Dining in Las Vegas has been moving from buffet to gourmet for at least a decade, but with the latest round of restaurants, it’s vying to become the country’s culinary capital.

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Westerners can attribute much of this to their own good taste: The hottest new restaurants are led by chefs from Hollywood, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Napa Valley. Menus now are less formal and more fresh, less about showmanship and more about substance.

Las Vegas has become a kind of litmus test of culinary importance–come here after you’ve made it elsewhere. “Las Vegas is a headliner kind of city, so casinos brought in recognizable names,” says Thomas Keller of the famed French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California. He opened Bouchon, a French brasserie similar to his Napa Valley catery of the same name, in January in the Venetian’s new tower, Venezia.

The influx of big names means that the Strip is now a smorgasbord of food trends. Along with Keller, in the last year and a half, other chefs who have opened up shop Strip-side include the Lark Creek Inn’s Bradley Ogden, Maya’s Richard Sandoval, the Bellagio’s Michael Mina (who now has three Vegas venues), and Hubert Keller, whose second restaurant here, Fleur de Lys, has just opened. And then, of course, there is the city’s original culinary innovator, Spago’s Wolfgang Puck, who launched his latest, a bar and grill, at the MGM Grand last summer.