It was an old favorite in need of a return visit. I just had to stop at Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay last weekend with a friend and catch up on some old favorites.
I still remember the first time I was there and I first tried their veggie burger. Wow... Something that wasn't taken from a freezer and formed in some factory many moons ago? It was truly love at first bite. ;-)
And amazingly enough, I'm still in love. Who knew pumpkin, potatoes, caramelized onions, green peas, lentils, and brown rice could all come together so beautifully in a meatless burger patty?
The sweet potato fries were also quite enjoyable. They were soft inside, but not soggy or overly greasy outside. And they had a subtle sweetness that kept me on edge... In a good way.
So it was most definitely a happy return to Burger Bar last week. I'll just have to remember to return more often for my other fave burger on The Strip.
Remember my fabulous time at La Cave in December, right after it first opened? Well, I hadn't had a chance to visit in a while... But I finally returned a few days before I left town. And much to my delight, the food still delighted me. And to make my evening even better, I discovered its pool view terrace!
Where should I begin? How about drinks! I ordered a mojito, and I got a good wallop of good rum! It was sweet and refreshing, but not sickly sweet and showing off enough lime tartness to keep it interesting and fun.
I had another flatbread/pizza, but I still wanted to switch it up, so this time I ordered one with prosciutto, caramelized onions, arugula, and a light cream sauce. It all came together beautifully. The salty prosciutto, sweet onions, and pepper arugula made for a great contrast of flavors. And the bread still tasted as fresh and soft as ever.
What also put a smile on my face is perhaps my new favorite dessert, the American Chocolate Cake at La Cave! I know I'm a sucker for nearly anything chocolate, but I have a hard time seeing anyone turn away all that rich chocolate ganache covered in rich chocolate fondant. It's just so sinfully delicious!
And now that summer pool season is raging in Las Vegas, do try to snatch a table outside if dining around sunset. The views of Wynn's breathtaking pool are captivating. For a moment, one might forget about the sweating hoi polloi gorging on footlong margaritas and nasty buffets when noshing here. ;-)
I just had to try it. I was drawn to it. Chinese food. And Mexican food. And avant garde cuisine. By Jose Andres. All under the same roof!
Many adjectives can describe the food here, but I suspect "boring" will never be one of them. Since I needed a cool libation after a rough morning, I was ready for a margarita. My "Salt Air Margarita" soon emerged... With salt foam on top! Very interesting, and very yummy. So far, so good.
And from there, it just kept getting better. The queso fundido came out piping hot, and served alongside fabulous housemade tortillas. It was divine.
Next up was an eggplant dish that I'm still trying wrap my head around. It was sauteed with black garlic and served with this interesting, slightly sweet soy sauce. The black garlic was quite pleasant and sweet, and the eggplant was very tender.
And finally, there was dessert. Because my curiosity got the best of me, I had to taste for myself the "coconut tapioca balls" with passion fruit and mandarin orange sorbet. OMG, this was something else! I had my doubts, but this made me a believer in tapioca pudding again... Especially when it's combined with floating balls of coconutty creaminess and perfect orange sorbet!
All in all, my first impression of China Poblano was quite good. I look forward to returning soon and exploring more of the fascinating menu here.
For ab fab, gourmet California style pizza, reworked Vegas style, I had to go to Spago! I had to stop at Spago before I left town for a lunch break during my holiday shopping spree, and I just had to order my fave mushroom pizza. It's obviously still my favorite!
I also tried the pumpkin bread pudding for dessert, and I was amazed by the complex pumpkin and spice flavors, the rich custard interacting so well with the hearty bread, and the delectable vanilla creme anglaise and house made ice cream that went so perfectly with the pudding.
All in all, another great lunch at what may be my favorite lunch spot on The Strip!
Next up for review is La Cave, the brand new wine bar and "Modern American Tapas" joint at Wynn. And as (what hopefully will be) always, the photos are just below the review. Enjoy! :-)
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Last week, I decided I might as well try out Wynn's new tapas bar for late lunch/early dinner. And hey, why not? It's already getting plenty of buzz, and I was already getting mighty hungry.
And thank goodness curiosity got the best of me! I started off with the Buttermilk Bleu Cheese plate, and a lovely wedge of this stinky goodness arrived alongside toasted mini baguette slices and fig jam. For some reason the bread was at room temperature, but that was quickly forgiven when I dove into the heavenly cheese paired with that divine fig jam! (Hopefully in the future, they'll make fresh batches of toasted baguette.)
From there, it was onto my pizza... err, "flatbread". I ordered a flatbread with roasted tomatoes, micro mozzarella, and capers, which is essentially a pizza margherita shaped more rectangularly, and with the basil swapped out in favor of the capers. But whatever one wants to call it, one can't deny it's tasty! The roasted tomatoes were sweet and tangy, and the salty capers provided the perfect balance and contrast. The mozzarella melted beautifully, and the crust was soft and pillowy. This definitely makes my "Top 10 Pizzas in Vegas" list!
And of course, what good meal is complete without dessert? I couldn't help myself, I HAD to try the "American Chocolate Cake". And trust me, if you're the kind of American who can never get enough chocolate, you'll LOVE this cake! Actually, there's a thin layer of cake hidden somewhere in the midst of a beautiful mold of chocolate mousse covered in chocolate ganache. Oh, and there's a thin chocolate wafer cookie on the bottom. And oh my, this was so perfectly sweet and smooth and creamy that I had to hold myself back from licking the plate!
All in all, my first impression of La Cave was quite strong. Again, my one small quibble was over the toasted baguette, and that can easily be fixed. Otherwise, the food was terrific, service was strong, and I'll likely be back soon to take full advantage of their wine list!
Executives at Bon Appetit have confirmed that they are returning to Las Vegas on May 5-8 for the fifth annual culinary festival Vegas Uncork’d. Tickets go on sale Jan. 25 for the 30-plus events. Additionally, the January issue features a guide to recommended top spots here. Bon Appetit reports: “Everything is larger than life in Vegas, including the food. From Michelin-starred French chefs to off-The-Strip gems, Sin City is more delicious than ever.”
The picks include Bellagio, Caesars Palace, The Venetian, The Palazzo, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Wynn, Encore, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and dining explorations at Sage in Aria, Mesa Grill in Caesars Palace, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand, P3 Commons at the Cosmopolitan, Noodles at Bellagio, Aburiya Raku at 5030 West Spring Mountain Road, Amber Unicorn at 2101 S. Decatur Blvd. and Encore Spa in Steve Wynn’s Encore. The January issue hits newsstands Tuesday.
And oh my goodness, might my wish actually be fulfilled already? And by Bon Appetit? For quite some time, Raku has been mostly a not-very-well-known Chinatown hideaway where Strip chefs and foodies in the know go for fantastic robatayaki cooking. But now, it's getting some serious national attention with its feature in the "Eating Las Vegas" guide, followed by this mention in Bon Appetit.
Hopefully, this means Raku will get some serious loving next May during Vegas Uncork'd weekend. And perhaps we'll see more homegrown talent get the limelight they so thoroughly deserve soon.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is set to open tonight, and The Strip is ablaze with chatter, rumors, optimism, concern, and so much more. John Unwin keeps saying he sees this not as a "book end" or "end of an era", but rather as "a new beginning". Could this be true?
Interestingly, most of the big name restaurants: Jaleo, Comme Ça, Milos, and Scarpetta are located on the third floor, and essentially adjacent to each other as they wrap around the main escalator. The effect is striking (and very convenient for galloping gourmets), and gives the appearance of the ultimate, up-, upscale food court — featuring the best of Spanish, French, Greek and Italian cuisines.
None of them are especially intimate (a quick scan puts each at around 175 seats), but if the hype and reputations of these places is to be believed, the only place in America that comes close to such an intense concentration of gourmandia is the Time Warner Building in the Big Apple. [...]
You heard it here first: The Cosmopolitan is going to shake the gastronomic ground in the High Mojave Dessert, and the whole world is going to feel the shudder.
What we’ve been thinking about is the difference between hotels who own their own restaurants (à la Wynn/Encore, Caesars, Bellagio, et al) and those who four- wall (i.e lease out) their food service operations (à la Venetian/Palazzo, Palms, and the soon-to-open THE Cosmopolitan).
We won’t bore you with all the pros and cons of one business model versus another, but suffice it to say the big, corporate hotels who dominate the Strip (and who own their own restaurants), are always teetering on the brink of reverting to the Vegas of old — when hotel gourmet rooms and coffee shops were almost indistinguishable from one another — and whatever personality the dining spots had was confined to cossetting the guests and getting them back to the tables quickly. Food wasn’t the point back then, the illusion of luxury was, and metronomic operations were the rule. [...]
The trouble is, big, corporate gambling palaces aren’t that good at food service operations. What they’re good at is running hotels and casinos. If any of them were being honest, they’d admit they don’t even want to run restaurants, they just have to. Since 1994, when MGM made the first big splash with Emeril, Mark Miller, and the original Charlie Trotter, the hotels have been locked in the restaurant equivalent of a cold war arms race — each feeling it has to top the other or risk being forever marginalized by the upscale tourist market they are all aiming to attract.
So how might Cosmo change this? Well, they're not even trying to take full control of the restaurants. They're simply leasing out their restaurant spaces, thereby allowing the chef-owners to have more control over their operations than the typical casino restaurant overseen by F&B (the casino's food and beverage department, that is).
Might this be a model for Strip casinos and restaurants in the future? We'll have to wait and see. Venelazzo and Palms have done this for some time, but it hasn't seemed to catch on yet.
Honestly, there are upsides and downsides to splitting the casinos from the restaurants. We'll see where that goes.
But believe it or not, that may not be the biggest change coming with Cosmo. Mike Dobranski could hardly hide his excitement on Monday about this. While he originally expressed doubt about Cosmo being all that much of a game changer, he's been warming up to it since.
Finally the resort us fans of food have been waiting for, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, will be open to the public on Wednesday, December 15th at 8pm. If I had to pick the three or four restaurants I’m most looking forward to, I’d have to tip my hat to both of José Andrés’ places with Jaleo and especially China Poblano, David Myers’ Comme Ca (pronounced ‘come saw’ for We-The-Frenchy-Deficient) and Block 16 Hospitality’s (folks that brought us LBS Burger) Holsteins.
Jaleo is Chef José Andrés’ Spanish tapas emporium, so obviously the tapas slut in me is excited about that. For me, the most exciting restaurant in the building is Andrés’ China Poblano, and original concept of his that will be a Mexican / Chinese fusion. Sounds good to me…and oddly logical considering I don’t know of that combo being done anywhere else. While Comme Ca is an import from Los Angeles, it will be nice to have an accessible, centrally located French Brasserie in town to go to. Last, but not least, Holsteins will be the requisite burger joint, but feature natural and organic ingredients and house-made sausage.
While most of Cosmo's "new" restaurants are either LA or NYC imports, they are from chefs who have not been exposed to Vegas before. And some of what they're offering, such as Milos' fine, authentic Greek food, hasn't been experienced here before. Hopefully, we'll be in for good eating.
However, what's even more exciting is that Jose Andres and Scott Conant will actually bring original concepts to Vegas! Andres will open China Poblano this week, which will be a very unique Chinese-Mexican fusion restaurant... Talk about "East Meets West"! Meanwhile Conant will open DOCG, and Italian wine bar and small plates joint that's coming first to Vegas. Not since Steve Wynn hand-picked previously little known chefs to come to Vegas and become culinary superstars (such as Julian Serrano, Alex Stratta, and Jet Tila) have we seen a Strip casino bring such exciting new concepts to town.
For such a long time, Vegas' culinary star-power has relied on New York, San Francisco, and Paris superstar chefs bringing "photocopies" of their restaurants here. And while just this alone has helped improve fine dining here, it's nonetheless no substitute for real, homegrown talent. Thankfully we are starting to see more homegrown talent emerge, but they've yet to achieve the sort of "critical mass" of attention that celebrity superstar chefs regularly get when they import more restaurants here.
Maybe one day in the not-too-distant future we'll finally see this happen, but in the mean time it's encouraging to see some new culinary ideas shine through at Cosmo.
Ah, nothing like Bellagio's Dancing Fountains to ring in our new blog!
This is wild. This is crazy. This is gourmet. This is hole-in-the-wall. This is home cookin'. This is haute cuisine. This is radical. This is avant garde. This is tried and true. This is VEGAS, baby, and we're on our way to munch through all of it and more!
And I'll be holding your hand along the way.
Welcome to Bite of Vegas!
For all of you coming to visit from Nevada Progressive, get ready to see another side of me. I'm leaving the public policy there (mostly, unless you really want to get all food wonk on moi!) to get all gourmand here! OK, OK, and I'll get down and dirty in those holes in the wall with you as well.
And for all of you more familiar with my foodie writing, welcome aboard! I'll be posting more good stuff here. Expect restaurant reviews, kitchen side chats on cooking, and maybe even some dishing on those food TV shows we love... And love to hate.
Maybe we'll even shift to other, broader topics. Who knows??!! Honestly, this feels like a new experience all over again. I feel like I'm moving out of my comfort zone in running my own blog that leaves my political life behind, so please don't be too hard on me in these first few days and weeks. Let's see what happens.
I hope you'll be joining me on this adventure. Just remember to buckle your seat belts. It's going to be a an exhilarating ride! :-D
