Dinner at INA starts with fire. You smell it before you sit down, catch it flickering across the open kitchen, and taste it in nearly everything that lands on the table. This is Glen Ballis’ domain, where smoke and flame aren’t for spectacle, but for flavour. At this after-dark-only restaurant in the new J1 Beach district, fire is the ingredient that ties it all together.
INA opens at 6:30pm, but it feels like it was built for the hours after ten – when the air cools, the music deepens, and the energy shifts from dinner to something more electric. It's the only venue on the strip without a beach or pool in sight, and the message is clear: this is for grown-up nights, not sun-drenched selfies. Beneath a clever lattice ceiling that retracts to reveal the stars, tables fill slowly, cocktails clink, and everything feels both open and intentionally intimate.
The food is unfussy, elemental, and rich with detail. Tear-and-share cheese bread arrives first, with whipped butter so good you forget to pace yourself. There’s scallop in its shell, floating in Café de Paris butter, octopus carpaccio in herb vinaigrette, and a romano pepper charred to softness, filled with ricotta and a spoon of quince jam. The langoustine, kissed with garlic butter and Sicilian lemon, is a highlight – sweet, smoky, and gone too soon. But it’s the Wagyu striploin that lingers: dark, tender, rested just enough, and made even better by the claypot crab rice it comes with.
By the time the dancers appear – all sequins and slow turns – you’re no longer clock-watching. You’re part of something looser, louder, a little surreal. INA is a restaurant that burns slow, then suddenly roars to life.