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 petit-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.

Following a recommendation from a friend, I decided to join in for dinner not too long ago at COTE Korean Steakhouse at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada. I haven’t been going to too many barbecue restaurants lately that revolve around red meats with high saturated fat content because I’m still being conscious about my high cholesterol and heart health. However, I saw that COTE wasn’t a typical all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurant, and instead offered some tasting menus, so I figured that if I’m going to go to a KBBQ restaurant, COTE would be a good candidate. Upon arriving at the restaurant, I saw from the logo that COTE is styled with 꽃 placed in the hole of the O, which is Korean for “flower.”

Out of the tasting menus, they had one called “Welcome to the Fabulous Butcher’s Feast,” also written in Korean on the menu as “모둠 고기한상,” for US$88.88 per person. The English name is obviously a play on the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” catchphrase, while the Korean name roughly translates to “assorted meat feast.” The other tasting menu was simply called “Steak Omakase™: The Grand Tour” for US$225.00 per person. The Steak Omakase is what my friend and I ended up getting.

Of course, when someone puts a trademark symbol beside a name, I always get curious enough to do some snooping, partially to see if they actually did trademark it, and partially to see if there is an interesting story behind it. I guess this is also one of the quirks of reading restaurant reviews on my website, because I imagine that not too many other food bloggers have enough of a background and an intrinsic interest in legal matters to go off on a trademark and intellectual property tangent in the middle of their review.

So anyway, during my search, I found that the first attempt to trademark Steak Omakase was made by Cote IP LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, back in January 2019. Unfortunately, it seems like they ran into some issues; they successfully responded to an office action in April 2019, but failed to overcome the subsequent office action in October 2019.

Rather than responding to the office action in October 2019, they instead abandoned the initial application and filed a new one under Gracious Hospitality Management LLC, a New York limited liability company with a foreign registration in Nevada, in November 2019. That application also received an office action in February 2020, and then again in August 2020, which caused the company to once again abandon the application.

Third time’s a charm, though, because in March 2024, Gracious Hospitality Management LLC made yet again another attempt to trademark Steak Omakase. They received an office action in September 2024, responded to it successfully in early December 2024, and finally received their registration certificate in late December 2024.

Thus, that confirms that this review is officially for COTE’s Steak Omakase®.

 
The omakase started with an ice-chilled oyster topped with some sea urchin. This was a very generous portion of sea urchin, but I felt like the explosion of flavor wasn’t quite as intense as what I expected for this size of sea urchin. Regardless, overall, it was still very delicious, and considering that sea urchin is my favorite food and I really like oysters, this was a very satisfying appetizer for the meal.

The friend with whom I went to this restaurant is the friend who doesn’t eat seafood, whom I’ve talked about previously on my blog. As a substitution for the oyster and sea urchin, the waiter instead brought out 바삭한 통 삼겹살구이, translated to English on the menu as “Korean ‘bacon,'” composed of house-smoked crispy heritage pork belly and pickled jalapeño.

We were also served a cup of broth. This was intensely and borderline overwhelmingly salty, but the broth had so much rich, deep, umami flavor in it that the salt did a great job enhancing and amplifying the deliciousness of the broth.

Next was some steak tartare with local grass-fed top-round beef, pear, and crispy tendon puffs. This was topped with a small portion of caviar, though I don’t remember exactly what kind of caviar it was.

This was amazing. I liked this combination, and this came with the “flavor explosion” that I expect from high-quality steak tartare and caviar. To make the beef flavor even stronger, this tartare came with crispy tendon puffs instead of bread. I’m impressed that they managed to shape the tendon puffs so neatly. This was perfectly complementary with the steak, and I wish more restaurants would serve tartare like this (though I imagine the reason they don’t is because this is far more resource-intensive than just serving bread).

When our waiter was told that my friend dislikes seafood but I love seafood, he took a caring step to ensure that the caviar went to me, and wasn’t just omitted from my friend’s tartare and “wasted.” My friend’s portion of caviar was separated into a small bowl on the side, so I was able to blissfully enjoy even more caviar to make sure we were getting our full money’s worth.

For my beverage, I ordered an Aplós Ume Spritz for US$15.00. I saw it on the non-alcoholic beverage menu and had never heard of it before, and it said that it came with an infusion of lion’s mane, which I thought sounded interesting, so I picked it. I was expecting some kind of fancy specialty drink from their bar. Unfortunately, when it came out, I realized that it was just a canned drink that I paid $15 for.

When I looked it up on their website after the fact, I found out that you can order this directly from Aplós for US$6.00 per can, or as low as ~$3.44 a can if you buy in bulk packs of 48 cans and enroll in their no-commitment subscription. It was actually pretty tasty and had a very interesting flavor profile, but it starts tasting less fantastic when you find out that, if you include the fact that you tip the waiter to carry this can to your table for you, the restaurant is taking over a 400% profit margin on the drink. (Yes, I understand that profit margins on fountain drinks are even higher, but at least for that, there is an up-front capital cost of the machinery, as well as ongoing maintenance and repairs.)

Not long after we finished both our appetizers, the waiter brought out the meat. There were six different kinds, and one piece of each for each person. The waiter explained that they were generally grouped into pairs—two wet-aged, two dry-aged, and two high-grade wagyu.

In traditional Korean fashion, we were also given a broad selection of side dishes. However, these were not the generic, stereotypical Korean side dishes. Instead, we were brought out a very unique selection of sides, some of which I have never seen at a Korean restaurant before. For example, the green sticks that you see next to the cauliflower are okra.

Another notable thing about the preparation of these side dishes is that a lot of them were pickled. I’m usually not a fan of pickled vegetables because I don’t like the taste of vinegar, I find pickled foods to be too sour for my preference, and I’d rather just eat vegetables raw. However, these pickled vegetables had all the positive flavors of the pickling process without there being any sourness. I ended up eating a substantial amount of these sides.

Unlike all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurants where you cook the meat yourself, COTE’s waiters cook your meat for you at your table. This is a huge plus considering that these waiters most likely have far more skill and training at grilling meat than I do, so it’s a great way to maximize the flavor of each cut of meat while minimizing the possibility of it being overcooked or cooked with an unbalanced doneness level.

Here is a series of photographs of our waiter salting, preparing, grilling, and serving the first few cuts of meat.

While the meat was being cooked and served to us, we continued to get more side dishes throughout the meal. I liked that they did this because I enjoy breaking up the continuity of meat with additional flavors. I think eating beef non-stop, especially cuts that have high levels of fat and marbling, can get cloying; mixing in other flavor profiles makes it so your taste buds can “reset” a bit, which allows you to fully appreciate each bite of meat without their flavors just merging together.

Here is some 계란찜, which is Korean-style steamed egg.

Here are some more photographs of our waiter salting, grilling, and serving more cuts of meat. He threw in a mushroom with some of them, which I thought did a great job at adding an earthy element to the rich fattiness and making the overall flavor profile more complex and desirable.

As we were approaching some of our final pieces of meat, they brought out two noodle dishes.

The first one was 상큼한 비빔국수, described on the menu as cold and refreshing Korean angel hair noodles with apples, iceberg lettuce, and gochujang vinaigrette. I ate this cold noodle dish a lot as a kid, so eating this again was quite nostalgic. However, as you can imagine, COTE prepared these noodles far better than anything that my mom made me as a kid, so that added an additional layer of euphoria.

The second bowl of noodles was 뜨끈한 잔치국수, described on the menu as Korean angel hair noodles with piping hot clear anchovy consommé.

I thought this was so funny that I had to take a photograph of it. If you’re familiar with Korean cuisine, you may recognize this as roasted chili flakes. These are extremely spicy. I immediately knew what these were because I have had instances in the past where I put way too much of this in my food, had a mild emergency in my mouth, and started sweating enough that I could’ve been added to Google Maps as a fire hydrant.

I smartly only added a very small pinch of this to the warm noodle dish, which brought it up to my perfect preferred heat level. I found it absolutely hilarious that they served this much of it for such a tiny bowl of noodles. Surely, at least once in the history of the restaurant, someone thought “they must’ve given me this much because this is how much I’m supposed to use,” dumped this entire thing into their bowl of noodles, and then proceeded to think that they had to go to the hospital.

Here are some photographs of our final pieces of meat. These were the high-grade cuts of wagyu. The waiter was so far doing a fantastic job making sure that the flame wasn’t flaring up, but because of how rich and fatty these cuts were, it was inevitable that the fire started dancing under the grate.

After we were finished with our wooden platter of meat, the waiter brought out a bonus plate of pre-marinated meat. He called this the “dessert meat.” This cut of beef isn’t actually eaten as a dessert, but it made sense why he would call it that, because the marinade usually has a nice sweetness to it. This is different than the more straightforward cuts of meat that we just finished eating that rely primarily on the flavor of the aging, the high fat content, and the accompanying salt to carry their naturally amazing flavors.

For our actual dessert, we were served some ice cream with a soy sauce glaze. The soy sauce glaze tasted very similar to caramel, but it had a deeper and more complex flavor to it. I actually liked this a lot, and if this was served à la carte at an ice cream shop near me for a reasonable price, this is something that I would deem worth getting for dessert on a relatively routine basis.

To close out our meal, we received a bowl of fruit. The pink pineapple was absolutely incredible and might have been some of the best fruit I’ve ever had in my entire life.

This is a photograph of the bar area in the center of the restaurant.

In alignment with the flower theme pursuant to the 꽃 in the middle of the COTE wordmark, the ceiling had a floral design on it.

This is the wordmark on the glass at the front of the restaurant.

This is the hostess’ podium at the entrance of the restaurant.

These are some animated LED signs just outside the restaurant that showed various different items served at COTE.

The omakase and non-alcoholic beverage came to a subtotal of US$240. After sales tax and gratuity, the total for my portion of the meal came to US$300.

I had a fantastic dining experience at COTE, and I highly recommend it as one of the top-tier and higher-priority options for someone looking for a meal at that price point. The meat was very high quality, their special twist on Korean cuisine noticeably elevated the food, the service was attentive and skillful, and the environment was classy and pleasant.

For several months now, one of my friends in Las Vegas has told (and reminded) me that he wanted to go get dinner at his favorite restaurant together with me someday so he could hear my thoughts and find out what I think about it within the context of my having become quite a tasting menu enthusiast lately. This restaurant has an important symbolic meaning to him—he has made it a tradition to dine here every time he gets another million subscribers on YouTube. He was curious to see if I would like it as well.

The aforementioned restaurant is STRIPSTEAK by Michael Mina, located inside MGM Resorts’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the southern side of the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The fact that it had the Michael Mina name attached to it was good news to me, as I had recently gone to Michael Mina at the Bellagio and had a great experience trying their High Summer 2026 tasting menu. I’ve generally been avoiding steakhouses lately because I’m minimizing my consumption of red meat due to having high cholesterol and needing to cut down on saturated fat intake. However, I figured that if I’m going to go to a steakhouse again, this would be a good candidate.

… I was wrong.

A lot of restaurants serve complimentary bread, but STRIPSTEAK does something special—they serve French fries cooked in duck fat. They also come with an assortment of three dipping sauces: ketchup, truffle aioli, and what I believe is their house take on a spicy mayo.

I would go as far as to say that these were probably the most delicious French fries I have ever had in my life. I would also quite confidently say that this truffle aioli is the best truffle aioli I have ever had in my life. I was sitting there eating the fries, trying different combinations of differently-seasoned fries with different sauces, and just being straight-up confused as to how they were so good.

After we finished the fries, I set aside the leftover truffle aioli and spicy mayo so that when the waiter cleared away the wooden plank, I’d get to keep the sauces. I had a feeling that there would be something coming up during the meal that would go well with these sauces, so I wanted to save them for later.

Prior to coming to STRIPSTEAK, I checked out their website and saw that there was a special tasting menu called The STRIPSTEAK Experience. If you’ve read some of my past food blog posts, you might have picked up on the fact that my favorite kind of food is when I go to a restaurant and a good chef decides for me what I should eat. Thus, opting for The STRIPSTEAK Experience was a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, when we were seated, the waiter brought out a few menus, but none of them had The STRIPSTEAK Experience as an option. I asked the waiter about the tasting menu by name, and he originally said that such a thing did not exist. After I was more specific about it and described it some more, he seemed to get a vague idea of what I was talking about, and he said that he would go and check to see if it was available. He came back several minutes later saying that they were not offering The STRIPSTEAK Experience that day because they ran out of the beef entrée that is supposed to be included in the tasting menu.

In disappointment, I started going through the à la carte menu with my friends and discussed what we would order. After we had come to an agreement, the waiter came back to us with copies of The STRIPSTEAK Experience menus and said that the tasting menu was actually, in fact, available that day, for US$150 per person. It would’ve been awfully convenient if he had shown up with those several minutes earlier, but that was fine. I confirmed to him that I would like The STRIPSTEAK Experience. One of my friends decided she would get the tasting menu too, while the third member of our party stuck with a more abridged version of the à la carte dishes that we had previously compiled for our meal.

After putting in our orders, my friends and I had a very lengthy conversation before I noticed that it was taking an unusually long time for the food to come out. The tasting menu started with four small plates, the first two of which were seafood dishes that shouldn’t take too long to prepare, so I was confused as to what was going on. For context, our reservation was at 5:15 PM; at 6:08 PM, 53 minutes after being seated, we finally got our first plate (if you exclude the fries that everyone gets before ordering).

When this came out, it was made very clear why it took so long. Most high-end restaurants will serve small plates on actual individual small plates. However, for some reason, STRIPSTEAK brought out all four of my appetizers all at once, side-by-side, on a single, long plate.

The first item was a shrimp served atop gin-spiked cocktail sauce. It tasted like a generic jumbo shrimp that you’d find in a grocery store. To be clear, that’s not universally bad; you can find some good shrimp at grocery stores. However, there was nothing special about it either.

The second item was hamachi crudo with cucumber, shishito, and truffle ponzu. Again, there wasn’t really anything particularly special about this, but it was still a refreshing bite.

Third up was wagyu steak tartare with traditional garnishes and crispy potato. I could barely tell that this was steak tartare because the potato’s flavor was so intense. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, and it would especially not be a problem for me because I like the flavor of potato. However, when paired together with the wagyu tartare, the deep-fried potato flavor was the only thing I could taste, and the tartare could’ve probably been replaced with cheap ground beef patty meat and I wouldn’t have even noticed.

Finally, the last bite was braised pork belly served atop some shredded cabbage and glazed with black pepper soy sauce. Flavor-wise, this was actually pretty good, but it wasn’t prepared very well. Too much of the edge was burned, and overall, it was way too dry. I have a bit of a gap between my back molars on the right side of my mouth, and shreds of meat get stuck back there if the meat is particularly tough or not tender. I feel like half of this entire braised pork belly got stuck between my teeth.

The second course also came with both dishes on a single plate. On the left was sea bass glazed with white miso marinade. It wasn’t terrible, but it sort of had a bit of a rubbery texture to it that I often notice in fish that is overcooked.

On the right of the plate was American wagyu New York strip steak with red wine reduction. This was decent taste-wise. However, the lack of preparation consistency was easily noticeable here, as my steak barely had any sauce, while my friend’s steak had so much sauce that it spread and covered her entire plate and even soaked her fish.

The tasting menu had one option for a supplement—we could opt to add some foie gras to the New York strip steak for an additional charge of US$26.

I asked the waiter if I could have the foie gras added to the sea bass instead, as I’ve already had plenty of foie gras with beef before, and having it comboed with seafood is a bit more rare. I also specifically asked this because I noticed that the menu had listed the fish as sea bass, which, to my limited culinary knowledge, is one of the types of fish that is actually compatible with foie gras, if prepared properly. He seemed doubtful about my request and said that he would ask the chef.

When the foie gras came out, it was served on the side on a separate plate. Considering that they seemed to like combining as much stuff as possible into single plates, this was actually very ironic. There were smudges on the plate, as if they were left behind by greasy fingerprints. The foie gras was firm and dense, and even when I cut a piece off and let it sit in my mouth for a while, it still didn’t soften up. This was the strangest, and probably the worst, foie gras I’ve ever had.

For the first side, we were served “seasonal vegetables.” In reality, it was just a bowl of green beans. They were actually quite good, and they were even better when I dipped them in the leftover French fry sauce from earlier. However, this just simply doesn’t match a reasonable expectation of what you’d get if you are offered seasonal vegetables.

Also pictured in this photograph are mashed potatoes and mac-and-cheese ordered by my à la carte friend. I sampled a small portion of both, and they were just as I thought—way too heavy on the butter, and extremely cloying.

The second side dish was spicy pork belly fried rice.

Sadly, this was my favorite dish of the dinner. The reason this is sad is because I usually don’t like pork belly, bacon, or basically any kind of “cheap” pork that derives most of its flavor from pork fat. Almost any well-made dish is better to my taste buds than pork belly or bacon, so the fact that I enjoyed this dish the most out of the entire tasting menu is an indication of how much I disliked the tasting menu.

The tasting menu concluded with warm beignets for dessert. One contained Macallan butterscotch pudding, one contained chocolate pot de crème, and one contained vanilla crème brûlée. Unfortunately, the only one I could distinguish flavor-wise was the chocolate. The other two had so little of the sauce in them that it tasted like I was eating plain sugar beignets.

The disappointing part about this is that there was no reason for them to stuff a microscopic amount of the sauce into the beignets. My friend ordered a full portion of beignets, and for his plate, the sauces were served in a generous portion on the side. If they had just done this same thing with the tasting menu beignets too, I would’ve been satisfied. The vanilla crème brûlée was actually quite delicious.

My friend ordered three desserts, with the first one being the beignets pictured above. If I remember correctly, his second dessert was some kind of creamy chocolate cake dish. He didn’t want the cookie on the top, so I had it instead. The cookie was actually quite good; it had a nice vanilla flavor to it, and it had a fun texture to it with a good balance of chewiness and stickiness.

This is what the interior dining area looks like.

We were seated in vague proximity of the kitchen. It was in eyeshot, but we were too far away for me to be able to actually watch them cook.

Out of curiosity, I walked right up to the window to see what the kitchen operations were like. Unfortunately, the glass was so smudged and dirty that it was difficult to actually see through it.

Remember how I said earlier that my friend ordered three desserts? Well, I saved the best for last.

My friend’s third dessert was pineapple rum flambé upside-down cake. For those who are not familiar, the flambé technique in this context involves igniting a rum and sugar combination so the alcohol can burn off and the sugar can caramelize. For this particular menu item, the flambé process was done tableside.

… Except it wasn’t. The waiter came out with some rum and syrup, mixed them together, did not light anything on fire, then dumped it directly on my friend’s dessert. The waiter then left behind the mixture on the table and walked away. Consequently, there was zero flambéing that happened, and my friend was left with a pineapple cake sitting in a puddle of rum.

My friend called the waiter back over and asked what happened to the actual flambé process for his pineapple rum flambé. The waiter apologized and said that he would look into it. Several minutes later, a different person came out with some more rum and syrup, except this guy actually had a lighter.

His rum and syrup clearly were not prepared for ignition. For proper tableside flambé presentation, these need to be pre-heated to a certain temperature so that they can actually be lit on fire. However, it seems like they came out with either cold or warm rum, as the guy was just standing there shooting his flame directly into the liquid for a good half minute or so, and nothing was happening. This is extra funny because I’m pretty sure a better way to heat up the mixture is by putting the flame under the steel serving scoop, not by torching the liquid directly.

To be clear, nothing had caught on fire by this point. I don’t know if this guy thought I was blind and didn’t notice, but he literally just gave up in the middle of the process. He then took his rum solution and poured it onto my friend’s cake again.

In utter confusion, I spoke up and told him that the solution he just poured onto my friend’s cake was functionally raw rum, and that it was not flambéed. He had no comment, presumably in disappointment that I had caught his sleight of hand, so he went back to the solution and started heating it up again.

If you hold a flame up to alcohol for long enough, I guess it will eventually reach vaporization temperature. The solution finally caught on fire in the scoop, and we were about to get somewhere. Now, all he needed to do was add it to the cake, and hopefully, the temperature had reached a point where the flame would transfer to the rest of the rum and successfully burn off the alcohol, if that’s even a thing that was possible anymore. This would also hypothetically leave a nice caramelization on the cake as well.

All this guy needed to do was reach over and pour. But instead, for some INEXPLICABLE REASON, he CARRIED THE FLAMING SCOOP and WALKED OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE OF MY FRIEND’S BODY.

By the time he finished his walk, the flame went out. He then proceeded to dump the liquid directly on the pineapple cake, looked proud of himself, gathered his scoops, and walked back to the kitchen.

Here is my friend’s cake training to be an Olympic swimmer.

Here is what the bathroom looked like. I thought ordering this here would serve as a great sequential flow of pictures following the pineapple rum flambé photographs.

This is a picture of the bar, near the hostess’ podium.

If it wasn’t obvious, I did not like STRIPSTEAK. Considering my positive experience at Michael Mina, I don’t think this restaurant deserves the Michael Mina name. Its tasting menu was disappointing and underwhelming, the food quality was lacking, the service was subpar, and the overall experience did not even remotely meet what I would anticipate from a restaurant serving food at this price point.

To elaborate more on my dissatisfaction with the tasting menu, I think The STRIPSTEAK Experience is very poor value. They left out the “experience” part, none of it was memorable to me (at least, not in a positive way), and the portion sizes were way too small. Tasting menus are often a way to commit to getting a full, multi-course dinner in exchange for getting a good deal and being able to try out a bunch of the restaurant’s best creations. I cannot say that The STRIPSTEAK Experience met any of those expectations.

My friend, who had previously raved about this restaurant, was also quite shocked at how badly it went this time. With that being said, he had a great point to rationalize the discrepancy between his past experiences compared to the disaster that unfolded during our dinner. When he dines at STRIPSTEAK, he has the same thing every time—the complimentary French fries, a steak, the pork belly fried rice, and the (full order of) warm beignets. Funny enough, if someone orders only those items every single time, then they are actually curating a meal for themselves that consists of what I think are the best items at the restaurant. It just happens to be that it seems like every other item on the menu isn’t that great… but someone who isn’t adventurous in ordering new things would never figure that out.

If a high-end restaurant is only good at making five dishes, then their menu should only have five items on it. On that basis, I cannot recommend STRIPSTEAK to anyone, even those who might just be looking to get those aforementioned good items, because, as a matter of principle, I cannot encourage someone to go to a restaurant where they have to disregard a majority of the menu.

This one has a little bit of a funny story behind it.

I obviously don’t expect everyone who stumbles upon my blog to know who I am, but those who do know me at the most fundamental level will most likely know about Tempo, the company with which I’ve been working together for over the past decade. One of its products is The Bazaar, a strategy game.

I oversee corporate operations at Tempo. In my case, that covers matters related to legal, finance, and human resources administration. Furthermore, being on the corporate side means that, although I’m not involved in the day-to-day activities of the company’s individual subsidiaries (such as the game development subsidiary), I still contribute to all projects as a whole. One facet of contribution is intellectual property.

In the process of conducting research and collecting materials for The Bazaar’s trademark applications, I came across a different The Bazaar owned by Bazaar IP Holder LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. As is fairly self-explanatory by the name of the company, it was an entity organized for the purposes of holding the intellectual property of “Bazaar.” Curious what this was, I started doing some digging and looking into the LLC’s other holdings.

I soon learned that a man named José Andrés had a restaurant at the SLS Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California called The Bazaar. Upon further investigation, I saw that he also had a restaurant called Bazaar Meat not too far away from me, at the SLS Las Vegas. As of today, neither of these two locations exist anymore—The Bazaar at the SLS Beverly Hills closed in 2020, and Bazaar Meat at the SLS Las Vegas relocated in 2025. Even the SLS Las Vegas no longer exists—it is now back to being called the Sahara Las Vegas.

And that’s how I found out that José Andrés’ Bazaar existed. (And if you’re curious, yes, Tempo was able to secure its trademark for The Bazaar; trademarks are issued by class, so you can have a The Bazaar video game and The Bazaar restaurant owned by two different companies co-existing, and that is fine.)

I have a friend in Las Vegas with whom I go to dinner on a routine basis. When we were arranging and planning another one of our regular meet-ups, my friend suggested a list of prospective restaurants, and I made the final decision from the small set of options. When I noticed that a Bazaar restaurant was on the list, I figured that now is as good of a time as ever to finally check it out and see what the restaurant counterpart of my company’s video game is like.

Thus, we decided to go to Bazaar Meat by José Andrés, located at its new home as of September 4, 2025 inside The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

Upon our arrival, we were asked whether we had a preference as to where we were seated. I like being close to the action, so when possible, I like to be seated near the kitchen or at the bar so that I can watch the chefs cook food and the bartenders prepare drinks. Bazaar Meat had a nice and fancy bar in the middle of the restaurant, so we asked to be seated there.

There were two different tasting menus available—José’s Ultimate Tasting Menu for US$295 per person and The Bazaar Tasting Menu for US$215 per person. I am interested in trying both at some point, but for this visit, I decided on The Bazaar Tasting Menu.

To start, I was served a bagel and lox cone with marinated salmon roe and dill cream cheese. I thought this was an interesting take on the bagel and lox, which is usually made with cured smoked salmon instead of salmon roe. This was a very small bite, but it was nice and flavorful, and I liked it.

Next was José’s taco, assembled tableside. They brought over a leg of jamón ibérico secured onto a jamonero and shaved some off to place it atop some nori.

They then placed a dollop of Ossetra caviar atop the jamón ibérico, then garnished it with a gold leaf.

This is what the final product looked like.

I’m usually not a big fan of jamón ibérico, but I actually quite liked this cut of it. It was fairly mild, and the texture was a great balance of firm and chewy, so I was able to continue chewing it for a long time and continue extracting flavor from it. I made sure to keep the seaweed wrapped around it as well, which contributed a complementary flavor. That, combined with the initial burst of flavor from the caviar when I first bit into it, led to me enjoying this dish in all aspects.

Next was super-giant pork skin chicharrón with Greek yogurt, wasabi, and furikake.

I usually don’t prefer pork rinds because I think it’s way too gamey and it tastes like I’m just licking a live pig. However, this pork skin chicharrón was incredibly mild and smooth in flavor. It encapsulated all the meaty flavor of the pork while getting rid of all the gaminess. The dip was also incredible—it had a nice creaminess and kick to it that worked very well with the umami of the pork skin.

Afterwards was a pair of tartare. The first was “beefsteak” tomato tartare with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, cucumber, black olive, and romaine leaf.

The fact that the “beefsteak” was in quotation marks on the menu, as well as it being labeled as a tomato tartare, makes me think that this is their take on a vegetarian beef tartare. The flavor profile was a little bit confusing, and it sort of dissipated quickly in my mouth before I could chew it for long enough to really analyze what it was like. It was a bit strange, but not bad.

The other was “the classic” beef tartare made from beef sirloin with egg yolk, mustard sauce, and anchovy atop a Parker roll.

This was rich and umami. The sauce worked well with the meat and was very flavorful. I usually prefer light or no sauce on beef tartare because I like the flavor of the beef itself and don’t want extra flavors to tarnish or detract from it, but the sauce used on this tartare was delicious and I thought it enhanced the bite overall.

Next was shrimp cocktail with piquillo cocktail sauce and avocado.

This was fine. There wasn’t really anything remarkably special about this, but it wasn’t bad either. It was decent quality and just tasted like a simple and straightforward shrimp cocktail dish.

Afterwards came the “not your everyday” caprese salad with half a cherry tomato, liquid mozzarella, a miniature crouton, and pesto.

This was small enough to have in a single bite. It said it was a caprese salad, and it definitely delivered on that promise. It was like eating a salad, but you get the perfect amount of each ingredient so that you get the full flavor profile of the entire salad all at once (which I guess is the entire point of deconstructing it like this). Also, this was an interestingly fun bite to have; I’m not really sure what exactly was fun about it, but it ended up being more memorable than I expected.

Next was sobrasada toast with pan de cristal, drunken goat cheese, honey, and chives.

I did not like this item. It was excessively greasy and heavy, and for lack of a better word, it tasted cheap. The syrupy sweet sauce was nice, but no matter how good it was, there was nothing it could do to counteract the thick greasiness that coated the inside of my mouth.

The next dish was served in a ceramic shoe. The waiter told me a story to go along with this about how this used to actually be eaten out of a shoe; that seems a bit unsanitary, so I’m glad they replaced it with a ceramic shoe instead.

Inside the shoe was some chicken croquetas.

I didn’t really like these either, and thought they were a bit overfried. The flavor profile of the filling was vague and felt as if I was eating a salty sausage of chicken blended with some other mysterious things that I couldn’t pinpoint.

This tasted like a more premium version of Costco’s chicken bake (though these chicken croquetas were actually edible). For context, I dislike Costco’s chicken bake so much that I threw it out after a handful of bites. That’s a pretty big deal because I’m someone who is notorious for not wasting food and still finishing most things, even if it’s just for the sake of consuming calories for sustenance.

Next up was the main entrée, a Washugyu chuleton ribeye steak.

Usually, if you want to have a tasting menu, you need the entire table to participate. Also, some tasting menus are made for two people to have together (which is why, for example, you might have noticed from the photograph of the bagel and lox cone that the serving container had two holes for two cones, but only one of the holes was filled). With that being said, the friend with whom I went to Bazaar Meat doesn’t eat seafood, so the wait staff made an exception and allowed me to get the tasting menu by myself while my friend orders à la carte.

It seems like this was communicated for the previous dishes forming the appetizers and small plates. However, for this ribeye, there seems to have either been a breakdown in communication, or it just might not have been feasible to prepare something like this for only one person. The reason I say that is because the portion size I got of this steak was absolutely massive, which makes me suspect that this plate was intended for two people to enjoy together.

The steak itself was fantastic. The doneness level was perfectly to my preference, and the meat was flavorful and well-seasoned.

To go along with my meal, I ordered a non-alcoholic beverage. This was not part of the tasting menu, but I figured I would enhance my experience by adding on one of their mocktails. I opted for the Emerald Coin, made from Seedlip Grove 42, honeydew, lemongrass, lime, and celery with a streak of beet paint on the outside.

The portion size on this was much smaller than I would have hoped, but flavor-wise, I liked it. Its flavor profile is not something that I drink often, so I enjoyed the unique element of it.

The ribeye steak came with a few sides. This one was Julian de Tolosa piquillo peppers.

I wasn’t a big fan of these, but I think that has more to do with my own personal preference, rather than it being a problem with the actual dish. They were a bit mushy and slimy texture-wise, but not so much that it was off-putting. They also did not taste like any other peppers that I’ve ever had before.

The ribeye also came with some buttered potato purée. The menu says the ingredient list for this was “butter, butter, more butter, and some potatoes.”

Quite frankly, this was disgusting. It was basically just a glob of butter with a little bit of potato flavoring in it. In their defense, the menu makes it very transparently and blatantly clear that you are basically ordering butter and not real potato purée. With that being said, I wish they would’ve at least given me an option of having a side of butter or a side of actual edible mashed potatoes.

I took one bite of this, literally had a gustatory shudder, and pushed this aside, never to be touched again.

My third and final side was Brussels sprouts petals with apricots, grapes, lemon purée, and lemon “air” (which I believe is just them referring to the foam on top).

I liked this side, and it was very helpful to cleanse my taste buds and counteract the lingering repulsion I had in my mouth from the butter purée. It had a bitterness to it, but it was a deep, earthy, flavorful kind of bitterness. The ribeye was also somewhat of a fattier cut, so the Brussels sprouts helped balance that out as well.

Considering that I pretty much got two people’s worth of steak, I was extremely full after this. I didn’t touch any more of the butter purée and I only had about half the peppers, but I completely finished the ribeye steak and Brussels sprouts petals. The only thing left on my steak plate was a little bit of the fat cap.

For dessert, I was served Spanish flan with crema Catalina, fresh passionfruit, orange, and almond brittle. I was so full that my body was just waiting for the moment that I was finally done, but even then, this still tasted good. Considering that context, I think this would’ve been incredibly delicious if I was a bit hungrier.

I also randomly had this banana-shaped dessert as well. This wasn’t on the tasting menu, so this was as if I was being taunted by the waiter and given a free bonus dessert when my stomach had no room for it.

… I finished the entire thing anyway. I believe this was a browned banana cake with layers of banana ice cream, coated with white chocolate molded and painted as if it was a banana.

Before I had my dessert, I literally went for a walk around the restaurant because I was so full that I wanted to see if I could move my body and prompt it to digest faster. My friend and I were seated at the bar near the entrance; I walked deeper into the restaurant and went around the corner, and to my pleasant surprise, I saw where they cooked the meat.

This area also had dry agers.

Inside one of the display cases, there was a little trophy and plaque. At first, I didn’t know what this was, but I took a picture of it anyway because it looked interesting. However, after looking back on the photographs and translating the text, I found out that it says:

兵庫県但馬牛
神戸肉
神戸肉流通推進協議会会員の証

Maybe it was just intuition, but yes, apparently I had snapped a picture of their official certification from the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association. For those who are not aware, Kobe beef is a very specific type of beef from Japan, and it is very frequently counterfeited by other restaurants. I had actually forgotten that Bazaar Meat is one of the restaurants that is actually formally certified by the Association to serve Kobe beef, but seeing this was quite the reminder.

As I’m typing this blog post, I also just noticed that it says “Kobe Beef” directly on the gold part of the trophy, in English. I didn’t see that before because I was too busy looking at the cow.

There were two bar areas; the main bar with the alcohol is the bar at which we were seated, and there was another bar off to the side that had a view of one of the preparation areas. Although those bar seats were set, it seems like that area was not used for service (at least for that day) based on the fact that there were a ton of plates stacked right in front of where the diners would be looking.

On the opposite side of the grilling area was the formal sit-down dining table area. I’m actually quite glad that we were not seated here, as it seemed like a lot of the smoke from the grill made its way into the air over here. The large, flowing lighting fixture here looked nice though.

Here is a clearer view of the alcohol that was suspended on shelves above the bar area where I had dinner.

The Bazaar tasting menu	$ 215.00
Emerald Coin	$  18.00
Gratuity	$  35.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  19.51
Total	$ 287.51

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Overall, I enjoyed this meal and thought it was absolutely fantastic value. With that being said, I am still thoroughly convinced that I had two portions of main entrée and sides; if I take that into consideration and assume that I would’ve only had half the amount of steak and sides, then I would downgrade my assessment from absolutely fantastic value to good value.

Some of the items in this tasting menu were a hit-or-miss, while some of them were just not to my preference. However, the entire point of a tasting menu is for a restaurant to show off a bunch of different offerings they have, and unless you are going to a very curated tasting menu experience, it is almost inevitable that there will be some dishes that you might not like. With that context in mind, I’d say that The Bazaar tasting menu was overall pretty good.

The Emerald Coin was way too expensive relative to the portion size of the drink. I would’ve probably been satisfied if they used a glass that had double the volume as the one that I was given. I do appreciate that I got to try a new flavor combination with this drink, but at that price, I would not order it again in the future.

Although I wouldn’t consider Bazaar Meat to be a mandatory addition to everyone’s must-go list, I do still recommend it if a meal of this price point is within your budget and you want a tasting menu that gives you a broad variety of Spanish-inspired food. If you’re not as adventurous with your food and just want a great high-end steak, then Bazaar Meat seems to be a great candidate for that.

 
… You thought I was done? Of course not. This is a two-in-one blog post. Remember how I said that my friend did not get the tasting menu with me because he doesn’t like seafood, and just ordered à la carte instead? Here is what he had.

This is cotton candy foie gras. The menu says that this came with crispy corn nuts, but I think they either forgot to bring that, or they meant that they somehow integrated it directly into the cotton candy. This cost US$12.

Next was patatas bravas made from fried potatoes and topped with dollops of aioli, served with a side of spicy tomato sauce, for US$14.

My friend also got some beef tartare (the real one, not the tomato one). As you can see, his portion is substantially larger than mine, because he got a full portion while I just got a tasting portion. This was US$32.

Inspired by my Emerald Coin, my friend ordered a different non-alcoholic beverage on the menu, Squaring the Circle. This was made from Kentucky 74, Lyre’s Amaretti, maple, and cumin. This was also US$18, and I think this is also very not worth it in terms of portion size; notice that a majority of the glass is occupied by a gigantic chunk of ice.

After finishing this drink very quickly, he ordered a Diet Coke. It did not come with refills, so he had to pay US$6 twice, once per small glass bottle he drank.

For his main entrée, he ordered the Vaca Vieja, which is an 8- to 10-year-old black Angus steak from Stemple Creek, California. They sell this by the cut; considering that he was having this solo and I had my own steak from my tasting menu, he asked for the smallest one available, which was 1.75 pounds (which is about 0.8 kilograms). This cost him US$166.

For his side, he got some Okinawa sweet potato with smoked butter miso, Fresno pepper, and citrus for US$15. He also got a side of buttered potato purée that looked exactly like mine for US$18.

His dessert was a chocolate hazelnut mousse for US$22.

For his meal, he paid a subtotal of US$309, and with US$25.88 in sales tax, his total came to US$334.88 (I don’t know how much he paid in gratuity on top of that because I didn’t look at his check after he signed it).

So yes, as you can see, you get substantially better value for your money with the tasting menu. You obviously forfeit the freedom to get whatever you want if you get a tasting menu, but if you’re someone like me who prefers to have a chef pick what you eat on your behalf, then it becomes a very alluring concept.

 
To wrap up this double blog post, here are some photographs of the exterior of the restaurant (considering that I already shared pictures of the interior).

On the opposite side of the hostess’ podium, there was a very large statue of a very happy-looking bull.

This is what the entrance of the restaurant looks like; it is right in front of a set of stairs down to the lower level of The Palazzo.

Nearby was some interesting bovine art.

The Palazzo is part of The Venetian Resort. The property has a large collection of dining options; this is what is available as of today, as advertised and on display on one of the walls near Bazaar Meat.

And finally, here is a view of The Palazzo as seen from the sidewalk running parallel to South Las Vegas Boulevard.