03/19/2026
The Rat Pack had a rule in Las Vegas. No one ate alone, no one went to bed before 3am, and the kitchen at the Sands Hotel had their orders memorized before they walked through the door.
In January 1960 Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. were filming a movie during the day and performing two hour shows at night in a 385 seat room in Las Vegas, and somewhere in between all of that they were eating. The way they ate tells you almost everything about who they were.
The Sands Hotel opened on the Las Vegas Strip in December 1952 and Frank Sinatra made his performing debut there in October 1953. Within a year he had negotiated himself a permanent suite, a percentage of the casino's profits, unlimited credit at the tables, and the kind of relationship with the kitchen staff that meant the Copa Room's cooks knew his order before he sat down. One of those cooks, a man named Johnny Costa, eventually left the Sands to become Sinatra's personal chef at his compound in Rancho Mirage, California and later opened his own Italian restaurant in Palm Springs that Sinatra also frequented. The man liked to keep his kitchen close. The Copa Room menu from that era has been preserved and it read like a serious restaurant, broiled Australian lobster tails, prime beef tenderloin, rainbow trout, the kind of food that matched the black tie dress code Sinatra expected from anyone walking into his orbit after 6pm.
The Golden Steer Steakhouse on Sahara Avenue was the other anchor of the Rat Pack food world and it came with a story attached. Before the Sands was desegregated, it was one of the only restaurants in Las Vegas where Sinatra, Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. could all sit down and eat together without incident, because the management simply did not care about anything except whether you had money and could hold a conversation. Sammy Davis Jr. had discovered it first and brought the others. Sinatra had a preferred booth. The Caesar salad was made exactly the way he liked it, lemon juice instead of vinegar, and the kitchen made it that way without being asked every time he walked in. The booth is still there. The restaurant is still there. The Caesar salad is still on the menu made the way Sinatra liked it, because nobody has seen a reason to change it.
The food culture they built was entirely nocturnal and entirely Italian American. Shows ran until midnight or later, the filming schedule for Ocean's 11 ran all day, and by the time everyone was done performing and the audience had gone to bed the only people left awake in Las Vegas were the Rat Pack and whatever kitchen staff could keep up with them. Late night pasta, Italian American food that felt like home at 2am after two hours on stage, Jack Daniel's and ci******es and food that did not require any particular effort to enjoy. Dean Martin's glass on stage was famously filled with apple juice rather than whisky, a detail his wife confirmed later, and he ate simply and without drama. Sinatra was the one who had opinions. Specific dishes, specific temperatures, specific tables, and the absolute expectation that the kitchen would remember all of it without being reminded.
The marquee outside the Sands during this period sometimes read: Dean Martin, Maybe Frank, Maybe Sammy. The hotel management ran that sign because the shows were so loosely structured and so dependent on who turned up that nobody could guarantee in advance who was going to be on stage. What they could guarantee was a full house regardless, because the word had gotten out across America that something was happening in that 385 seat room that was worth flying in from New York or Chicago or Los Angeles to see. People slept in their cars when they could not find hotel rooms. Sinatra once ordered 300 Bloody Marys from room service for a single Rat Pack party. Howard Hughes, who eventually bought the Sands in 1967, reportedly grew annoyed every time the Rat Pack were in his hotel because of a decades old grudge with Sinatra over Ava Gardner. The kitchen staff probably had a different opinion.
The whole thing ended the same way it began, abruptly and on Sinatra's terms. When Hughes's management cut his casino credit line in 1967, Sinatra confronted the casino executive Carl Cohen directly, and Cohen punched him hard enough to knock out two of his front teeth. Sinatra left the Sands that night and never went back. He moved to Caesars Palace and the Copa Room was never quite the same again.
The hotel was demolished by controlled implosion in November 1996 and The Venetian was built on the same ground. Nothing physical remains of the Sands. But the Golden Steer is still on Sahara Avenue, the booth is still there, and if you order the Caesar salad they will still make it with lemon juice instead of vinegar, because that is how Sinatra liked it and nobody has seen a good enough reason to change it since.
eatshistory.com
- Donnie
