U.S. Adventures: Vegas, Baby! (Part 2)

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And...the first part of a post of which I have already posted the second part. Enjoy....

Some people go to Las Vegas for gambling, some go for the shows (and apparently some go for the very short skirts). Me, I go for the food.  And to meet up with a very dear friend who I met when I lived in San Francisco, and who remains one of my closest friends. She needed to get away, I was tired of everyone telling me about how great the food is in Vegas, so it seemed perfect.   She was happy to let me plan every meal and accompany me as my date.

Upon my arrival the first night, it was dinner time in Vegas (even though it was like 10:00 p.m. Indy time) and I was excited to start our marathon of food!  I quickly checked in to the room and went down to have dinner at Jaleo, one of the restaurants in our hotel, The Cosmopolitan.  Jaleo is a restaurant from Chef José Andrés, and is a Spanish tapas restaurant.  We caught up, drank (too much) and enjoyed some food.  Honestly, the food highlight was probably our simplest dish, which was toasted bread with a fresh, light tomato spread and white anchovies ($10) with some Jamon Iberico ($15) and Manchego ($9) alongside. I loved the tomato spread.  We also had the Ensaladilla rusa con atun en conserva (a salad type dish of conserved tuna, potatoes and egg ($9) and a Brussels sprouts salad with Serrano ($10).  But truly, the real highlight of this meal was the girl talk.  It is a fun lively restaurant, but nothing food-wise totally wowed me.

Jaleo

The Cosmopolitan

3708 Las Vegas Blvd., South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

http://www.jaleo.com/index.php/contact/las_vegas

Our lunch the next day we ended up at China Poblano, which is another venture of Chef Andrés, and also in the Cosmopolitan.  I really enjoyed this one.  I liked the seemingly completely incongruous menu of Chinese and Mexican small plates.  The flavors in the dishes were flashy and I really liked everything.  We had several tacos, my favorite probably being the carnitas taco ($4.50) with a little avocado and fried pork rinds on top, although the fried fish taco has an amazing, and quite hot, salsa verde hiding under the fish.  And there were chipotle pickled red onions across the top. We also had a lengua taco (tongue) ($4.00) and scallop ceviche ($12.00).  The ceviche was fun—little scallops stacked on top of a seasoned lime half which you popped in your mouth together to squeeze the juice out of with your teeth.  My favorite of the Chinese items was probably the “dancing eggplant” ($9.88) which was a lightly fried whole Chinese eggplant (you know, the ones that are more long and skinny) which was served in a teriyaki/soy thick smoky sauce with black garlic, and had wispy flakes of bonito laying all over the top, and any slight breeze (just from the airflow in the room) made them dance.  Not only was it visually beautiful, but it was delicious.  We also had some lovely pork belly/shrimp dumplings ($12.88). For dessert, there was a dish called “Giggling Buddha taking a bath” that involved blood orange sorbet and because of the name, I just had to try it.  It was really cute.  There was pomegranate gelee (fancy name for jello) shaped like a Buddha head, belly and feet swimming in a bowl of "tequila air" and bubbles and with scoops of blood orange sorbet.  It was fun, and refreshing (and I love blood orange).

China Poblano

The Cosmopolitan

3708 Las Vegas Blvd., South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702/698-7900

http://www.chinapoblano.com/

Dinner that evening was Raku, which was a place my friend was really excited about.  This is a really interesting place—it is not a restaurant on the strip. It is a few miles off the strip in what is essentially Vegas’ Chinatown.  It was really cool just to experience another part of Vegas, a more local side.  Anyway, it is a Japanese robota (charcoal) grill restaurant and one of the first things you notice about it is the extreme soothing and well-thought out décor.  The walls and table are all warm woods, and even the containers of sauces on the table were beautiful.  Don’t even get me started on the bathroom, where there is grass with stepping stones and a tree with birds that are singing and rose petals artfully arranged on the floor.  I would go back just for this.  But the food was a piece of art in itself as well.  Again, it is a small plates shared style of eating, which suits me just fine.  One of the food highlights was the agedashi tofu ($10) which is their own housemade tofu that is somehow very lightly fried on the outside edge and served in a lovely broth with teeny little mushrooms.  When you break the tofu with your spoon, it is like the richest creamiest custard you can imagine.  There was salmon roe on top that popped in your mouth with each bite. My friend could not get over this dish. She said she would eat it every day for the rest of her life if she could. The charcoal grilled items we had were buttery scallops ($7.00 each) and Kobe beef skirt skewers ($7.50 each) with crispy garlic.  Both were good, but the Kobe beef was better.  Slightly chewy from the fat content, but still wonderfully seasoned and perfectly bite sized and the garlic was a nice crispy counterpoint. Crunchy asparagus spears were a good side dish to get a little bit of vegetables but with crunchy bread crumbs fried on the outside.  Yellowtail carpaccio ($12) was buttery and served with just the right, slightly spicy, thick soy based sauce and teeny dabs of wasabi and chili paste. Finally, one of the more interesting dishes was the crispy pig ear ($3).  Having had pigs’ ears before, but where the pieces were really thin and deeply fried and crunchy, these were different.  They were crisply fried on the outside, but left in thicker pieces (but still bite sized).  They were slightly chewy from the cartilage of the ear, but not so much that it was unpleasant.  The only downside about this place is that they serve bluefin tuna on their menu which is highly endangered.  I really wish they didn’t, but I thought I would put it out there for your information.  This place is quite small, and quite popular, so make a reservation if you go.

Aburiya Raku

5030 S. Spring Mountain Road, #2

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702/367-3511

http://www.raku-grill.com/

It was an amazing whirlwind trip to Vegas, and a perfect getaway.  You really can just plan a long weekend around food with a little bit of this and that in between. Can't wait to go again--so many more places to try! 

U.S. Adventures - Las Vegas (Part 1)



Vegas from the Air

Ok, so I totally screwed up and accidentally posted this earlier today, but when it was only half finished and edited, which put it out on lots of people’s readers, so I am just going to re-post it properly today and post what was actually the first half of my recent trip to Vegas on another day, and this, which was the second half of the trip, today. Clear as mud? Good. (I just hate having a half finished thing floating out there).

So recently, I got to go to Las Vegas with a close girlfriend from California (more on that in my next post).  And for our last lunch in Vegas, I had chosen RM Seafood just to get something different, and to visit some other casinos, so we headed to Mandalay Bay, which turned out to be much further than it looked to walk.  (The Strip seems to do that—you can see that resort, it looks so close!).  But as soon as we settled in, we noticed that our server Cliff was exceedingly helpful and knowledgeable about the menu and the wine.  He was mellow, but extremely enthusiastic about food, and the restaurant in general.  We chatted with him quite a bit about various options and decided to share a couple of things (as usual).  We shared a lobster roll ($27) and tuna poke ($20).  The lobster roll was completely lovely.  Served in a wonderfully buttery, crunchy but light rolls, the inside had mainly lobster and was seasoned with celery, fennel and instead of your usual mayo, they were using crème fraiche which gave it a wonderfully tangy, creamy richness that made it seem more “Vegas.”  Our server had recommended we trade out the chips that usually came alongside and get the fries that are tossed with herbs.  He was totally right about that.  The fries were wonderfully crisp and salty and a nice balance to the creamy sandwich. And it was cut into 2 nice sized halves, making it extremely easy to share.

The poke is cubes of raw tuna (they have an extensive sushi menu as well) that are seasoned with soy, and served in a sort of salad with lots of crunchy shreds of veg-- green onions, red onions, radish and some microgreens.  This was nice and light and refreshing.  I really enjoyed it as well.  Around this point, the manager came over to chat with us for awhile (they weren’t very busy, it was Sunday) and he was also exceptionally friendly.  As we talked more (and they both gave us lists of restaurants to try as well as their contact information if we had questions) we discovered that the manager (Chris) was also the Chef Rick Moonen’s son.  It explained why he was so interested in customer satisfaction—I mean he was great at his job.  So as we were talking, and he was explaining how the restaurants started as a seafood place, but has so much wonderful beef as well, I told him about how I had read somewhere about the beef tartare and how wonderful it was (but it wasn’t on the lunch menu).  He and our waiter agreed and then he disappeared only to return with a special (and complimentary) little taste of the tartare.  I was amazed at the customer service.  While I found nearly everyone in every restaurant very friendly, helpful and professional, this restaurant was the clear winner in the service experience.  And really, the food was just as good.  Everything was perfectly prepared and presented.  And yes, the beef tartare was perfect.  Smooth and rich with capers, cornichons, mustard, crispy onions and even a couple of slices of black truffle on top.  And this was just a little sample, an amuse bouche ending, as it were.  I can only imagine an entire order, which I hear is served normally with those lovely fries…. Oh well, next time.  And if you go, be sure and ask for Cliff to be your waiter. This place has got it down, both food-wise and service-wise.

Tartare dessert

RM Seafood

Mandalay Bay

3950 Las Vegas Blvd., South

Las Vegas, NV  89119

702/632-7777

http://www.rmseafood.com/

Our last dinner was L’Atelier de Joel Robouchon.  Hubby had just been recently on a business trip and wouldn’t stop talking about it, so I thought I needed to go and see what all the fuss was about.  It is a completely open kitchen, and the majority of the seating are bright red bar stools around the kitchen.  There are a few tables (maybe 6-8?)  but I think it was more fun to sit at the bar.  Although, if there were more than 2 of you, you may want to ask for a table because I think it would be hard to talk amongst yourselves.  So they have a large, small and larger plates-type a la carte menu as well as two different tasting menus.  We went with the smaller 6 course “club” menu (7 really if you include the amuse bouche) at $97 per person.  Ok, these are fancy French items with many layers and ingredients and I shall endeavor to remember them all as well as possible, but just keep in mind, it is hard to remember all the nuances, with so many things going on in the dishes. The amuse bouche was a foie gras parfait with a port wine reduction and parmesan foam.  Wow, this was amazing.  You dipped your little spoon deep down to get some of the custardy foie flavor and came back not only with it, but the port and cheese flavors as well.  Amazingly rich and decadent. 

The first official course was mussels and mimolette veloute with croutons.  So, it was an intensely rich, but not thick, soup with several whole juicy mussels at the bottom. There were dots of red pepper on top and some little crunch saffron croutons alongside.  The saffron flavor with the mussels was perfect.  Although, my friend and I decided we needed even more to soak up all the drops of the soup, and also used large hunks of bread from the wonderful bread basket (that puff pastry roll was divine.)

The next course was the one I was looking forward to the most I think after talking to hubby.  It was a langoustine, which is sort of like a teeny tiny lobster, but so much better.  The meat of the langoustine was wrapped in a light pastry wrapper with a couple of basil leaves inside and fried just crispy.  The thing about langoustines is they are so sweet and don’t seem to have the tendency to get overcooked the way shrimp and lobster so often do (not that you would likely have that problem at L’Atelier).  There was a little basil sauce (they called it pesto, but to me it was more like the pure essence of basil with maybe just a touch of oil) and a teeny little salad of baby green on the side that was dressed with a lovely acidic dressing that was a perfect balance of the sweet shellfish.  I saw a regular a la carte order come out of the kitchen and it had three of the fritters.  Hmmmm….next time perhaps.

The main course was a choice of beef cheeks or John Dory.  I went with the John Dory and it was lovely as well. Two small pieces of fish that are cooked on the hibachi right in front of you.  Each piece of fish was topped with chopped tomatoes and capers and served alongside was the most amazing buttery Napa cabbage. It was so tender and buttery, you sort of forgot it was a vegetable.  And of course, you get the side of the famous “Robouchon potatoes” which are whipped potatoes which are basically made in a ratio of one part potato to one part butter. True story.  And delicious.

A lovelysmall cheese plate was next (and you know that always makes me happy). There were three nice pieces. An Epoisses, a creamy goat cheese, and a third I can’t remember.  It was simply served with just some slices of bread, and I would have loved just little fruit or jam, but the cheeses were perfectly a temperature, which seems to be something that very few places pull off.

Lastly there was a dessert course, which was a choice of a selection of tarts or a selection of ice creams and sorbets.  We got one of each to share.  Honestly, I thought dessert was the weakest part of the meal, although it was fun to try all the different things.  My favorite tart was one that involved caramel, chocolate and big salty peanuts.  The two best sorbets were the raspberry and the pear.  Both tasted of the pure essence of the fruit which is what I enjoy in a sorbet. 

L’Atelier is an interesting place though.  You would have to be an intensely disciplined to make that kind of food all night in front of your customers I would think.  And there’s no yelling and cursing like I sort of imagine a lot of kitchens are like.  And watching one of the staff pick celery leaves with tweezers and place them around a fancy dish is an experience.  The Chef would make an appearance frequently and mutter lowly about things, rarely smiling.  A very serious man for sure.  In fact at one point when my friend and I were sort of laughing about some random thing, he sort of turned and glared a little.  Eventually we had a chance to speak with him for a moment and tell him how delighted we were with the food and he seemed to soften a bit.  But it made the meal memorable for sure, as if the food wasn’t enough.

L’Atelier

MGM Grand

3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S.

Las Vegas, NV 89109

http://www.mgmgrand.com/restaurants/atelier-joel-robuchon-french-restaurant.aspx