What é is
é by José Andrés is a restaurant-within-a-restaurant: a small, curtained room hidden inside Jaleo on the second level of The Cosmopolitan, with a single counter seating eight or nine guests around an open kitchen. Two seatings a night, a menu of roughly 20–25 small courses in the avant-garde Spanish style that Andrés learned at elBulli, and a team of chefs who cook, plate and narrate each course a foot in front of you. It opened in 2010, and it has been the most sought-after reservation in Las Vegas ever since, not because it is the most expensive — it is not — but because there are only around 16–18 seats a night.
Andrés's wider empire on the Strip includes Jaleo, Bazaar Meat at the Sahara (our guide) and other outposts; é is the distilled version, where the liquid olives, the cotton-candy foie gras and the rest of the greatest hits share the menu with new work.
The room
There is no room, really — there is a counter. Guests arrive at the Jaleo host stand, are led through the busy tapas restaurant and behind a curtain into a small, dark space with a sprinkle of theatre: a chandelier, a counter that curves around the kitchen, and shelves of the equipment (siphons, liquid nitrogen, a bath for spherification) that the chefs will use during the meal. Everyone sits down together and the meal proceeds as one; latecomers miss courses. Because it is eight strangers at one counter, the tone depends on the night, but the chefs are natural hosts and it usually becomes convivial by the third course.
The meal takes about two and a half to three hours. Phones are welcome; there is a lot to photograph.
What to expect on the menu
There is one menu and it changes, but a typical evening moves from a sequence of one-bite snacks — a liquid olive, a foie gras wrapped in cotton candy, a "ferran adrià" style airbag filled with something unexpected — through a few seafood courses (Spanish anchovies, gambas, perhaps a caviar service), a couple of meat courses that might include Ibérico pork, and a run of desserts and petits fours. Some courses are deliberately silly and some are profound; the point is the swing between the two. The beverage pairing leans heavily on sherry, cava and Spanish still wines and is worth doing, because the sherries in particular are things you cannot easily taste elsewhere.
Dietary restrictions must be flagged when booking and the kitchen accommodates most, though the menu is not designed for vegans.
Price range
As of 2026 and subject to change, the tasting menu sits in the $300s per person before drinks, and the pairing adds roughly $150–250. With tax and the 20% gratuity that is added automatically, expect around $1,000–1,300 for two. The ticket is prepaid in full at the time of booking through the reservation platform, which is also how the room deals with no-shows. That places é above Wing Lei, roughly level with the shorter menus at Guy Savoy, and below the full dégustation at Robuchon. Check the Cosmopolitan or é site for the current price.
Reservations and dress code
This is where the page earns its keep. Seats are released through the restaurant's ticketing platform, typically in blocks a couple of months ahead, and demand vastly exceeds supply. The reliable strategy is: sign up for the reservation alerts on the é site; know the release date and time and be online at that moment; be flexible on the early (around 5:30pm) versus late (around 8:30pm) seating and on the day of the week; and check regularly for cancellations, which happen more than you would think because the tickets are bought so far in advance. Solo diners and pairs have the best odds because the counter fills in odd numbers. Cosmopolitan hotel concierges cannot conjure seats, but the hotel's top loyalty tiers occasionally can.
Dress is smart casual; there is no formal code, but the counter is intimate and most guests dress up. The minimum age is 21 because of the sherry pairing and the setting.
Best for
People who love food as performance and are happy to surrender control of the menu. Pairs and solo diners celebrating something. Anyone who has done the classical French rooms and wants the opposite. It is a poor fit for large groups, for picky eaters, for anyone who dislikes chatting with strangers, and for the kind of celebration where you want to talk privately across a table. Pair it with a night at The Cosmopolitan's bars — see the Cosmopolitan guide — since you will be in the building.
Pros and cons
- Pro: the most original and memorable tasting menu in Las Vegas, and probably the West Coast.
- Pro: the chefs are a foot away, explaining everything; it is a cooking lesson as much as a dinner.
- Pro: cheaper than the top French rooms for a comparable number of courses.
- Con: getting a seat is a project, and the prepaid ticket is non-refundable.
- Con: counter seating with strangers is not for everyone.
- Con: some courses are more clever than delicious; it is a show, and shows have weaker scenes.
Verdict
If you can get a seat, take it. é is the one fine-dining experience in Las Vegas that feels genuinely unlike anything else, and it costs less than the classical rooms it competes with for the "big night" slot. If you cannot get a seat, Jaleo outside serves an excellent tapas dinner and a shorter chef's tasting that scratches part of the itch, and Bazaar Meat gives you Andrés's theatre at a larger scale.