Last Thursday (yes, I am about one week behind on blog posts), I had a chance to try the new High Summer 2026 tasting menu at Michael Mina inside the Bellagio Resort & Casino. I was lucky enough to be the first guest to try this limited-time tasting menu. To be clear, this wasn’t a special invitation or a promotional event, and I paid full price for my meal. It just happened to be coincidence that the day I showed up was the first day they started serving this menu, and my reservation was at 5 PM right when they opened, so I was the first diner through the door that day.
In addition to this High Summer 2026 menu for US$250 per person, there were two other tasting menu options—a signature tasting menu for US$195, and an extended Restaurant Week prix fixe menu for US$120. The signature tasting menu had a wine pairing for US$125 and a premium wine pairing for US$295. I opted for High Summer not only because it was new, but also because it seemed from the course list that it was far better value than the signature menu in terms of the variety of courses and the amount of food. Furthermore, the other menus had a bunch of supplements for add-ons or upgrades to more premium items, while the High Summer menu basically had everything included.
On the day of my dinner, I walked to the Bellagio and made my way into the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Garden, as the entrance to Michael Mina is situated inside the installment. When navigating the Las Vegas Strip by public transportation or by foot, I always give myself a bit of a buffer in case I run into unexpected delays, such as landing on unlucky Monorail timing or running into dense tourist congestion. On this day, it wasn’t too busy, so I arrived a bit early; while I waited for my reservation time, I strolled through the Conservatory until the hostess showed up at her podium outside the front entrance of Michael Mina.
I was seated deep into the restaurant. They already had a small, one-person table prepared for me, likely in response to my reservation placed ahead of time. The table was all the way in the center-rear close to the windows, so I had a nice view of the entire restaurant.
On a somewhat related note, this made for an interesting conundrum with regards to photography. Because I was seated next to the windows, I had fantastic natural sunlight. However, the rest of the restaurant was extremely dim. As a result, due to the intensity of the angled sunlight and the darkness of the rest of the restaurant, all my pictures had exaggerated highlights and shadows. I tried to fix it as best I could in post-production using my camera’s sensor data and the raw image files, but my skill in that is nowhere close to where I would like it to be, so as a disclaimer, some of the food might seem unnaturally saturated or vibrant in some of my pictures.
The tasting menu started with a caviar parfait with smoked salmon, crème fraîche, and egg mimosa.
The waiter recommended that I grab this with my fingers and eat the entire thing in one bite. This was actually quite sizable, so I had to stretch my mouth to near maximum height in order to fit this in. I technically could’ve eaten it “sideways” by putting the caviar portion into my mouth first, but I wanted to keep it “upright” so that, when I bite down, it mixes all the ingredients optimally in my mouth.
As you’d probably expect from a dish like this, it was an absolute explosion of incredible flavor. I really like caviar, and having that mixed in with other intense flavors made it almost overstimulating. This caviar parfait was basically like if you had an attribute slider on how delicious you wanted something to be, and you just cranked it all the way up as high as it can go.
I looked at some old Michael Mina menus online and saw this listed on some tasting menus as a supplement for US$55. This might sound crazy to hear me say this about a single bite of food, but if you are a caviar enthusiast, I’d go as far as to say that trying this at that price point is worth it, as this really pushes your taste buds to their limits and may enlighten you on just how much flavor a single bite of food could possibly have.
Next was ahi tuna crudo with Dapple Dandy pluot, umeboshi, and mint.
This was a refreshing crudo dish that helped restabilize my taste buds after the caviar parfait, and it had a grounding effect to prepare me for the rest of the dinner. This had a fun eating experience, as part of it involved dissecting and unraveling the rose, and then reconstructing each bite with a bit of tuna and a bit of pluot to combine the flavors evenly.
Then came the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market tomato and melon with Marcona almonds, sheep’s milk feta, passion fruit, and basil.
The mixture of tomato and melon was quite nice, and I don’t think it’s a combination that I’ve ever had before. The almonds added a great depth to its texture that made the chewing experience more fun. I’m usually not a fan of feta cheese because I think it smells like a combination of mold and vomit, but this feta was actually quite mild and not pungent. The sauce underneath was amazing. It added a creamy and gritty element to the dish, and its slightly earthy flavor worked well with the lighter and refreshing tomato.
In between the next two dishes, I was served an off-menu naan bread with three different kinds of sauces. The waiter explained with great detail what ingredients each of the sauces had, but I forgot the specifics.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first dark brown sauce, but the tan and white sauces were great. The bread was a bit too oily for my preference, but it was a type of pure oiliness that was different than greasiness, so it didn’t feel heavy or cloy at all.
The first main entrée was Australian black truffle with house-made tagliatelle, 24-month aged parmesan, and pistachio streusel.
I’m a fan of truffle and enjoyed the Australian truffle in this dish, but the rest of it was too salty and didn’t align with my personal preference (my best guess being that the aged parmesan cheese probably tarnished the entire dish’s flavor profile for my own taste buds). With that being said, I could still tell that it was a high-quality, well-made dish. Even though it wasn’t my favorite, I still finished the entire thing because it was still plentifully palatable, and I wanted to analyze it. It was rich and flavorful, and if you like aged cheese and/or salty foods, then you’d probably be a big fan of this pasta.
The second entrée was applewood-grilled branzino with hazelnut and saffron romesco, zucchini pistou, and black olive gremolata.
I love grilled fish, but believe it or not, this was my least-favorite dish of the night. The texture of the fish skin was a bit soggy. The flavor profile of the sauces was a bit vague and not particularly memorable. In my personal opinion, the sauces didn’t really seem complementary to the fish or zucchini. The fish itself had a bit of an unusual taste to it, almost as if it had been cleaned with heavily chlorinated water. It ended up leaving an aftertaste that lingered for a few minutes. (With that being said, it is very possible that this was just a bad batch and I got unlucky.)
To top it all off, they even spelled zucchini wrong on the menu and wrote it as “zuccini,” which, to my knowledge, is just a typo and not a different thing.
Next up was charcoal-roasted shellfish with red miso butter, Brentwood corn fondue, and charred lemon. Although I’d say that the caviar parfait was my favorite dish of the meal in terms of flavor, this shellfish was my favorite dish of the night if you rate it holistically with all elements beyond flavor as well.
Although just serving the highest possible quality of food during a tasting menu is great, I think they should have at least one innovative, creative, fun, and/or interactive dish if they want to ensure that the experience is memorable. This shellfish dish was absolutely that kind of dish.
They basically came out with a little campfire in a bowl. There were some shrubs and charcoal actively on fire and smoking in the middle. There was a scallop, some lobster, a few pieces of miniature corn, and a few small potatoes surrounding the fire. To eat it, I removed the seafood from its shell or the vegetable from the skewer, dipped it in the fondue, and held it above the fire to allow it to absorb the charcoal flavor.
All the seafood was very tender and flavorful. The fondue added a deeper level of richness to the food, but was still light enough that it didn’t make the seafood taste heavy. The smoke got a little overwhelming after a while, but that was an easy fix; I just placed the scallop shell on top of it to block the rising smoke, and then removed it when I needed it again to “roast” another piece of food.
Next up was Muscovy duck breast and foie gras with Kabu turnip, pickled green strawberry, and red walnuts.
This was a nice, solid, well-rounded dish. The duck breast was cooked fairly rare, which aligned perfectly with my preferences. The foie gras added a deep richness to each bite of duck. This dish made me realize that I don’t think I have ever seen foie gras paired together with duck before, which I guess is ironic. This combination worked well, and the turnips and strawberry were decent to cut through a little bit of the fattiness of the foie gras.
The final entrée of the tasting menu was prime Brandt New York strip with Mendocino porcini, black cherry, and smoked béarnaise.
This dish was fine, but not remarkable. The béarnaise sauce was incredibly salty, so I had to make sure I mixed it together well with all the steak, mushrooms, and cherries, otherwise it was so salty that it borderlined bitter. The steak had a larger ratio of fat than I would’ve preferred (and not the well-marbled kind). It was still okay, and probably made sense to include in the tasting menu as the red meat dish that adds variety to the seafood-heavy flavor storyline.
I had the option of upgrading this New York strip to a triple-seared Miyazaki wagyu for an additional US$55 supplement. I passed and just stuck with the New York strip steak. Miyazaki wagyu is definitely delicious, but as someone who mainly likes seafood and is trying to lower saturated fat consumption to maintain heart health, wagyu isn’t really something I go seeking out anymore.
As the meal was approaching its end, I was presented with my first of two desserts: Golden Lady mango shaved ice with coconut espuma and Santa Barbara finger lime, topped with an edible gold leaf.
Usually, I know shaved ice to be somewhat of a watered-down version of whatever flavor it’s supposed to resemble. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I ate some of this shaved ice and found it to be somehow more intense in mango flavor than just eating an actual mango. This was almost as if they had frozen dehydrated mangoes so that the taste of the mango was more concentrated, and then shaved that into ice.
And finally, the last dish of the tasting menu was a Valrhona dark chocolate soufflé with Madagascar vanilla crème anglaise and salted caramel ice cream.
This was “prepared tableside” to an extent, where the soufflé was cut in half and the salted caramel ice cream was placed on top. The temperature contrast between the soufflé and ice cream was nice, and the soufflé was very fluffy. I also appreciated the fact that it was pleasantly sweet, but not too sweet.
Here are some photographs that I took of the interior of the restaurant. Remember that I was the first person to show up this day, right as they opened their doors, so that’s why the restaurant seems empty. The tasting menu took right around two and a half hours to finish. This was a random Thursday evening, so it never really got fully packed at any point, but it was still decently busy during peak dinner hours.
| High Summer 2026 tasting menu | $ 250.00 |
| Gratuity (18%) | $ 45.00 |
| Sales tax (8.375%) | $ 20.94 |
| Total | $ 315.94 |
The table to the right shows how much I paid.
Overall, I am highly satisfied with this tasting menu, and I think it is very worth it. A lot of restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip have a huge tourist mark-up, but I think the pricing of Michael Mina’s High Summer 2026 tasting menu is very reasonable and comparable to something you’d find in a big city without any special tourist mark-ups. Of course, it is still an expensive meal, but it’s not crazy compared to other fine dining restaurants.
Speaking of fine dining, I loved that Michael Mina was an effortlessly high-end restaurant. I don’t like restaurants that shove “fine dining” down your throat by exaggerating how luxurious they are. Michael Mina does fine dining the right way by being quietly and subtly elegant, and the way they demonstrate that they are a fine dining restaurant is through the food and service. The attentiveness of the staff was top-tier and perfectly balanced; they were not intrusive, but they were extremely prompt in taking away empty plates, replacing used utensils, and refilling half-empty water glasses.
After my meal, the assistant general manager came to me and asked how I liked the tasting menu, considering that I was the first person to try it. I told him that it was great, and I asked him how much detail he wanted me to go into. He said that he wanted as much detail as I was willing to give, so I basically gave him an abridged version of what you just read here in this blog post.
He was very attentive and curious about my opinion. He seemed pleased when I pointed out the positives, and was very concerned and interested in learning more when I pointed out the negatives. For example, when I talked about the strange taste of the fish, he seemed genuinely distraught because they pride themselves in the freshness of their food; he said that he would promptly address it with the kitchen and make sure they taste the current batch of branzino to determine the best path forward.
After a long conversation, the assistant general manager thanked me for my detailed feedback and opinions, to which I responded that I’m always happy to talk about food and learn more about how chefs express their creativity through cuisine. He joked about how he felt like he basically just interviewed me, and offered me a complimentary glass of champagne in return. I told him that I don’t drink alcohol, but let him know that I appreciate the gesture. He then offered me a non-alcoholic drink from the bar instead, but I respectfully declined that as well. (The reason I am explicitly pointing that out here is to clarify that I received literally no gifts or incentives from the restaurant that may sway the neutral integrity of my review.)
If you enjoy seafood and are looking for a nice dinner on the Las Vegas Strip, I think the High Summer 2026 menu at Michael Mina might be one of the best seasonal options available at the moment. I forgot to ask for how long they’re running this menu, but I imagine it should be sticking around until at least the end of summer.
It’s rare for me to go back to high-end restaurants a second time because I want to prioritize experiencing a lot of different locations instead, and I don’t have an infinite supply of time and money. However, based on my positive experience at Michael Mina, this is definitely a spot where I’d go back to try their winter menu if it is different enough from their summer one.