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).

A few months ago, I tried The Bazaar Tasting Menu at Bazaar Meat by José Andrés inside The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort, and I had a great experience. I got fantastic value for my money, the food quality overall was very high, their unique and innovative concepts are in alignment with what I believe makes a restaurant great, and I want to go back at some point to try José’s Ultimate Tasting Menu (the other tasting menu that I didn’t have).

However, no matter how amazing Bazaar Meat was, there is still one minor problem for me: their dishes are heavy on red meat. Unfortunately, I still need to be heart-health conscious and minimize the amount of saturated fat I eat; although my cholesterol levels have become far more manageable now, I’m still at high risk for hereditary heart conditions. Thus, I like to indulge in red meats sparingly, and where possible, I shift my diet towards focusing more on fish, poultry, and vegetables.

There is some great news though. Bazaar Meat is known for their delicious and high-quality steaks that have incredible marbling and impeccable preparation, but they also have a sister restaurant that upholds the same reputation but focuses on seafood instead. That obviously is a great match for me, so late last week, I dined at Bazaar Mar by José Andrés, located inside The Shops at Crystals on the Las Vegas Strip.

Bazaar Mar also had two different tasting menus: The Bazaar Mar Experience for US$175.00 per person, with an option to add a discovery wine pairing for a supplemental US$150.00 per person; and José’s Creative Experience for US$235.00 per person, with an option to add the ultimate wine pairing for a supplemental US$220.00 per person. For this meal, I decided to try out The Bazaar Mar Experience, with an intent to come back and try José’s Creative Experience on a later day if I have a good experience.

I’m glad I don’t drink alcohol, because it’s wild to me that some sips of wine to go along with your meal can end up being almost just as expensive as the entire tasting menu itself. Instead, I opted to get two non-alcoholic beverages. One of them was given to me complimentary because Bazaar Mar is running a special promotion right now where locals get one free drink with a purchase (though I’m not sure whether any Nevada ID would qualify, or if the ID has to have an address listed that is within the Las Vegas Valley). The second one is one I selected and paid for.

 
The first course, called “a bite or two to welcome you,” came with three items. The first was oyster ceviche with leche de tigre and corn nuts.

I love the flavor of oyster so I usually don’t add anything to it that could potentially diminish the strength of the flavor of the oyster. If a restaurant serves oysters with a set of sauces, I usually don’t use any of the sauces and end up eating the oysters plain (or with a very small amount of lemon juice) because I like oysters that much. Sometimes, if there is some sea salt available and the oysters are extra good, I will salt the oysters to further enhance the flavor of them.

With that in mind, I think it’s reasonable to assume that I don’t like oysters that have a lot of preparation behind them. However, this oyster ceviche was actually quite good. The sauce added a bit of sourness to the overall flavor profile, but the level of sourness stopped at the perfect level such that it didn’t interfere with the taste of the oyster. I like nutty flavors, so the corn nuts not only added a different angle to the flavor profile, but also added a fun textural contrast to the bite.

Along with the appetizers, my complimentary drink came out: the Emerald Coin, made with Seedlip Grove 42 non-alcoholic spirit, honeydew, lemongrass, lime, and celery. If I wasn’t a local, this would’ve cost US$16.00.

This is a flavor profile that I don’t have often, so I enjoyed the unique aspect of it. It was a nice, balanced mixture of sweet fruitiness and earthy vegetable…ness. At first, I thought the portion size was a bit small, but I think the shape of the glass was deceptive; I sipped this throughout my first few courses, and it was enough to last me past when my second drink came out.

The next bite was José’s Taco with jamón Ibérico de bellota, Ossetra caviar, nori, and gold leaf.

I’m usually not the biggest fan of jamón Ibérico because the flavor can be a bit basic and overpowering, but this jamón was great. It was relatively mild, yet still had a rich, meaty flavor. The seaweed was relatively mild as well, which allowed the taste of the caviar to come through prominently.

The third bite was a river trout cone made from Smoke in Chimneys trout shaped into a flower, with preserved Meyer lemon and dill.

The presentation was nice, but even if it wasn’t formed into the shape of a flower, it would’ve still been fantastic. The trout had a strong but very clean and crisp fish flavor. When the server brought this out, she recommended that it be eaten in two bites at once, i.e., bite the top off, then put the rest in your mouth and chew together. The sauce at the bottom of the cone was very complementary to the fish, so I’m glad she pointed that out.

The next course was called “a trip around the world, The Bazaar world.” This started with monkfish ssam containing fried monkfish atop gem lettuce, sauced with black garlic romesco and aioli, and topped with lemon foam.

The fried monkfish tasted very clean. It felt like it was grilled and seared monkfish, but with a light and refreshing layer of breading on it, and injected with all the positives of the fried flavoring without any of the greasiness. I couldn’t really pinpoint the specific flavors of the sauces, which I found to be a good thing; they meshed well with the fish flavor and didn’t overwhelm it at all.

Next was kueh pai ti, described on the course list as Singapore’s favorite street food. Inside, it contained ama ebi shrimp, peanuts, and chili sauce.

This was my favorite bite of the dinner. It was an incredible explosion of flavor containing basically all of my favorite elements—seafood, nuttiness, and spiciness. I feel like I literally could’ve had ten more of these and still wanted more.

Afterwards came Hokkaido sea scallop crudo with tomatillo and seeds aguachile, green grapes, and jalapeño-cucumber oil.

This was my second favorite dish of the night. The quality of the scallop was incredible. Scallops are usually on the milder side with flavor profile, but these tasted quite strong. The sweetness of the grapes worked really well with the scallop. The oil was absolutely packed with flavor, and it seems like they dried the other ingredients well enough that the oil really stuck to everything and enhanced every bite. The oil was so delicious that I grabbed a spoon and literally scooped and drank it like soup after I was done with the solids.

In preparation for the next course, my second drink came out: Mediterranean milk punch made from lemon, lavender, mint, green cardamom, orange blossom, and grenadine. The liquid itself was clarified from Greek yogurt and milk. This was not included in the tasting menu and cost an extra US$18.00.

If I’m paying extra for a drink at a restaurant, I want to make sure that it’s something I can’t get at a grocery store somewhere. This Mediterranean milk punch far exceeded my expectations in that regard, because it was unlike anything I had ever tasted before. It had a very subtle and smooth underlying dairy base, but the top notes were a dynamic mixture of a lot of fun, fruity flavors.

The third course was called “from ocean depths to garden heights.” This started with their Po Boy José! made with fried baby squid and aioli packed inside a steamed brioche bun, served with a pepper to nibble on on the side.

I think people underestimate how difficult it can be to make the perfect sandwich. I think our expectations of sandwiches are reasonably pretty low, and if it just generally tastes like meat, vegetables, and bread, then most people are satisfied. However, if you really consider the flavor profile of a sandwich, you will often realize that it is very easy to get a proper balance of flavors of all the different elements of the sandwich.

This po boy nailed the balance perfectly. Not only was the squid nice and flavorful, but the way it was fried made it so you could detect the fried flavor, but it was still a seafood-forward flavor profile overall. I think the bread was intentionally slightly underseasoned, which ended up being great because it allowed it to supplement the squid flavor rather than making the sandwich too bready. Even the pepper was perfect—it was a relatively mild pepper, but it still had enough sourness to it to help cut through the creaminess of the sauce.

Next up was a tomato salad made with heirloom tomatoes inside ginger lime syrup and topped with citrus soy glaze.

I think these might have been some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever had in my entire life. The tomatoes themselves were high quality and had a natural sweetness with no sourness. However, the sauce was world-class. I think the soy glaze had a very similar flavor profile to soy sauce, but without any of the excessive saltiness, so it tasted like these tomatoes were marinated in and then brushed with a thickened version of just the flavor of soy sauce, with no salt, and diluted perfectly to the point where its intensity matched the intensity of the tomatoes exactly.

As a side note, this was a comically large portion size of tomatoes, and I think it is sized for two people to share. That was obviously no problem, though; these were delicious enough that I happily ate the entire thing.

And finally, the last dish before the main entrées was a Maine lobster croquette with lobster and shrimp fritters, served with a side of saffron aioli.

This was decent, but probably the most underwhelming dish of the tasting menu. Compared to the other dishes tasting extra clean, crisp, refreshing, and well-balanced, this croquette was far more “normal” and on the heavier side.

It was now time for course number four: “where the sea meets the land.”

At the beginning of my meal, my waitress asked which dish I wanted for the main course, with my options being chicken or salmon. Of course, I picked the salmon. However, after reviewing the course list again, I realized that I was supposed to get both the main entrées, rather than needing to pick just one. The next time she came around, I brought it up and asked her about it. She said that the tasting menu only comes with both if you are dining as a group of two, and solo diners only get to pick one or the other.

I asked her if it was possible for me to get half portions of each. She said she would go to the back and ask the chef; after several minutes, she returned to my table and said that the chef said they’re willing to let me have both, and that wouldn’t be a problem.

The first entrée was pollo al ajillo made with Josper-roasted chicken and ajillo sauce.

When this came out, I was confused. This was such a large portion of chicken that I suspected they might not have given me a half-portion of it like I had mentioned to the waitress. Subsequently, I was concerned that, not only did they not give me half-portions of both, but they ended up just giving me a full portion of chicken and skipping the salmon.

I think I had a very unlucky first bite of this chicken, because the edge piece of the pre-cut section was quite dry. However, that first bite was definitely a fluke. When I ate more of the chicken, the next part was immediately far more tender and delicious. This ended up being a bit too salty for my preference, though I’m not sure if the saltiness came from the chicken brine or the sauce.

Shortly afterwards, to my surprise, the salmon came out too—this was Ōra King salmon grilled over wood fire and served with salmon roe atop Meyer lemon sauce.

Now I was even more confused, because this also seemed like a full portion of salmon. When I had a chance, I asked my waitress whether the kitchen forgot that I was alone and inadvertently gave me full portions instead of half portions. She then responded that the kitchen doesn’t actually do half portions of anything, so they made me full portions of both. I thanked them and offered to pay an upcharge for receiving a second full-size main entrée for free, but she said it was fine and that the kitchen said it was all good.

This is the best salmon I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was cooked pretty rare, so I was able to get both the raw salmon and cooked salmon flavor combined in each bite. The salmon in general was absolutely packed with flavor. The fish tasted almost as if it was denser, as in, there was more salmon flesh and fat packed into each cubic centimeter. The skin was also incredible and added a fun crisp to each bite. To top it all off, chewing into the salmon roe coated my tongue in its oozy goodness so I had a rich flavor to keep my tongue occupied in between bites.

The side dish to go along with the chicken and salmon was Josper-roasted carrots with olive oil labneh yogurt, carrot gastrique, and sumac.

The carrots were cooked to perfection. They were both soft and firm at the same time, and had a rich broiled texture on the inside with a more charred exterior. For lack of a better way to describe it, there was also a facet of the carrots that made me think that they were very slightly dehydrated as to intensify the carrot’s sweeter element.

I think the sauce was a little bit too strong and overpowering, but that was obviously easily solved by just using less of it when I dipped the carrots into it.

To conclude the meal, the fifth course, serving as the dessert, was named “seaside treat, lime and sweet.” It consisted of their key lime beach, made from key lime mousse, graham cracker crumble, and lime air.

It’s as if this dessert was custom-modified to fit my personal preferences. I like key lime pie, but funny enough, my favorite part of it is the crust. This key lime beach, as you can tell by the name, had a far more generous portion of the graham cracker crust (in crumbled form) than what you’d find in a regular slice of key lime pie.

The fact that it had the lime foam was also fun. When eaten alone, it was very light and mild; when combined with bites of the key lime mousse and graham cracker crumble, it was unnoticeable. Regardless, it obviously made the presentation much better, and it made sure the tasting menu ended on a positive, artistic note.

Here are some photos of the interior of the restaurant.

It’s empty because I booked my reservation for 5 PM when they first opened, and I took the pictures while I was waiting for my first course to arrive. My meal took right around two hours, and as I progressed through the tasting menu, it got fairly busy to the point where it felt pretty packed by the time I finished my dessert.

For full transparency’s sake, I also got an additional 10% discount on my meal. However, that discount had nothing to do with this restaurant in particular, the discount has a set of external requirements in order to qualify for it that are unrelated to me as an individual, and there was no favoritism or subjectivity surrounding the discount. I did not receive a special invitation to this restaurant, and the staff did not know I was coming beyond a reservation I put in through their public booking portal a few hours before I showed up.

With that discount, which was separate from the complimentary beverage I received for being a local, my subtotal came to US$173.70. Sales tax at 8.375% came to US$14.55. I added a gratuity of US$60.00, which brought the grand total for the meal to US$248.25. For the record, I am still fairly staunchly against tipping culture and generally only tip around 15%, but I felt the almost 35% tip this time around was well deserved due to the fact that I seemed to not only have gotten far more food than I was supposed to, but also got it at a great price.

It’s probably needless to say at this point based on my detailed descriptions of how much I liked the food and why, but I highly recommend Bazaar Mar. This restaurant is probably a seafood enthusiast’s dream come true with the variety of different kinds of seafood they serve, and the innovative and unique nature in which they prepare the dishes. I would consider my meal an oceanic success, and I’m looking forward to going back to try José’s Creative Experience in the future.

In late 2025, Gymkhana opened a location inside the Aria Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in the unincorporated town of Paradise, Nevada. I like keeping up with new restaurants and attractions in the Las Vegas Valley, so I browsed their website to see if it was something I would want to try out. Lately, I have been enjoying experiencing tasting menus because I like the idea of being able to try smaller portions of a lot of different things as determined by chefs who have decided for me what I eat. When I saw that Gymkhana had a tasting menu, I promptly put it on my list of restaurants to try.

Since then, several months have gone by. I had been keeping an eye on Gymkhana’s reservation availability, but very often, they were fully booked out around 45 days in advance. Because of my erratic travel schedule, I generally don’t put in reservations too far in advance, so I ultimately just decided on waiting until the hype settles down before I go to Gymkhana myself.

Throughout this waiting process, I noticed something intriguing. On Google Maps, Gymkhana’s listing settled at around the mid-3 stars in rating and did not really show any signs of climbing up into the 4s. This made me even more interested in dining there, because Gymkhana has an award-winning location in London, and I figured that at least some of that food and culinary skill would carry over to Las Vegas. I wanted to find out for myself whether the poor ratings were justified, or if people were just getting upset about certain things and then being extra harsh in their reviews.

Last night, I had some friends in town whom I decided to join for dinner. They had a few options for restaurants already in mind, and they ended up picking an Indian spot in Town Square. They mentioned that they had a prior obligation scheduled for the evening, so they would have to book the dinner late at night. Well, it happens to be that Gymkhana is also an Indian restaurant; it’s only about 4 miles further north; and lately, if you don’t want to book too far in advance, the only available time slots are around 8:30 PM and after. I checked seating availability for the same night, and 9 PM happened to be open. I proposed changing our dinner venue to Gymkhana instead due to its circumstantial similarities with their other choice; my friends happily agreed.

We dined as a party of three. Apparently, according to the reservation platform, that counts as a “large party,” which unlocks a special tasting menu called “The Vault.” When I go to tasting menus, I usually go either alone or with only one other person; thus, I realized that this may be a rare instance where I will be able to try Gymkhana’s “The Vault” menu that I otherwise would not be able to try in my routine dining system, so I locked that in during booking. This cost US$195.00 per person.

Before I start, I want to point out that the lighting in the restaurant was nice to set a certain mood, but horrific for photography. Gymkhana was probably one of the darkest restaurants I’ve ever been to. We were seated very deep in the restaurant where there were no windows, neither to the outdoors nor to the resort. There were some chandeliers hanging above some tables, but the table at which we were seated had little lighting. The only reason we could see was because there were small lamps on the table, but they were aggressively orange. When preparing my photographs for upload, I made a frail attempt at white balancing the color temperature before realizing how futile my efforts were and just posting them as-is.

The tasting menu started with two appetizers. The first was a pappadum selection. There were four different kinds of pappadums: lentil, chickpea, potato, and rice. This was served alongside three accompaniments: coriander and mint chutney, sweet lime pickle yogurt, and Goan prawn chutney.

I enjoyed the pappadums, and it felt like this was a more premium substitution for a bread basket that would be served by other restaurants. Because I’m not familiar with the ingredients (which will end up becoming a recurring theme throughout this entire meal), I couldn’t tell which accompaniment was which. Visually, my favorite was the reddish one that had a chunkier consistency, and then the creamier one that looked like spicy mayo (but definitely did not have the taste of spicy mayo). The runnier green sauce was good too, but I liked the other two more because the other two seemed like they had more depth to their flavor.

The second appetizer, which was served at the same time as the first, was a set of gol guppas. This came out as fried wheat puffs with a side of potatoes and moong lentil sprouts. Some of it was served as a pastier sauce consistency, while some of it was served in a miniature cup-pitcher hybrid with mint and cumin water underneath.

The waiter advised us to poke a little hole in the top-center surface of the wheat puffs, which were hollow inside. We would then scoop and pour in the potatoes, lentil sprouts, and mint and cumin water. I think I didn’t make the hole large enough because it was tricky to get everything inside the wheat puff, but once I got as much as I could in there, I ate it all in one bite and it was very flavorful.

According to the course list, the next dish was supposed to be aloo chaat with crispy fingerling potatoes, sweet yogurt, tamarind chutney, and gram flour vermicelli. However, this next plate is what we received instead. Because I don’t know much about Indian food, I’m not sure if this is just a modified version of aloo chaat, but visually, this is significantly different from what I see when I search up pictures of aloo chaat.

Regardless, this was delicious. We still had pappadums left from the first appetizer course, so I broke them up into smaller pieces and then used them to grab heaping scoops of this. If this is hypothetically also considered an accompaniment along with the other three that were provided with the pappadums, then this would’ve overwhelmingly been my favorite.

For my beverage, I ordered salted lemon nimbu pani, which the menu described as a take on Indian fresh lemonade with salted lemon and spiced salt. This was supplemental to the tasting menu and cost an extra US$15.00.

It’s not very obvious from the photograph, but there is a gigantic block of ice stretching vertically from the bottom to the top of the glass, and the slice of lime at the top of the drink is sitting atop the block of ice. The actual volume of beverage I got for this was very small, and it did not come with refills. It was good lemonade, and the spiced salt did add a unique facet to it that is otherwise not found in regular lemonade, but it was absolutely not worth it for the price.

The next dish was amritsari shrimp and scallops with red chili and carom seed batter, with a side of dill raita.

This was an overwhelming explosion of flavor. This had an underlying taste of being heavily fried, but because there was so much flavor to it, it didn’t have that oily, greasy taste or sensation that you get from eating regular deep-fried foods. The spices had a bit of a kick to them, so after finishing my portion of this, my nose started running a bit. Adding a generous portion of dill raita to each bite helped counteract and smooth out the spiciness.

The shrimp was great, and even though the batter and spices were very intense and piercing in flavor, I thought it went along well with the shrimp. However, using this preparation method for scallop felt a bit suboptimal. Maybe this is because I don’t eat much Indian food so I am highly sensitive to the pungency of the spices, but the flavor of the scallop seemed to just be completely drowned out by the other flavors. (For those who are not aware, scallops have a relatively milder flavor, so it’s usually served with minimal garnishes.)

Afterwards, we each received one tandoori masala lamb chop with red chili, ginger, fenugreek, garam masala, and walnut chutney. (Yes, there were originally three, but one person was very eager and expeditiously grabbed a lamb chop before I had an opportunity to snap a photograph.)

Just like the amritsari shrimp and scallops, these lamb chops were also an overwhelming explosion of flavor. This not only had a high intensity of flavor, but it also had a high variety of flavor in each bite.

I am generally not a particularly expressive person if I’m just doing regular day-to-day things and not fulfilling a role in entertainment or performing arts. I have been told that I am especially inexpressive around men, but even around my regular female friends, it has been a running joke about how it’s a funny puzzle to try and guess whether or not I like something I’ve just eaten, because I am usually in deep thought and analysis about the food in my mouth, and that often results in me having a serious face.

This lamb chop inadvertently induced an expression on my face. My reaction to this was so intense that apparently my body had to spew it out somewhere. I looked up and declared “there is so much happening in this lamb chop that I have no idea what’s going on.” I could tell that it was a great-quality lamb chop, but the seasonings and flavors covering the lamb chop were so over-the-top that it was hard to get a handle on it. It felt like my entire mouth was used as a stewing pot for the entire spice cabinet.

With that being said, it wasn’t bad. Usually, if you are ambushed with a ton of different flavors all at once, there is some degree of dissonance among the flavors. I imagine that if this kind of situation happened in any other context, I’d be taken aback and likely wince at the taste. However, this lamb chop wasn’t bad at all. It’s been a day since I had this, but thinking back on it, I am still confused about it right now. I still don’t know where to even start in terms of figuring out what it was seasoned with, let alone whether or not I genuinely enjoyed it. If I was committed to figuring that out, I reckon that I’d need to eat at least a few more of these on multiple more occasions so my taste buds can get more accustomed to it first.

After we finished the lamb chops, it was time for the main courses. One of them was Goan lobster curry with coconut milk, coriander, and red chili. This was served alongside black lentil dal maharani, saag makai, a bread basket, and some basmati rice.

The curry was good, but I’m not sure if I am particularly impressed by the lobster. The best way for me to describe this is that the curry was sort of off doing its own thing, and the lobster came along for the ride as an afterthought. Seafood is my favorite type of food and I very much like lobster (not because it’s expensive, but because I actually like the flavor of it), so I am far more alert to the nuances of the quality and preparation of lobster. The lobster in this curry acted not as the headliner of the dish, but as a supplemental addition to the curry itself.

The naan was incredible. There was a bunch of different kinds of naan, and all of it tasted amazing. I wasn’t able to have as much of it as I wanted because my friends also really liked the naan and ate a lot of it. The waiter offered to bring us more naan, but unfortunately, because of how late we got to the restaurant, the kitchen was already wrapped up by that point and had already discarded the charcoal they use to cook the naan, so we weren’t able to get a refill.

The second main course was supposed to be beef short rib pepper stir-fry with South Indian spices, coconut, and flaky Malabar paratha. However, the waiter let us know that there was an alternative for this dish that he would recommend instead: their venison biryani with braised venison, saffron pilaf rice, and pomegranate and mint raita.

When there is a pre-determined course list for a tasting menu, I usually like to stick to the menu, not only because I trust the chef who designed it with the flow and progression of flavor profiles in mind, but also because, when I share my experience on my blog, I want it to be replicable by other people (i.e., by going to the same restaurant and ordering the same tasting menu, if it is still in season). However, the waiter made it sound like it was a very appealing substitution, and my friends were on board with it, so I agreed to get the venison biryani instead of the beef short rib pepper fry.

The biryani came uncut, and its preparation was finished tableside. The server used a knife to cut off the top, then mixed the rice, venison, and spices together until it was ready to eat.

I think they made it wrong.

I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous coming from someone who knows nothing about Indian food, but the taste was noticeably off. Unfortunately, I know that I know nothing about Indian food, so rather than bring it up with the waiter, I instead second-guessed myself and just assumed that this was another one of those new, wild, crazy, intense flavors, just like I had already experienced many times earlier that dinner.

This entire dish tasted ashy. For lack of a better way to put it, this tasted like someone had crushed up a bunch of nearly-spent wood embers into powder, soaked it into water, strained the water so all the solids were left behind, and then used that water to cook the rice. To be clear, it didn’t directly taste burnt; it just tasted like ash. I prodded at the rice and mixed it around some more to see if I was able to find any excessively charred or discolored portions, but it looked pretty normal. There was no particular single component or element of the biryani that tasted ashy; the ashiness was such a core part of this dish’s identity that it was almost as if the intended flavor profile was to be ashy.

The reason why I suspect that this was prepared incorrectly is because, contrary to the intense flavors of the shrimp and lamb chop, the biryani actually induced an unpleasant sensation. More specifically, the flavor of the lamb chop was so intense that it was overwhelming, but there was something about it that made me not want to stop eating it. On the contrary, the ashiness of the biryani was also overwhelming, but it overwhelmed me to a point of not wanting to have more.

The tasting menu came with enough food that we had a lot of the main course left after we were all full, so we requested for the leftovers to be packaged into takeout boxes. I ended up keeping a majority of the leftovers, which was good, because I wanted to investigate this biryani further. The next afternoon (i.e., earlier today), I heated up the saffron pilaf rice and venison in the microwave to try some more and see if my taste buds would be more receptive to it. Unfortunately, the ashy taste persisted. The venison was palatable so I ended up finishing most of that as a good source of protein, but I threw out the rest of the rice.

For our first dessert, we were served rasgulla tiramisu made from soft cheese dumplings soaked in coffee and marsala, along with mascarpone cheese, pistachios, and rose petals.

This might be some of the best tiramisu I’ve ever had. It was noticeably different than other regular tiramisu I’ve had; it was greatly enhanced with extra earthy and floral flavors from the pistachios and rose petals.

Our other dessert was gold leaf gulab jamun, which were fried milk dumplings served with almonds and pistachios inside rose syrup and basundi milk.

The dumplings were pretty good, but the sauce was incredible. I made sure to re-dip the dumpling in the sauce continuously after each bite to get as much of it as possible. My friends just grabbed their dumplings without indulging much in the sauce, so I took advantage of the lack of utensil cross-contamination and finished all the remaining sauce myself as if it was soup.

Upon the conclusion of our meal, we were brought out some petits fours: candied fennel chocolate truffles, and passionfruit and chili jelly. The waiter let us know that those particular nuts and seeds on the chocolate were selected because they are known to help with digestion.

Because we had a very late reservation slot, most of the dining room was already empty by the time we were done. Thus, I managed to get a few shots of the interior before we wrapped up and headed out.

This is the bar area between the front and rear dining sections.

This is the front dining section, closest to the entrance. Because they were closing and cleaning, they turned the chandeliers on at maximum brightness, so I was able to actually see what the dining area was like.

This is another bar that was right across from the front dining area. Again, this is well-illuminated due to the chandeliers being boosted to seemingly maximum brightness for utility purposes during closing, but usually, this area is extremely dim.

Overall, I am tentatively satisfied with my experience at Gymkhana. Obviously, the ashy venison biryani is an issue, especially considering that it was talked up as a great substitution for the main course in The Vault menu, and even on their regular à la carte menu, it is prominently highlighted as one of their flagship entrées. However, I am still not confident enough in my understanding of Indian cuisine to make a certain statement about it.

The service was excellent. Our waiter was very attentive, he responded to all our questions in a thorough and knowledgeable way, and he demonstrated great care for our enjoyment and satisfaction. Beyond our waiter, we also encountered a few other staff members throughout our dinner, all of whom carried out their roles in a polished and efficient way, while still relaying warmth and kindness.

As I mentioned before, I opted for The Vault menu because it was an opportunity to experience a tasting menu that I might not otherwise be able to in the future. After assessing this experience, I do want to return to get the regular tasting menu for US$165.00 per person, though I may wait a season or two to see if they rotate some of the dishes, as I noticed that there is some overlap with the appetizers between the regular tasting menu and The Vault tasting menu.

As for whether or not I recommend this restaurant to other people… I’ll let you know next time, after I learn more about Indian cuisine.