There is a restaurant called Wing Lei at the Wynn on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada that has been on my radar for the past few years.

When I looked into it more closely about a year or so ago, I saw that they were offering Chef Ming’s Signature Tasting Menu containing six courses for US$227.88. However, when I looked at online reviews of the tasting menu, the general feedback was that the amount of food was too little. I still wanted to try it at some point, but because I don’t go to tasting menus daily, I deprioritized Wing Lei behind some other restaurants that I wanted to try out first.

Upon recently revisiting Wing Lei’s website, I noticed that it seemed like they changed head chefs. Instead of Chef Ming, his signature tasting menu was replaced by Chef Tam’s Signature Tasting Menu. The meal was increased from six to seven courses (or nine courses if you count each appetizer separately), and the price was lowered to US$198.88. I figured that they had also seen the online feedback about insufficient portion sizes and decided to not only serve more food, but also lower the price to entice more people to try it out. Well, it worked on me, because I booked a reservation for it.

The Wynn is the one and only property on the Las Vegas Strip that always hassles me when I try to drive in; specifically, they stop me and tell me to open the tonneau cover on my pickup truck bed so an employee can do a visual inspection. The key word here is “visual”—they just look, without ever giving any proper attention to opaque containers to assess their risk. This is extra inconvenient for me because I have a 2018 model that has fully manual locks on the bed and no engine start/stop button. This means that I have to remove my key by turning off my engine, walk around to my truck bed, use the key to unlock the latch, open it for an inspection, re-lock it, go back into my truck, and restart my engine to continue driving.

Just like a lot of non-law-enforcement security is, I consider this to be theatrics rather than genuine security, considering that anyone with truly malicious intentions would, you know… just not stop when the security guy asks you to stop, or put their dangerous items under a pile of other stuff. And yes, I am aware that it has some level of deterrent effect, but it comes at a cost. Because of these annoying past experiences with the Wynn, I usually avoid going to restaurants there, even though I will transparently and honestly say that I think the Wynn and Encore are the best hotels on the Las Vegas Strip and I highly recommend them if you want a luxurious stay.

I decided that trying the tasting menu at Wing Lei was a rare compelling-enough reason to do business with the Wynn. In order to avoid the weekend crowds, I booked my reservation for Monday, right when they opened at 5:30 PM. Instead of going through the hassle of using Wynn’s parking garage, I parked across the street for free at Fashion Show mall and took the pedestrian skybridge over Las Vegas Boulevard (yes, I hate dealing with fake “security” that much, primarily as a matter of principle… but also because I need to get my steps in somehow). Upon my arrival, I was taken deep into the restaurant and was seated at a small table with sweeping views of the rest of the dining area and the garden.

While I was browsing through the dinner and beverage menus, I was given a very small cup of tea to sip on while I made my decisions.

I was also given a small shrimp as an amuse-bouche.

I notified my waitress that I was interested in trying the tasting menu. Shortly thereafter, a plate containing my appetizer course came out.

The first was 軟炸鵝肝蝦多士, which is fried shrimp toast with foie gras and coriander. There was a lot going on in this dish, and as you can see, it also had some stuff that was not included in the ingredient list, such as salmon roe. Overall, it was quite flavorful, and although I couldn’t really distinguish and fully grasp each separate component of the dish, I still liked it as a whole.

The second appetizer was 黑毛豬蜜汁叉燒, which is char siu Ibérico pork belly with cherry blossom honey.

I think this is probably the most tender and flavorful char siu I’ve ever had in my life. I think this was also the most well-marbled piece of pork I’ve ever eaten, even though it visually looks like the fat cap is distinctly on the side of the meat. This took “melt in your mouth” to a completely new level. I feel like I could eat this for dinner for several days straight and still not get sick of it.

And finally, the third appetizer was 黑蒜冬筍帶子餃, which is a scallop, bamboo shoot, and black garlic dumpling.

There was also a lot going on in this dish as well, but not quite in such a positive way as the fried shrimp toast with foie gras. There was nothing wrong about this, but I think it was probably the most underwhelming out of the entire dinner. I think one possibility for this is that, after having such clean and bright flavors in all the previous dishes, this dumpling caught me off guard because of how deeply it was fried.

For my drink, I ordered a Pear Blossom off their non-alcoholic specialty mocktail menu; it was made with pear purée and Chinese five-spice in a base of Lyre’s apéritif rosso.

This kind of drink is exactly what I’m looking for when I order a specialty beverage. Pear is already a fairly uncommon flavor profile to see in mocktails, but this elevated the pear to something deeper and richer. On top of that, the fact that they used pear purée meant that there was a very subtle grittiness to the drink that even added a fun textural element as well.

The next course was 青檸拆魚羹, which is classic Shunde-style fish soup with lime zest.

This soup was amazing and made me feel warm and cozy. It also evoked a sense of home and nostalgia, which is funny, considering that I am not Chinese and my mom never made soup that tasted even remotely this good when I was still a kid living with my parents.

I think a lot of people would say that this needed more salt, but I liked it the way it was served. I think adding salt would definitely bring out more of the umami fish flavor, but I think there is a lot of charm in a fairly plain soup that is carried entirely by the high quality of the ingredients.

Next up was 北京鴨, which is Imperial Peking duck.

This is the dish I had the highest expectations for, and the dish that let me down the most. The portion size of the duck was way too small. The ratio of duck to vegetables was way too low, and the flavor of the vegetables overwhelmed the duck too much. I’m not sure why they were being so stingy with the duck here, but I think they should’ve doubled the amount of duck per roll at minimum for this to make sense.

For the fourth course, I was served 水晶虎蝦球, which is crystal king prawn.

I have had some orgasmic prawns in the past, with Andō and VEA coming to mind as fantastic examples. Before this dinner at Wing Lei, I had not heard of crystal king prawn before, so I thought it was some kind of unique, rare, specialty prawn that was adjacent in quality to some of the best I’ve had before.

Unfortunately, this dish was also sort of a let-down. Upon doing some more research, I found out that crystal king prawn isn’t a type of prawn, but rather, a type of preparation of prawn wherein the prawn is velveted and oil-poached to form a “crystal” or “glass” translucent appearance. I am not sure if I’m just understanding this incorrectly, but I have had some pretty translucent-looking prawns and seafood before, and this prawn did not look translucent to me.

This tasted like I was just having a good regular shrimp, with nothing special about it.

The fifth course was 燜美國和牛面頰, which is braised American wagyu beef cheek.

This had comparable melt-in-your-mouth tenderness levels as the char siu. It was so soft and felt so well-marbled that I probably could’ve eaten the entire thing just by moving my tongue around my mouth without needing to chew.

I thought the sauce was a little bit generic, and the doneness level of the vegetables (or rather, the lack thereof) made for somewhat of a jarring difference with the beef cheek. However, the beef itself was so good that it made up for the sauce and vegetables and made it hard to focus on anything else.

The final savory dish of the night was 龍蝦炒飯佐魚子醬, which is Maine lobster fried rice with leek and Ossetra caviar.

This was good taste-wise, but I wish they had lightened up a little bit on the sauce in the rice in order to let the lobster and caviar shine a bit more. To clarify, I feel like the amount of sauce they used in the fried rice was completely reasonable, but keeping in mind the fact that they went a bit lighter on seasoning in some of the previous dishes they served, I think they could’ve also applied a similar philosophy to this fried rice and still had it be very good.

I’m not sure if it’s apparent in the photograph, but the amount of rice I got here was comically small. Rice is a low-cost carb that helps fill people up, so I would’ve appreciated it if they either gave more rice, or offered seconds of just the fried rice (obviously without the lobster and caviar) if the diner is still hungry.

The seventh and final course was 甜點, which just translates broadly to dessert.

The dessert was some kind of icy coconut red bean… soup? I’m not really sure. There were also pearls of what was potentially popping boba at the bottom of the cup. This was a very confusing dish because it’s almost like they tried to make shaved ice or a more gourmet version of bingsu, but their ice shaving machine broke, so they instead went to their refrigerator’s ice dispenser and set it to “grind” mode and just grabbed some ice from there.

It was very awkward eating (drinking?) this. They gave me a spoon for it, but when I tried to scoop up solid portions of this, half of it was ice. I would put the full scoop in my mouth and try to chew on the red beans, but instead, I would chomp down on the ice and make piercing crunching sounds that I’m pretty sure echoed through the entire dining room. After my face was done 😐ing, I tried sipping it directly from the cup, but that also didn’t work, because then I missed all the red bean and pearls.

Logistically, this dessert made absolutely no sense to me. I would have loved to watch the chef consume this so I could figure out what in the world I was supposed to do with it.

After the tasting menu was over, the waitress brought out some petits fours.

This is probably the most unique and interesting presentation I’ve ever seen for petits fours. Usually they just all come out on a single plate or tray, but Wing Lei had a special spherical container that split into three smaller plates, each one holding one petit four. I was so amused by the dishware that I reassembled it after finishing, just so I could take a photograph of it.

Along with the check, the waitress also brought out a small gift to take home—pomegranate cake with coconut flakes and a sheet of chocolate on top. She said that I could either eat it after I got home, or I could save it for the following morning to have with hot coffee or tea.

The cake was unexpectedly and disappointingly extremely dry. That might have been why the waitress recommended having it with hot coffee or tea, but I literally do not have either of those in my condo, and I did not want to go out of my way to get it just to see if it made this cake taste better.

This is a view of Wing Lei’s garden. Way at the beginning of the meal, it seemed like the staff did something with the door (they presumably either locked it or unlocked it), but nobody went into it afterwards. I’m not sure if I would’ve been allowed to go in it for sightseeing if I had just asked, or if it was only accessible during special events or something.

This is what the interior dining area looked like. It looks empty in this picture because I took it very close to when they had just opened, shortly after I got seated for first service. My tasting menu took around an hour and a half to finish; by the time I was done, the restaurant wasn’t packed, but it was definitely busier.

And finally, this is the front entrance, which I photographed on my way out after dinner.

Signature tasting menu	$ 198.88
Pear Blossom	$  13.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  17.74
Gratuity	$  38.00
Total	$ 267.62

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I was still hungry after finishing the tasting menu. I ate the take-home gift cake right after arriving back home, and I was still hungry. The portion sizes on this tasting menu are comically small, and things were further exacerbated by the fact that there wasn’t really anything heavy or filling in the course list. Sure, the dumpling was fried, but apart from that, everything else was light and refreshing.

Overall, I was satisfied with the taste and quality of most of the food items. However, I don’t think you can reasonably call this a full dinner unless you’ve already eaten a hearty breakfast and lunch and just want something light and quick before bed.

A high-end tasting menu in a fine dining restaurant for a base price of under US$200.00 is very appealing, and if you got the same amount of food that you usually get at full, multi-course tasting menus, then this would be an absolute slam dunk. However, because of how little they give you to eat, I think the value you get for the amount of money you spend isn’t really worth it.

As a side note, I want to point out that the service was absolutely fantastic. It was highly attentive, very classy, elegantly executed, pristinely professional, and typical of a true fine dining restaurant (as opposed to restaurants that try to market themselves as fine dining, but don’t meet the standards to do so). My glass of water was always refilled promptly, my utensils were always swapped out between dishes so there was no flavor mixing, and multiple different people came to check in on me to make sure all my needs and wants were met. If you are someone who is willing to pay an upcharge to receive world-class service like this, then sure, maybe the price is not as crazy as I’m portraying it to be. However, I’m personally someone who prefers to have just “above average” service if it means I can have a little bit more rice and a few more shrimps in exchange.

I think if you are really craving Chinese food, specifically on the Las Vegas Strip, and you want to have it in a top-tier fine dining establishment to guarantee a luxurious experience, then Wing Lei is for you. However, I think that, for most people, it is worth considering some other options instead.

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.