Back in winter, I went for the first time to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

My original intention was to try it out as a gateway restaurant to the full-scale Joël Robuchon next door. Since then, I have not yet had an opportunity to go to Joël Robuchon (the high price point of it makes me want to go together with someone else for a special occasion or something, rather than showing up alone on a random weekday for a regular dinner), but in the meantime, I decided to go back to L’Atelier to try out their updated seasonal signature menu (alone on a random weekday for a regular dinner).

I had a reservation right at opening time and was the first one checked in and seated. My seat was at the far back end of the kitchen bar in a cozy corner that allowed me to have a full view of the entire restaurant, while being very out of the way so I could have maximum privacy. I didn’t make a special request for this seat or anything, though I obviously appreciated being able to eat my dinner from there.

Shortly afterwards, one of the servers brought over a basket of bread with some butter. There were three different types of bread—one that had a little bit of cheese melted on top of it, one that resembled a flaky pastry, and one that was basically a miniature baguette.

I complimented the bread a lot last time, and I’ll do it again this time: I think this simple bread basket is a huge deal when it comes to customer satisfaction.

When I go to chef’s tasting menus or omakase experiences where they use a lot of high-quality and expensive ingredients, the cost of the dinner can get extremely high. In order to make pricing manageable and marketable, some restaurants cut down on the portion sizes a lot. This means that I will walk away from my dinner still hungry.

L’Atelier solves this entirely by giving not only a generously portioned bread basket, but also offering refills (at least they did for me both times). Obviously, very well-made bread like this is going to be more expensive than regular buns and rolls, but comparatively speaking, it is still cheap to make. The amount of return on investment you get on customer happiness is astronomical compared to not having a filling carb like this at all. Throughout my meal, I ate a ton of bread, used it to dip into and finish all the leftover sauces on my dishes, and walked out of the restaurant with a blissfully bloated stomach.

I hope that L’Atelier continues doing this forever, and I also hope that other tasting menu restaurants learn from this and start offering bread if they lean towards smaller portion sizes on their dishes.

To start the meal, I was served an amuse bouche. I don’t remember exactly what all the ingredients were, but it was a three-layer creamy, custardy, foie-gras-based dish.

I was given a spoon so I could scoop deep into the shot glass and get all three layers at once per bite. This worked extra well with me nibbling on some bread in between scoops; it tasted like I had spread some extra rich, ultra-premium butter on the bread.

The first dish was la fameuse gelée de caviar de Joël Robuchon, which translates to Joël Robuchon’s famous gelée de caviar, served with cauliflower purée and Ossetra caviar. (The menu wrote it as le fameuse gelée de caviar, which, to my understanding, contains a grammatical error, and is unexpected to see from such a high-end French restaurant. … Or maybe I am just wrong and will make a fool out of myself to any French speaker reading this blog post.)

There was a generous portion of caviar layered under the gelée. I tried to scoop up some of the caviar and take a second picture, but the consistency of the purée made it so the caviar immediately got covered in white, so it made for a not-very-photogenic situation. However, taste-wise, it was great. The gelée and purée were quite rich, so the saltiness of the caviar also helped enhance the rest of the dish as well.

Next was le gyoza, which were dumplings made with foie gras, duxelles, artichoke, and ham.

This was probably my least favorite dish of the tasting menu. It tasted like upscale dumplings, but they were so salty that I couldn’t really distinguish any of the individual ingredients, and the inside registered to my taste buds as just a generic meaty and vegetable mixture. I could obviously tell that they were much better than the average dumpling, but all the other dishes of the dinner seemed to dwarf the dumplings in almost every metric for me.

With that being said, I have never seen a high-end restaurant try to make extra gourmet dumplings before, so I appreciated the novelty of it.

The third course was la Saint-Jacques, which was a seared scallop with steamed leeks and a ginger champagne emulsion.

The scallop was cooked to a perfect doneness level that perfectly balanced firmness and tenderness. The seared top of the scallop added a nice, subtle crisp to it, and the garnish on top added a fun element of depth to the texture in addition to the flavor.

However, my favorite thing about the dish was actually the ginger champagne emulsion. In cuisine, there are some ingredients that are known to be particularly and disproportionately polarizing in nature among diners; a few examples are garlic, onion, cilantro, and, of course, ginger. I love all four of those foods. I love garlic and onion so much that I sometimes just eat them raw as snacks. And for someone who eats as much authentically-prepared sushi as I do, I imagine it is a given that I eat a ton of ginger.

I saw from the ingredient list that the sauce had ginger, but I guess it didn’t actually register in my brain as to what it would be like. When I took a first taste of the scallop, I was elated at the sauce. I made sure to add generous scoops of the sauce to each bite of scallop, then used the miniature baguette to soak up and finish all the remaining sauce after I was done with the scallop.

As a bonus that was not mentioned on the course list, a zucchini dish was added in.

I think extremely good vegetable dishes are underrepresented at fine dining restaurants, so I always like when great dishes are centered around vegetables. I especially like when the vegetables are prepared in such a way that it captures all the core flavor of the vegetable, but it eliminates all of the bitter elements and the “watered down” elements of the flavor. This zucchini dish did that to my satisfaction and pleasure.

Up next was la morue charbonnière, which was caramelized black cod with daikon velouté and yuzu.

The fish was pretty straightforward and tasted good, but funny enough, it was actually the daikon radish that was the star of this dish. They had somehow managed to completely saturate this daikon with the flavor of the sauce, but still maintain a reasonable level of firmness so that it wasn’t mushy.

As the main entrée and the final savory dish of the night, I had la caille, which was a duo of quail and foie gras with chanterelles and romano beans. This came served atop a small bed of la fameuse pomme purée de Joël Robuchon, which is Joël Robuchon’s famous mashed potatoes, with a generous portion of extra mashed potatoes also served on the side in a bowl.

The portion size of the quail was a bit smaller than I had hoped. I also had the quail dish as my main entrée the last time I was at L’Atelier (though it was prepared in a different way), and for some reason, I remember it being a bit bigger back then. Regardless, the preparation was done well. I also liked the mashed potatoes because they actually tasted like mashed potatoes and not just butter purée like it does at a lot of other restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip.

There were two other options for the main entrée: l’entrecôte, which is Jack’s Creek ribeye with matsutake and salsify; or, for a US$38.00 supplement, le wagyu, which is A4 wagyu tenderloin from the Kagoshima prefecture. I opted to get the poultry dish and not the red meat in my continued efforts to reduce my saturated fat consumption in response to my hereditary predisposition to heart health issues.

At the beginning of my meal, I browsed through the list of specialty non-alcoholic cocktails. The menu indicated that these weren’t just regular mocktails, but rather, the list contained a thoughtful collection of botanicals, nutrients, and functional ingredients selected for wellness.

Out of the six different options, their Blackberry Café caught my attention the most. The ingredient list said it contained blackberry, espresso, whole egg, and cane sugar; the egg induced a silky texture and served as a natural source of protein. I saw “whole egg” and, in my head, visualized a drink that would have like an entire yolk floating at the top or something. Out of intrigue, I ordered this drink and asked the bartender to serve it to me at whatever point of the meal he thought it would fit best.

Well, apparently, this was a dessert drink, because it finally came out after all the appetizers and main courses, and right before dessert. To my disappointment, it did not have an egg yolk floating at the top, and I actually couldn’t even tell that there was an egg in it at all. However, taste-wise, it was amazing. It went literally perfectly with both desserts.

The first dessert was la figue, which was fig sorbet served with blackberry panna cotta and fig confit.

The second dessert was la mûre, made with smooth Manjari crémeux, cocoa crumble, and blackberry sorbet. (For the record, the course list wrote it as la mure, which means something different; based on the context of this dessert, I am pretty sure they meant mûre.)

Here is a view of the interior of the restaurant. As I previously mentioned, my seat was all the way in the back, so I had a commanding view of the entire rest of the restaurant.

Unfortunately, the angle of the kitchen workstations meant that I didn’t have as good of a view as I did last time of the kitchen staff preparing the dishes. However, there was a small table out of the way in the corner that was close to me, and I had a decent sight line to that counter.

This is what the front of the restaurant looks like.

Seasonal signature menu	$ 255.00
Blackberry Café	$  16.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  22.70
Gratuity (18%)	$  48.78
Total	$ 342.48

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Although the meal was fantastic overall, I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have found this a little bit overpriced if it wasn’t for the bread that helped fill me up. There was obviously a great share of heavy-hitting high-end dishes like foie gras, seafood, and generous portions of caviar, but the value for money wasn’t quite at a level where I would religiously go back every single season.

Funny enough, my favorite item of this dinner was actually the Blackberry Café. Not only was it just a very delicious drink, but the way that it added even more depth to the fruit flavor profiles of the desserts was amazing. Thinking back, la mûre was actually a bit more bitter than what you’d expect from a dessert due to the chocolate flavors leaning more towards the darker side. I think it still would’ve worked well as a standalone treat, but combined with the Blackberry Café, it morphed into a very well-balanced level of sweetness.

Because L’Atelier gives print-outs of the course list, people sometimes photograph it and upload it online, so I can get a preview of what I’m about to eat during a particular season before going in. For now, my plan is to keep an eye out for that and return for another meal at L’Atelier either when they overhaul the main entrée (because I had quail twice in a row and would like to try something different that isn’t just steak) or during the summer 2027 seasonal menu, whichever comes first.

I’ve been wanting to go to Partage for a while now due to how well-known it is around the Las Vegas Valley as being a great restaurant. It has held a spot on my list of places to dine at for some time, but I guess I never really rushed to go there.

However, I recently found out that Partage rotates their food offerings regularly, and their tasting menu is completely overhauled once a month (or even more frequently in the case of special events). This is perfect for me, as I have been really enjoying tasting menus lately, and I have been going out of my way to search for novel culinary experiences. With that new knowledge about Partage’s cadence in mind, I promptly booked a reservation last week on September 30, just in time for the final day of the September 2026 tasting menu before they switch over to their October 2026 one.

While I was getting settled in, I was given an amuse-bouche. In the scramble of asking about the three different tiers of tasting menus, discussing Le Club and whether it has any useful benefits for people who don’t drink alcohol (it doesn’t), and selecting a non-alcoholic beverage from the drink menu, I actually forgot what was inside this opening bite. I do remember that it tasted good, though.

For my beverage, I ordered a drink off their non-alcoholic menu—their Passion Lavender, made from house lavender syrup, lemon, raspberry, passion fruit, and cranberry. It was a solid drink, but to me, it sort of tasted generically fruity and didn’t offer anything unique or special.

I asked the bartender about their selection of non-alcoholic beverages and whether those also rotate with the same frequency as the tasting menu. He said that they originally started with six non-alcoholic drinks, but everyone just ordered three out of those six drinks over and over again, so they narrowed the scope of their non-alcoholic beverage menu. He said that those three drinks ended up becoming staples, and they don’t really swap them out.

Partage has three different levels of tasting menus: a five-course tasting menu for US$120.00, a seven-course tasting menu for US$150.00, and a signature nine-course tasting menu for US$198.00 (and of course, the pricing is as of the day I dined; considering how much they change the contents of the menu, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pricing sometimes got tweaked as well). For my very first dinner with Partage, I opted for the nine-course signature tasting menu.

The first course was a crab trio. First was some crab meat served on top of a puffed rice and furikake crispy chip, alongside some Hokkaido-style triple-milk ice cream. Inside the cup was crab bisque flan with live Dungeness crab meat topped with croissant foam. The third of the trio was buttery king crab wrapped in crispy kadaifi.

I was confused when the server said that one of the items contained ice cream and thought he might have just meant that it was a dollop of extra creamy thick sauce, but when I bit into it, I confirmed that it was definitely actually ice cream. With that being said, the ice cream worked really well with the crab and didn’t taste like I was starting my meal with dessert.

The flan was very flavorful, and the amount of crab inside was quite generous.

For the king crab wrapped in crispy kadaifi, I tried to eat this in two bites, but when I tried to bite it in half, the kadaifi crumbled and started flying everywhere, so in panic, I just put the entire thing in my mouth. The kadaifi was extremely crispy, yet still had a sense of lightness to it such that it wasn’t crispy to the point of being sharp and cutting my mouth. The kadaifi didn’t really have any greasiness to it that you’d expect from something fried to this level of crisp, which is good, because that allowed the butter from the crab to control the primary fatty element of the flavor profile.

The second course was Scotch egg stuffed with corn purée, served atop farro risotto, wild mushrooms, and baby corn, sauced with chicken jus.

I wish I had taken a picture of this after I sliced into the egg, because it was very amusing seeing the egg cut open and seeing the corn purée ooze out as if it was a thicker and lighter-colored runny yolk. Overall, this was quite a bit too salty for me, but if I set that part aside, then I still enjoyed the dish.

The third and final appetizer course was lamb Wellington with olive tapenade, red bell pepper, baba ghanoush, and lamb Choron sauce.

As you can most likely see from the photograph, the ratio of puff pastry to meat was extremely high compared to what you’d expect from a beef Wellington. I am not sure if everyone would agree with me, but I personally thought this was fantastic. Rather than just going for a lamb variant of beef Wellington, this tasted like it was a fully reimagined bakery dish where both the pastry and the meat share the spotlight. On top of that, because lamb generally has much more intensity of flavor than beef, I think this worked out very well.

The only thing that I did not prefer about it was how salty the sauce was, though that was obviously fixed by just using less of it. For someone who doesn’t love pastries as much as I do, using more of the sauce will probably lean the dish a bit away from the pastry realm and deeper into the Wellington territory.

The fourth course was the foie gras signature dish. Foie gras always exists in some form in the signature tasting menu, but they change how they prepare it each month. This month, it was seared foie gras with reduced Muscat, caramelized grapes, and baby grapes. It also came with a crispy roll wrapped with grape leaf and topped with artichoke. Both were sauced with duck jus.

I like when dishes take an item and prepare it in multiple different ways to make a certain dish. A very common example of this is how some sushi restaurants will serve salmon bowls atop sushi rice and serve the salmon three different ways: dorsal loin sashimi, belly sashimi, and roe. This foie gras dish basically did that, but with a bunch of different kinds of grapes.

The grapes and artichoke helped balance the fattiness of the foie gras. I pretty much always prefer foie gras to be served with a generous amount of fruits and/or vegetables; I think this dish met the bare minimum of that threshold such that it tasted great, but it still maintained as much of the powerful, rich, savory kick as possible.

Course number five was the seafood dish. This month, it was premium white fish and clam chowder with celery, fennel, potato siphon, bacon, and crispy tuile.

I mentioned this at the beginning of the blog post, but I had this meal last week on the final day of September, so it’s been a little while since I ate this. In the time that has passed, I forgot what I thought about this dish. In every situation where that happens, it always means that the dish was decent, because I pretty much never forget a dish if it is remarkably good or remarkably bad. Thus, I am guessing that this was an all-around solid white fish dish, and I most likely enjoyed it, but there was nothing special about it that would prompt me to remember it in detail.

Next up was the signature course. Apparently this is the most popular dish in the entire tasting menu, and they allegedly attempted to swap this out in the past, but this was such a fan favorite that people kept asking for it back. This is the one course that stays consistent month-to-month, and is the reason a lot of regulars will get the nine-course signature tasting menu instead of the seven-course or five-course versions.

The signature course is wagyu oxtail croque-monsieur.

Believe it or not, this was my least favorite dish of the tasting menu. The first few bites were brain-bustingly delicious, but by the time I finished two of the seven layers, it was already getting very cloying. The fat content in the wagyu oxtail was insane, and although it’s amazing in smaller portions, the amount in this croque-monsieur was excessive in my opinion. I did end up finishing the entire thing, but by the time I was done, I was almost relieved that it was over.

Honestly, this actually works out perfectly well. I’m glad I was able to enjoy this signature dish one time. However, it’s not something that I would get repeatedly. This means that for future visits to Partage, rather than ordering the nine-course signature menu, I can get the seven-course menu and then supplement a foie gras add-on. That way, I can get the eight dishes that rotate each month, while saving a bit of money passing on the ninth dish, and also make my heart happier by eating less saturated fat.

Course seven was the meat course. This month, it was Black Opal wagyu beef tenderloin on one half of the plate, and a celery risotto with glazed and caramelized beef cheek bonbon on the other half. Both were sauced with some parsley-garlic coulis and beef demi-glace.

I think the tenderloin was around AUS-MEAT BMS 6-7, rather than BMS 8-9+. This meant that the marbling was top-tier, but not the highest tier. I actually prefer this over BMS 9+ (or A5 on the Japanese scale) because you can taste more of the beefiness and you can have a larger portion of the meat without feeling overwhelmed. I was also glad that this tenderloin had lower fat content after having the wagyu oxtail croque-monsieur.

This is what the inside of the celery risotto looked like. The fact that it was celery atop the beef cheek was very amusing, but the combination actually worked quite well. Even the texture matched up almost perfectly to the rice in slow-cooked risotto, so calling it celery risotto was definitely justified.

Next up was the cheese course for course number eight. This was Brillat-Savarin cheese served alongside candied baby beets and beet bread, topped with salted peanuts and drizzled with raspberry vinaigrette.

This is the best cheese I’ve ever had in my entire life.

I am usually not a fan of cheese because I think it tastes like mold, and I tend to pick up on the moldy flavor profile much more easily than other people. However, this cheese did not taste at all like any other cheese I’ve ever had. This cheese was buttery, creamy, milky, and fresh. In fact, I’d say that this Brillat-Savarin is the best dairy product I’ve ever had in general.

I spread generous portions of it on the beet bread and took bites of the candied baby beets to go along with it. That, combined with the greens and the peanuts, and it basically hit every single metric for every single possible thing you could ask for to go along with a world-class cheese dish.

I literally think I could’ve eaten three more plates of this and still wanted more.

To conclude the meal, there were two desserts. I’m not sure if the course list is entirely accurate here just based on what the dessert looked like, but this apparently had caramelized pear, pear gel, oatmeal, and cocoa crumble. Realistically, this tasted like an elevated version of a s’more.

The second dessert was a vanilla rice pudding mousse. I remember the server introducing this with the term Snickers for some reason; it didn’t really remind me of Snickers at all, but I thought this was better than the chocolate bar. It was like a light chocolate brownie, and it was quite sweet, but it wasn’t the sickly or cloying kind of sweet; instead, this was a much brighter sweetness that you usually get from crystallized sugar.

Along with the check, I was brought some petits fours to enjoy at the end of my meal. The left bite was blueberry meringue, and the right bite was a miniature tart with a custardy and nutty flavor profile.

Because I was dining alone, I took a seat at the bar so I wouldn’t be occupying a full table that could be used by a larger party. Sometimes I read the news on my phone during the downtime between dishes, but occasionally, the bartender would have some free time between making drinks to come chat for a bit at a time.

This is what the dining area looks like. I had the first reservation slot of the evening at 5:30 PM, which is right as they opened, so that’s why it looks so empty. The bartender mentioned that they plan on changing their business hours and opening half an hour earlier at 5:00 PM starting from October.

Next door to Partage is Le Club by Partage, and in between the two dining areas, there is an area where they store and sell wine. I was several minutes early for my 5:30 PM reservation and Partage hadn’t opened yet, so the hostess asked me to hold tight for a few more minutes until she could confirm that the staff was ready to start service. In the meantime, I browsed the wines set out for display (though I had no idea what anything was, considering that I do not drink alcohol).

Signature tasting menu	$ 198.00
Passion Lavender	$  12.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  17.59
Gratuity	$  40.00
Total	$ 267.59

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I thought that the meal was a little bit pricey, especially considering that it didn’t have any of the iconic expensive-to-procure items (such as caviar, truffles, Japanese A5 wagyu, lobster, and other rare or supply-constrained seafood) that tend to drive up the price of some other tasting menus to around US$200.00+ due to the cost of goods being passed along to the diner. On top of that, Partage is in Chinatown out in the suburbs, and it doesn’t qualify for the expected Las Vegas Strip upcharge from high rent and high roller capitalization.

With that being said, I think it was still within reason, primarily if you account for the relatively high intricacies and complexities behind each of the dishes. I guess the fish was somewhat straightforward, but everything else looked like it involved high-effort, time-consuming preparation processes. Partage is big on wine, and they seem to have a very successful wine club, so my guess is that their primary target audience consists of older wine enthusiasts who have more spending power and don’t mind not milking maximum value per dollar on food, presumably due to being desensitized by the generally high price of alcohol.

Based on my experience during the aforementioned dinner, I am definitely going back again this month (in October) for the new menu rotation. With a few minor adjustments and optimizations to my order (specifically, getting an eight-course menu instead of the full signature one, and sticking with just house water instead of also getting a decent-but-not-amazing non-alcoholic cocktail), I think the price point will be chipped down enough that it won’t be bothersome to me. I want to support chefs who prioritize exploration, innovation, experimentation, and seasonality, and I think becoming a regular at Partage would be a great way to do that.

I am a Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholder. Unfortunately, as of the past year or two, it feels like it is changing from a premium credit card to a hassle-ridden coupon book. In order to get maximum value out of the card in exchange for the steep annual fee, you have to chase down a bunch of credits, one of which includes a semi-annual OpenTable credit. I already used it last semester at Meteora while visiting a friend in Los Angeles, but it refreshes starting from July, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for a good opportunity to go to another qualifying restaurant soon.

I’m always looking for unique, creative, innovative, and limited-edition dining opportunities. While browsing for options near me, I came across the Caesars Palace 60th Anniversary Teppan Experience at Nobu on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. This was great news because, not only would I be able to try a special teppanyaki dining experience that was concluding at the end of September (I had this meal approximately one week ago), but I also remembered off the top of my head that Nobu was a qualifying restaurant for the OpenTable credit.

After I found it, I promptly booked the reservation for the same day, and then showed up at 5 PM for the first seating. I finished my dinner, paid for my meal, then checked my Chase app to confirm that the charge had gone through properly as “Nobu” instead of just a generic “Caesars Palace food and beverage” so Chase would know to award me the credit. Somewhere along this process, I found out that, about three months ago, Chase removed Nobu from the eligible OpenTable credit restaurants. And of course, they didn’t release a proper press release about it; out of all places they could’ve picked, they announced it on reddit.

It is entirely my fault. There was an absence of the Chase Sapphire Reserve logo on the OpenTable booking page for Nobu, but it didn’t register in my head that it was gone when I opened it to make the booking. Chase also gave a two-month grace period after they removed Nobu (in addition to a bunch of other restaurants), and my dinner fell outside of even that grace period. And of course, Chase and OpenTable reserve the right to change qualifying restaurants at any point, and it is up to me to check for participating status at the time of booking.

Regardless, it is obviously disappointing going into a meal expecting a US$150.00 discount and then finding out that you have to pay full price. Luckily for me, I dine at restaurants a lot, so it won’t be an issue for me to go to another restaurant—this time, one that is actually on the list of participating restaurants—to spend the credit that I wasn’t able to use at Nobu.

 
With all that being said, I’m still glad I got the opportunity to try this special tasting menu. Was it a high-value experience for the money? No, not really, as you will see later on. But was it still a good experience? Yes.

What made the experience extra good was the fact that apparently I was the only one who booked a reservation for that particular time slot on that particular day. When I showed up at the restaurant, I was a little bit early and they hadn’t opened yet, so I waited about ten minutes in the lobby; once they were ready, the hostess walked me to the teppan table, and I noticed that only one of the spots was set with a linen napkin and chopsticks. When I pointed with a confused look and asked if I was the only one, she said “yes.”

Sadly, the positioning of the teppan grill was very unfortunate. Because Nobu is inside Caesars Palace, it is directly connected to the hotel. The far back walls of Nobu are not solid, and instead have diamond-shaped spaces that show a view out into the hall. Because of the casino, cigarette smoking is legal inside Caesars Palace. This meant that I would occasionally get repulsive waves of cigarette smoke odor coming into the restaurant, and being so close to the back wall, my table was the first one hit. This alone is enough for me to never return to Nobu for another teppan meal again.

The meal started with a collection of sashimi: kanpachi jalapeño, ama ebi, and salmon nashi pear with sliced truffle.

The greater amberjack was solid, but there was nothing particularly special about it. The sweet shrimp was incredibly delicious, but the shrimp head that came with it was fairly average. The salmon was my favorite bite; the pear sauce and truffle to go along with the salmon made for an amazing combination.

Whenever I go to a restaurant, I like to browse their non-alcoholic mocktail menu to see if there’s anything interesting that I might want to try. At Nobu, the drink that stuck out to me was their Shiso Peachy, made from white peach Calpico, aloe juice, simple syrup, lemon, and Fever-Tree soda, topped with a shiso leaf.

This actually ended up being one of the best drinks I’ve ever had. It was a very unique flavor profile that I’ve never had before. It had a smooth and subtle fruitiness to it that was sweet, but not too sweet. I think shiso leaves can be tricky to use because their flavor can very easily pierce through and overwhelm other flavors, but the fact that this leaf was just gently placed on top made it so that it only had a gentle contribution to the overall flavor profile to the extent that it matched, but did not overpower, the rest of the drink.

Next up was the nigiri. The three pieces included toro with miso and caviar, Japanese snapper with shiso and lemon, and snow crab tiradito. This was also accompanied by atsuyaki tamago.

All of this was pretty good, but I particularly liked the snow crab nigiri. The crunchy garnish on top gave it a fun texture and added a very slight kick of mild spice.

After the first two courses, the chef came out and prepared the teppan grill.

He seemed to have no reaction whatsoever to the fact that I was the only one dining that round. I asked him how often this happens, and he said that it has actually been occurring a lot more frequently lately. I guess the fact that I showed up on a weekday and early on in the evening (as opposed to the weekend during the late evening dinner rush) also contributed to it as well.

After doing a little juggling show with his cooking tools to show his agility, the chef started cooking my meal.

First off the grill was Hokkaido scallop with charred negi goma, sesame chili oil, and shiitake mushrooms.

The quality of the scallop was great, and the accompanying sauce was fantastic. I often don’t prefer over-garnished scallop because it’s easy to overpower the milder flavor of scallop. However, this sauce had the perfect intensity such that it got right up to the limit of flavor while just barely not overwhelming the scallop. The mushrooms also worked great with this, as they were charred and almost crispy on the outside, while being soft and tender on the inside.

Next up was Glacier 51 Chilean sea bass with yuzu kosho chimichurri and broccolini.

This was an interesting take on chimichurri. I often see chimichurri paired with steak and other red meats, but this was infused with a more citrus-heavy twist, and it complemented the fish well. It had an element of spiciness to it, but it was more of a “throbbing” kind of satisfying spicy aftertaste, rather than it being a front-loaded spiciness that is often associated with spicy foods.

While I was enjoying the sea bass, the chef started working on my next dish.

For the next course, the chef cooked some lobster tail and served it atop some rocoto sweet chili garlic miso and micro arugula.

I like lobster, so I appreciated this dish. I suspect that the sauce here was quite special, but I think the highly innovative and unique nature of the sauces of the previous two dishes made it so that, in comparison, this rocoto sweet chili garlic miso didn’t stand out as much as it otherwise would have had I eaten this as a separate entrée.

With back-to-back-to-back seafood dishes done, it was time for some beef.

The chef’s next plate was Miyazaki A5 wagyu drizzled with soy mirin reduction served with pickled daikon and a dollop of karashi.

This was delicious wagyu beef and matched the quality I would expect from a cut graded A5. However, the thing that stood out most to me about this was actually the spicy mustard. Wagyu is often served with flaky salt and pepper so that the beef flavor is enhanced, but there is nothing diluting or altering the flavor profile. Even though I’ve eaten quite a lot of A5 wagyu at this point in my life, I think this is actually the first time that I ever had it served with karashi.

For my first bite, I accidentally put way too much of it on the beef, so all I ended up tasting was the spicy mustard. However, for subsequent bites, I used the spicy mustard far more conservatively, and with a small dot of it on the wagyu, it made it much better. The best way for me to describe it was as if the wagyu was served with a more unique variant of wasabi.

While I was enjoying the wagyu, the chef started preparing a bunch of different ingredients for my final savory course before dessert.

After I finished all the wagyu, a waiter came over to take away my empty plate and drop off a bowl of miso soup.

I sipped the soup to go along with my bowl of Nobu fried rice, made from lobster, wagyu, scallop, black garlic, and crispy allium.

Up until this point, I was noticing how small the portion size of each dish was, and the limited number of overall courses offered in the tasting menu. Although this fried rice didn’t single-handedly “fix” the problem, the fact that the chef prepared a large, heaping bowl of rice did definitely help lift me out of continued hunger and into the “fine” territory.

For his final act of the meal, the chef seared a crust on some banana slices and then lit them ablaze to flambé them.

When I saw him do that, I told him an abridged version of the story of my friend’s botched pineapple rum flambé upside-down cake at STRIPSTEAK and let him know that I’m glad he knows how to properly use the technique. He seemed to have found the anecdote quite amusing and funny.

The bananas were brought back to the kitchen, where the pastry chefs finished preparing the dessert. This is the final product that came out: banana kinako with nougatine, walnut, and Maldon salt, served with a scoop of milk gelato. According to the description on the menu, this is inspired by Bananas Foster.

This was great. It was fun combining all the individual elements into cohesive bites, and I particularly enjoyed the nuttiness and how it complemented the baseline banana flavor.

This is a picture of the front of the restaurant near the hostess’ podium.

I didn’t have an opportunity to capture any other photos inside Nobu because of how far back I was seated. The teppan grill tables are tucked away in a little alcove, so it’s fantastic for privacy, but not the best if you want to take pictures. The restaurant also filled up pretty quickly after I arrived, so I didn’t want to go for a walk taking pictures when a ton of diners were already getting settled in for their meals.

Instead, here is a photo of the statues and fountain near the hotel registration desk at Caesars Palace. I passed through here on my way out of the building after finishing dinner.

Teppan Menu	$ 266.00
Shiso Peachy	$  15.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  23.53
Gratuity	$  50.00
Total	$ 354.53

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

As I mentioned before, I enjoyed the meal and I enjoyed the experience. However, I think this price is quite steep for what you get.

Nobu is a very reputable brand. After this dinner, I do think that Nobu is deserving of praise and acclaim. However, with that being said, I think Nobu is overrated. I think the way that people perceive Nobu as some kind of ultra high-end luxury brand is a bit overblown for what you actually get. Again, to be clear, the food was fantastic. However, you can also get food of comparably high quality at other high-end, authentic Japanese restaurants for substantially less money and larger portion sizes.

Obviously, restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip charge quite a bit more than regular restaurants out in the suburbs, or compared to restaurants in other cities that aren’t designed to attract high rollers. However, even with that in mind, I think the US$266 price point is still too high. In my opinion, I think the “Nobu mark-up” here is somewhere around the US$60-70 range, i.e., if this exact experience did not have the Nobu name attached to it and was instead given to you at some generic “Mr. & Mrs. Lee’s Teppanyaki” restaurant on the Strip, it would probably be priced closer to a flat US$200.

So, my final verdict of whether or not I would recommend it? It depends. If you’re taking a gold digger out on a date, or if you yourself are a gold digger and want to milk good value from your date, and you care about the prestige of dining at Nobu, then I think this is a great place not only to stroke your ego, but also to actually eat very good food. However, if you’re just a normal person and you want to dine at a restaurant that will give you more bang for your buck, then I think it makes sense to pass on Nobu (at least the one at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip).