Ever since gambling became legal in Atlantic City in the late 1970s, the New Jersey oceanfront town has been a sort of Las Vegas Lite, following in the footsteps of its Western correlative.

Gambling was supposed to revitalize the city, but for the first 20 years it only seemed to make the boardwalk seem seedier, the town more downtrodden, the beach more abandoned. At one time, the same could be said of Las Vegas. But in the late 1990s, luxury hotels like MGM Grand and the Bellagio began to change the vision of what Las Vegas could be. Now the city has become a destination for more than just gambling and all-you-can-eat buffets, drawing visitors to high-end spas, salons, and restaurants, and importing celebrity chefs from around the world: Paris’s Joel Robuchon is the latest big name to hit the restaurant marquis in Las Vegas.

Atlantic City has followed suit, bringing familiar favorites from New York and Philadelphia into their hotels. What Atlantic City lacks in culinary originality, it makes up for in spot-on imitation.

At the Tropicana, the steakhouse the Palm is almost an exact replica of the New York original, from the celebrity caricatures that decorate the walls to the standard steakhouse menu. Nearby, Carmine’s pumps out the aroma of garlic and classic Southern Italian red sauce from a venue that’s almost indistinguishable from the one in Manhattan’s theater district. Next door, Philadelphia’s Cuba Libra has set up shop with a nuevo Latino menu and rum bar. Meanwhile, just off the casino floor at Harrah’s, you’ll find ‘Cesca, a high-end Italian restaurant with an extensive wine collection and the same type of intimate, yet roomy, curved booths that fill the dining room at the restaurant of the same name on the Upper West Side. (This New Jersey outpost has the same owners as the place chef Tom Valenti made famous, but he chose not to participate in this project.)

It’s the Borgata that truly succeeds in its aspiration to emulate Las Vegas’s upward mobility. The luxury hotel separates itself from the other hotels, both literally – unlike the majority of the casinos, it’s not near the boardwalk – and stylistically. Like at Las Vegas’s Bellagio, also owned by MGM Mirage Corporation, brightly colored hand-blown Italian glass adorns the lobby. The standard hotel rooms are small but chic, similar to what you’d find in a boutique hotel. The Borgata also houses some excessively luxurious suites, a spa and salon that rival those at the best resorts, and several worthwhile dining destinations.

Unlike the Palm at the Tropicana, the Old Homestead at the Borgata has a dramatically different appearance from its older sibling, a steakhouse that’s been located in the Meatpacking district since the time when it was actually a place where meat was packed. The original opened in 1868 and has kept its dark burnished-wood interior and historical appearance. The new Old Homestead is sleek and contemporary with cushy ultra-suede seats that high rollers can sink into as they enjoy their obscenely large portions of steak. The signature Gotham Rib Steak is 36 mountainous ounces, charred on the outside, cooked exactly to the temperature requested on the inside, and is enough to feed a moderately hungry family of six. Crispy iceberg wedges are closer in size to a whole head – or an actual iceberg – and smothered in blue cheese dressing and crispy slabs of bacon. Though the food is the same, the look and feel of the new location is a bit different: “Every 135 years or so,” the menu reads, “we like to shake things up.”

The exception to the knockoff rule are Ombra and Specchio, a pair of Italian restaurants created specifically for the Borgata. The two restaurants share a kitchen and an executive chef, Luke Palladino. Ombra, Italian for “shade,” is a casual, subterranean wine bar and restaurant with excellent snacks, such as Sicilian olives stuffed with gorgonzola, walnuts, and panelle; chickpea-and-fennel fritters, and house-made pastas such as bucatini alla carbonara and linguine with spicy clam sauce and grape tomatoes. Specchio, Italian for “mirror,” located upstairs, is an elegant Italian dining room that houses Palladino’s stunning collection of antique hand mirrors. The food is more formal than at Ombra, too. Some standout dishes include sweet pea tortelli, delicately flavored with brown butter and mint, and moist and tender rack of veal served with roasted hearts of palm and cheese polenta.

Ombra’s wine bar alone is almost worth the trip to Atlantic City. It features an innovative wine program of carefully selected flights from a particular region – white wines of Friuli or ancient varietals of Campania, for example. Each flight consists of three carafinas (a glass and a half, plenty to share), identified with stickers corresponding to the wine label, and clever cards on which you can pair the wine label sticker with your tasting notes. Novices are guided toward what to look for in the categories of appearance, aroma, and palate with well-chosen, witty questions such as “Legs: ballet dancer or sumo wrestler?” and “Conclusions” such as “I should have had a beer” or “I’ll have another glass.” The excellent selection of artisanal goat’s, sheep’s, and cow’s milk cheeses are available to be paired with wines and also at a retail cheese counter near the entrance.

The next wave of image-raising celebrity chefs to hit the Borgata includes Bobby Flay (opening his first steakhouse next summer), Michael Mina, and Wolfgang Puck – all of whom already have successful offshoots in Las Vegas.