The Star Hotel on Cornell Avenue doesn’t have a sign that does much to explain itself. What it has is a hand-lettered board, a dining room that smells like garlic and lamb, and a tradition going back to 1913 that most people driving past have no idea exists. Reno has a Basque history deeper than most American cities, and The Star Hotel is one of the few places left where you can sit down and actually eat your way through it.
The setup is a prix-fixe family-style dinner, and that word “family” is not being used loosely here. You sit at long communal tables with strangers. The food arrives in waves and keeps arriving until you stop it or surrender. A typical dinner might open with lentil soup, then a bean stew, then bread, then salad, then a main — usually lamb or oxtail — alongside picon punch, which is a bittersweet Basque cocktail made with Amer Picon, grenadine, and brandy that tastes like something your grandfather’s grandfather would have approved of.
Dinner runs somewhere around $30 per person for the full spread, which feels almost implausible once you see how much food arrives. Picon punch is a few dollars extra. There’s wine. The portions are sized for people who have been out herding sheep all day, and even if you haven’t, you’ll eat like you have.
The neighborhood is a stretch of Cornell near downtown that has seen better commercial days, which only adds to the effect. This isn’t a restaurant that has been packaged for the tourism dollar. It operates on its own schedule — dinners start at a fixed time, the menu rotates by what’s available and what the kitchen feels like making, and reservations are strongly advised because they will simply run out of seats. Walk-ins during peak hours have a mediocre chance of getting in.
Lunch is a quieter, more relaxed affair if you want to try the food without committing to the full dinner theater. Sandwiches, stews, the lamb if they’re running it. Portions are still generous. The room is less crowded and the communal table energy is lower-stakes.
What makes The Star Hotel genuinely interesting rather than just historically significant is that it isn’t performing its own past. The staff isn’t narrating the Basque immigrant experience to you between courses. The dining room has the feel of a place that just kept going, long after it became unusual. The tables are worn. The photos on the wall are old. The picon punch is cold and tastes exactly the way it did in 1960, which is to say it tastes like a time you weren’t alive for.
Reno can be a hard city to read sometimes — there’s the casino corridor, the arts district, the outdoor recreation crowd, and then long stretches of strip-mall ordinaries. The Star Hotel doesn’t fit neatly into any of that, which is probably why it’s lasted. Go on a Thursday or Friday night with a few people, make a reservation, and don’t eat beforehand. The lamb will take care of the rest.
