Downtown Reno
Louis' Basque Corner
Family-style Basque dinners on East 4th Street since 1967, and the place most people in Reno will tell you to try Picon Punch.
RenoStart here The independents Inside the casinos Drinking
Where to eat
Reno’s food story over the last fifteen years is the shift from casino buffets to independent kitchens, and most of it happened in Midtown and along the river. But the single most distinctive thing you can eat here has been on the table since the 1900s and has nothing to do with either.
Eat Basque
Northern Nevada was settled in part by Basque sheepherding families, and the boarding houses that fed them turned into restaurants. The result is a style of eating you can find in this corner of the American West and almost nowhere else in the country — Reno, Boise, and Bakersfield, and that is close to the whole list.
A Basque dinner is family-style and set. You sit at a long table, often with strangers, and courses arrive whether you ordered them or not: soup, salad, beans, a plate of something, then the main you actually chose. It is a great deal of food and it is not a place to order the way you would elsewhere.
- The courses that arrive unasked are a full meal on their own.
- It is the northern Nevada Basque bar drink — bittersweet, brandy-floated, and essentially unavailable outside this region. Order one, not three.
- You will likely be seated beside people you did not arrive with. That is the format, not a mistake.
Midtown
Midtown is where locals send you, and it is where the independent restaurants, bars and breweries are. It runs along South Virginia Street below downtown — about a mile of it, low-rise and strip-like rather than a pedestrian quarter, which surprises people expecting a plaza.
From downtown it is a twenty-five minute walk or a very short rideshare. The walk is flat and direct and not scenic.
The steakhouses outlived the buffets
The all-you-can-eat buffet was a Nevada invention and a loss leader: cheap food to keep people on the property and near the floor. Most of Reno’s are gone, and the survivors are no longer cheap. The Atlantis has kept the strongest local reputation of the ones still running, and it is the one worth the detour if the buffet is specifically what you came for.
What genuinely survived is the casino steakhouse. These are the properties’ flagship rooms, they are priced accordingly, and they are usually the best formal meal on any given property. The Eldorado’s food operation is the strongest downtown — the founding family are winemakers, and it shows on the list.
Breweries and distilleries
Reno’s brewing scene is real and partly walkable — several producers sit within a few blocks of each other in and around Midtown, which is what makes a guided crawl a reasonable way to cover ground you would otherwise drive between. Great Basin Brewing, out of Sparks, is the oldest operation in the state and the reference point for the rest.
Downtown distillery tours are a newer addition and a short, low-commitment hour before dinner. Most are 21+, which is worth checking if you are travelling with teenagers.