What, Exactly, Happened To Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Restaurants?

For fans of the Food Network, Bobby Flay is everywhere. Online, he's serving up cooking hacks to educate the masses, such as what mistakes to avoid when cooking steak or the best way to thoroughly dress a salad. On TV, he's schooling incompetent home chefs on "Worst Cooks in America" and blazing through reams of skilled competitors on reruns of "Beat Bobby Flay." We've actually grown so accustomed to the sight of Flay's handsome mug on our screens that it's easy to forget that he's also an acclaimed restaurateur.

Mesa Grill was the first of Flay's numerous restaurant ventures, serving elevated, Southwest-inspired cuisine and featured a renowned weekend brunch service. The first location opened near Union Square in New York City in 1991. Based on its enormous success, the concept quickly spread to two other outlets in Las Vegas and the Bahamas. By 2021, however, all three Mesa Grill locations had closed. What, exactly, was the problem? Each of these restaurants closed for different reasons. One was the victim of a real estate squabble, another had a positive reason for the closure, and one is still shrouded in speculation.

Unlike dubious Mexican restaurants serving sketchy chips and salsa, Flay's Mesa Grill was a culinary revelation. Notable plates served there include fresh corn tamales, succulent grilled fish, chicken, and tiger shrimp accompanied by piquant, complex chili pepper-based sauces, and playful spins on Southwestern classics, like a blue corn succotash. The OG Mesa Grill in New York shuttered in 2013 after more than 20 years due to a clash regarding the building's lease. In 2021, the Michelin-starred Vegas outlet of Mesa Grill closed to make way for a fresh Flay venture: the high-end Italian concept Amalfi.

The fate of the Bahamian Mesa Grill, which was located in the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, is a bit more open to interpretation. It was only operating between 2007 and 2015, during which time it was plagued by poor reviews regarding both the service and the fare — strange, considering that it served many of the same dishes as the wildly popular New York and Vegas locations. When the Bahamas-based Mesa Grill shut its doors, a new restaurant was soon installed in its place, which could have been another explanation for Flay's eatery going out of business. While the restaurant world was left wondering, no official explanation was ever given for the closure.