Pok Pok Wing

When the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas opened in 2010, it leveraged new and existing concepts from famous chefs to generate excitement (and plenty of reservations) from food tourists – a strategy that informed its second phase of development in 2017 and 2018. Following David Chang’s opening of Momofuku on the second floor, the hotel invited multiple chefs, including James Beard award-winning chef and Northern Thai food devotee Andy Ricker, to join him. Their concepts formed the Block 16 Urban Food Hall, a collection of miniature restaurants informed by Singaporean hawker centers and street food trends around the U.S.

Ricker opened Pok Pok Wing inside Block 16 in 2018, focusing on two dishes: Ike’s Vietnamese chicken wings, served as shown here – sweet and full of sliced garlic gloves – and Pad Thai. While the food was pretty good, the wings were sticky (not great for walking around Vegas) and not particularly memorable otherwise.

Pok Pok Wing closed in late 2020. At that point, it was the last remaining location of Pok Pok, as the others were shuttered during the pandemic.