). Like any casino restaurant, it faces some challenges: There’s no natural light, for one, and designers had to rely on artificial plants instead of real ones. The restaurant’s menu also claims to feature “local ingredients,” but I’m not exactly sure how that works in the middle of the desert.
But overall, once you walk in under a trellis and through a handful of “patio” tables, you really do feel like you could be in Stewart’s home. That’s quite intentional. The Bedford was designed to mimic Stewart’s 1925 farmhouse in Bedford, New York, and even has an outer facade that looks just like it. According to a server, the gray paint is the exact same shade she uses in her home; other materials, like the marble bar, keep things light and airy. In front of a large open kitchen, there’s a substantial cabinet filled with vintage glassware collected by Stewart herself. One wall showcases black-and-white photographs of Stewart during her early modeling and stockbroker days, before she became “Martha Stewart.”
Inside The Bedford’s “Brown Room,” as seen on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nev.
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A collection of Martha Stewart’s vintage glassware is on display inside The Bedford.
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In a cozy side dining room known as the “Brown Room,” a “window” projects images that change with the seasons, and a four-top table in front of the fireplace has a placard that says, “Reserved for Martha Stewart.” Although Stewart is a very busy woman and likely isn’t there often, it’s a fun trick that creates the illusion that she might be coming in for dinner.
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The menu, meanwhile, leans into Stewart’s passion for simple but elegant French cuisine. And guess what? It’s damn good.
Forget the celebrity flash: The Bedford was by far the best meal I had during a recent trip to Las Vegas, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised given how successful she is at pretty much everything she does. Still, I wasn’t sure if Stewart’s entertaining prowess would translate into restaurant deliciousness.
The bread basket at The Bedford, left, alongside a dish of “Big Martha”’s pierogies.
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Well, it does: Every detail seems to be carefully thought out. Take the bread basket, for one. It’ll set you back an eye-opening $35 (it’s Vegas, after all), but it’s absolutely worth it for the three beautifully executed breads inside: Ingenious garden flatbreads are thin crisps studded with pressed vegetables and herbs; sour cherry-rosemary focaccia is pleasantly oily and hits a lovely sweet-savory balance; and parker rolls are perfectly fluffy and buttery and yeasty.
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Dishes lean personal, which adds to the feeling that you really are dining inside Stewart’s house. Starters include her mother “Big Martha”’s pierogies, which are little pasta pillows filled with the silkiest potatoes imaginable and bathed in brown butter (you can add caviar and sour cream to them if you feel like splurging, but their simplicity was stunning).
The chopped vegetable salad is her daughter Alexis’s favorite, and isn’t what you might expect. It’s simply chopped vegetables like asparagus, radishes and English peas tossed in a bright rice wine vinaigrette. The freshness of the dish was a welcome escape from heavier meals served at chain restaurants on the Strip. Later in the meal, a roast chicken dish delivered exactly what you’d want: crisp skin, tender meat and a rich, savory gravy for dunking.
The Bedford’s chopped salad, full of fresh vegetables, as seen on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nev.
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The Bedford’s buzzy baked potato, with creme fraiche, bacon and chives, as seen on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
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But we have to talk about the baked potatoes. There’s been a lot of buzz around them at The Bedford: They’re brought out tableside, where they’re thrown with force onto a cutting board, sliced, and mixed with accoutrements like creme fraiche, chives and bacon lardons (caviar and sour cream are an option here, too, if you’re willing to shell out the extra cash). Is the presentation gimmicky? Sure. But it also results in a creamy baked potato that has a bit of each topping in every bite. I wasn’t mad at it.
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Overall, my visit to her Vegas restaurant only added to my admiration — and it seems that I may not be alone. The restaurant has already proven to be a success, and Stewart now has plans to open another outpost of The Bedford at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. The only thing that might have made it better would be if she and Snoop were dining there at her specially reserved table that night, but I guess I’ll just have to go back.
An advertisement for Martha Stewart’s restaurant The Bedford is seen outside of Paris Las Vegas, on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
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The Bedford by Martha Stewart, Paris Las Vegas, 3655 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. Open Wednesday and Thursday, 4 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., Friday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
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