Las Vegas’ most exciting new opening is a seafood restaurant from Mexico City

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”

“I didn’t want to put a Contramar here,” said Gabriela Cámara, seated in the dining room of her new restaurant at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. “I didn’t believe a restaurant like Contramar can actually have a replica.”

Then she proved herself wrong.

Cantina Contramar, a spinoff of Contramar, the seafood-centric Mexico City restaurant she founded nearly three decades ago, opened in late March. Located at the northern end of the Strip, it has the essence of the Roma Norte original, only reimagined for a Las Vegas crowd.

The restaurant is perched above the casino on the second floor, next to a food hall that boasts lobster rolls, burgers, pizza, sushi and, yes, tacos. Las Vegas is a mecca for cuisines from around the world, including Mexican, but Cantina Contramar is arguably the most significant opening by a Mexican chef in the city. Cámara’s innovative tostadas, grilled fish and tacos helped define Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and beyond, with many Contramar creations now part of the country’s seafood lexicon.

In the months leading up to opening, the Vegas setting for her restaurant started to click. Cámara has highlighted the ways food and politics intertwine throughout her career, having implemented health insurance for staff and equitable tip sharing in her restaurants years before it was part of a larger conversation happening in the industry. And Vegas’ long history as an established hospitality hub meant creating opportunities for the city’s vast Latino workforce, which accounts for more than 50% of the hotel and restaurant workers represented by the city’s Culinary Workers Union.

“Vegas started making sense because of the hiring possibilities and because so many people with Mexican backgrounds and other Latino backgrounds were very excited about working in a restaurant that would be on this level, and Mexican food,” she said.

And it’s not lost on Cámara that in the midst of ICE raids targeting undocumented workers and Latino communities across the country, she is opening a restaurant that celebrates Mexican cuisine and culture in one of our country’s most popular international travel destinations.

“I find it a total honor to be able to make a Mexican restaurant here, now,” she said. “An honor, but a great responsibility to do it right.”

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the Las Vegas spinoff of Gabriela Cámara’s Mexico City restaurant Contramar.

(Maureen Martinez Evans)

At the age of 22, she opened Contramar in a Roma warehouse with no formal restaurant or culinary training, serving variations on the beach food she enjoyed during weekend trips to Zihuatanejo. It was stylish but comfortable, quickly becoming both a local and international destination, with bow-tie-clad servers delivering plates of tostadas and tacos that, over the last 28 years, have become synonymous with Mexico City cuisine.

“Contramar is a kind of cantina, an informal place where people meet to have a good time — very accessible” she said. “I thought cantina was a better term for defining what this could be, but a little more chic, because Vegas is not a shack on the beach, right?”

In Vegas, she’s introduced more meat-centric dishes, with Wagyu carne asada, short rib with black adobo and a dry-aged tomahawk steak. The aguachile negro de res may be the most emblematic of the Vegas menu, bridging Cámara’s signature seafood preparations and the bolder, more theatrical red meat dishes one might expect from a Vegas restaurant. Slivers of domestic Wagyu tenderloin sit in a deep salsa negra fortified with soy sauce. On top of each piece, a small mound of diced cucumber and avocado dressed in a leche de tigre spiked with serrano pepper.

A seafood platter at the new Cantina Contramar at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.

(Marcus Nilson)

Her most famous dish, the tuna tostada, makes an appearance at Cantina Contramar, with a smoky chipotle mayonnaise smeared onto a crisp tostada, the entire surface nearly covered in panes of fresh tuna, fried leeks and a single thick slice of avocado. As well as her most recognizable fish, a whole, butterflied white fish, beautifully charred on the grill and painted with both red adobo and a garlic-parsley rub.

The goal is for that pescado a la talla to taste the same as the one presented in her Mexico City dining room, but sourcing for Cantina Contramar has posed its challenges in the weeks leading up to the opening. Two weeks ago, Cámara was in the midst of what she described as a “lime crisis,” in which she was presented with lime juice instead of fresh citrus.

“I was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, we are not going to use that,’” she said. “It’s a hard time for limes even in Mexico, so we just needed to get good limes from California. I’ve been very stubborn in getting what we need.”

While she uses snapper at Contramar, Cantina Contramar features rock cod for the pescado a la talla, or whatever white fish she can procure from as local a source as possible, working with purveyors in California, Baja and the Gulf of Mexico. The mushrooms featured in her mushroom adobo tacos are from Desert Moon Farms in Las Vegas.

The restaurant nixtamalizes its own corn. The crumbles of chorizo on the queso fundido are all made in-house.

“I hope diners are pleasantly surprised about how varied Mexican food can be,” she said. “It’s very sophisticated without being impossible to understand.”

Architect Frida Escobedo, left, chef Gabriela Cámara and Bertha Gonzalez Nieves at the grand opening of Cantina Contramar.

(Denise Truscello / Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

Behind the Cantina Contramar bar is an extensive selection of agave spirits and an emphasis on bottles from Casa Dragones. Bertha González Nieves, co-founder of the small-batch tequila producer, was the one who put Cámara in touch with the hotel and serves as an advisor for the restaurant. Her tequilas are featured in many of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, including a take on a Paloma, and the Dragones Rosa, with Casa Dragones Blanco tequila, Bianco vermouth, tomato, guava and lime.

The noted Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed the space. Diners enter through a passageway lined with tiles that range across a spectrum of indigo to ocean blue. The main dining area is a sprawling room with high ceilings, pale wood and cool tiles reminiscent of the original Contramar.

“I have never been a Vegas person, just because it’s never sort of been in my universe,” she said. “I am very curious to see how this develops. Most of the staff do speak Spanish, and it’s very important that this is a Mexican restaurant where we are making tortillas, cutting our fish from scratch and doing things how we have always done them.”