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 |
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.