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.

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.

This particular friend’s birthday is actually in late April, but I was not available to travel to Southern California during the times when she was free, so we ended up being over a month late for her dinner. However, last week, we finally made some time to head over to Encino Place, the shopping center where Sushi by Scratch is located.

Similar to last time, we were invited to optionally arrive up to half an hour early for canapé service. This is done in a separate area of the restaurant while the chefs are at the omakase bar preparing for dinner service. Of course, I’m not going to pass up on extra food, so we arrived about 20 minutes before our designated reservation time.

I’m not sure why they call this an optional part of the experience, because I think the canapé service is a major element of the Sushi by Scratch experience. To be clear, these are not just some random small snacks that you can get from a grocery store; these are delicious, high-quality dishes that, although small, are still things that you’d probably find listed on fine dining menus at around US$10.00 each, or more.

The first small plate we got was a prawn dish; the prawn was decently sized, had a satisfying texture, was rich in flavor, and came served with a great sauce. We requested a non-alcoholic substitution to the welcome drink, so we received a citrusy tea instead.

The next bite was a miniature tuna roll topped with salmon roe. This was familiar, and looking back, I noticed that this was the same as one of the canapés that we were served at the Beverly Hills location.

For our last small dish before heading into the omakase bar, we were given some Japanese egg custard.

This is a picture of the “holding area” where we enjoyed our canapés. Surprisingly, a lot of people showed up only a few minutes before the 5 PM reservation time for our round of omakase. I feel like that is a big mistake on their end; if you’re paying premium prices for dinner, I’d imagine you’d want to have as much food as possible, considering how good it is.

Once attendance was taken and everyone was accounted for, the waiter gathered us all together and escorted us deeper into the building, into the dimly-lit main restaurant area. Although slightly different in design, it still had the familiar four-by-four grid of nigiri items written on miniature wood-bordered blackboards that I remembered from the Beverly Hills location. This “course list” allowed us to set our expectations for what we’d be eating that night.

After we were all seated, the bartender checked in with each of us and took our drink orders.

There was a designated wine pairing, but no non-alcoholic pairing. I did notice that there were two mocktails on the menu, so I figured I’d build my own pairing and order one of each. I asked the bartender to bring out the first mocktail early on, and then slot in the second mocktail part-way through the omakase at whatever point he thought that it would work best.

When he heard my request, I think he identified that I wanted a non-alcoholic pairing, so he said that he could actually make one for me on-the-fly. He offered making me four medium-sized drinks and spreading them out evenly throughout the omakase experience—two that were on the menu, along with two different ones that weren’t on the menu.

My friend wanted to try them just to see what they tasted like, but she didn’t want full mocktails of her own, so I ordered one non-alcoholic pairing to share with her. My friend also got some green tea.

After the bartender took everyone’s drink orders, the chefs were wrapping up their preparations, and the first round of nigiri was almost ready.

Shortly before serving the first piece, the chef mentioned that there was an opportunity to supplement some pieces of nigiri with extra caviar and/or shaved truffle. He mentioned the upcharge, but I thought the amount was so unreasonably high that I dismissed it as ridiculous and I guess my brain just immediately forgot it. It was somewhere in the ballpark of US$100-150 to have the add-ons for a handful of pieces of nigiri. Both my friend and I declined.

The dinner started with some hamachi, which is yellowtail.

Next came toro, or fatty tuna.

Afterwards was kinmedai, or splendid alfonsino.

The fourth piece was hotate, which is scallop.

With the first set of four pieces of nigiri finished, the bartender returned with my first mocktail. It made sense that each drink would be grouped with each batch of four pieces of nigiri, considering that there were four beverages and 16 pieces of nigiri. However, I think it would make much more sense if this came before the first piece, rather than after the fourth.

Next was shima aji, or striped jack.

Then came madai, which is red sea bream.

Afterwards, we received sawara, or Japanese Spanish mackerel.

Finally, the fourth piece of nigiri in this batch was masu, which is cherry trout.

The next mocktail was a citrus-based drink.

Nigiri number nine was albacore.

Following that was kanpachi, or greater amberjack.

Next was akami, which is the fleshy part of tuna.

Afterwards was a nice treat for me. One of my favorite types of sushi is escolar, but it’s rare to find it in restaurants because overconsumption of escolar can cause gastrointestinal issues, and a lot of restaurants don’t want to take the risk of people getting an upset stomach from ordering too much escolar and accusing them of causing food poisoning. This is prominent enough of a symptom that it is actually banned from being served in Japan.

I really like it because it is an extremely rich and buttery soft fish that isn’t quite like any other kind of fish. I happen to have the great fortune of not having any digestive issues with escolar, so I like to order it whenever I have the opportunity to do so. Thus, you can imagine how nice it was when I saw that escolar was already part of the omakase experience.

My next beverage was quite interesting, and was my favorite of the night. It had what I believe was chili oil in it, and I’m a big fan of spicy oils.

For the first piece of the set of four constituting the grand finale of the omakase, we were served torched wagyu beef nigiri.

That was followed by some bone marrow.

The chef then prepared unagi nigiri, which is eel, and topped it with some of the leftover bone marrow from the bone that was melted atop the eel with a torch.

To close out the night, the chef brought out some fresh uni, which is sea urchin.

The sea urchin was served as a small open hand roll instead of as nigiri or gunkan.

At the end of the meal, I received my fourth drink.

To close out the dinner, we were given a small cold dessert that resembled chocolate-covered ice cream.

The dessert also came with its own small cup of tea (so I had two beverages to go along with my dessert, if you also count the final mocktail of the non-alcoholic pairing).

Here are some additional photographs I took around the restaurant. These next three are from the bar area that you see immediately upon entering the restaurant, from which they conduct the canapé service.

And finally, these are photos of the Encino Place shopping mall. This was a multi-story structure with an underground parking garage and a bunch of different shops and restaurants laid out in a horseshoe. Sushi by Scratch was up one flight of stairs on the escalator from the ground floor, behind an unassuming door.

Omakase ×2	$ 370.00
Mocktail pairing	$  40.00
Green tea	$   8.00
Service charge (20%)	$  83.60
Sales tax	$  48.61
Total	$ 550.21

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Sushi by Scratch advertises itself as a no-tipping establishment, but they add a mandatory 20% service charge to the bill, which is functionally a forced 20% gratuity.

There’s also something strange going on with the sales tax. Unless I’m misunderstanding something, the sales tax in Encino, California should be 9.75% (composed of 6.00% to the state of California, 2.50% to Los Angeles County, and 1.25% at the local level). However, the bill charged 9.70% sales tax instead. Unfortunately, this sales tax also applied to the service charge too, which usually isn’t the case for proper gratuity.

I would hope that restaurants become honest enough to just add these charges directly into the listed base price and just have no extra fees, but in Sushi by Scratch’s defense, they did at least disclose this service fee prominently on their website and on the reservation page.

Sushi by Scratch Los Angeles was very similar to Sushi by Scratch Beverly Hills—primarily in the sense that their specialization was to add very creative and unique garnish combinations to each piece of nigiri—but it still had enough differences that it had its own unique identity. I ended up liking this experience in Encino a little bit better because the selection of fish was more diverse and they included more uncommon cuts in their rotation.

With that being said, one thing that I liked much better at the Beverly Hills location was the non-alcoholic beverage pairing. It was very weird that the bartender at Encino waited for me to finish four pieces of nigiri with just water before bringing out my first drink, and then doubled me up on drinks for dessert. Also, I felt like the Beverly Hills location was far more creative with the beverages’ flavor combinations. I did appreciate that none of the drinks at Encino were excessively sweet, and the drink with droplets of chili oil was amazing, but beyond that, I think the execution could’ve been handled better.

My assessment of this Sushi by Scratch is basically the same as the one in Beverly Hills. It is quite pricey, and if you calculate the base rate for omakase plus the mandatory service charge and sales tax, and divide it by the three canapés, all 16 pieces of nigiri, and the dessert, then you end up paying somewhere around US$12 per item. With that being said, the flavor combinations that you’ll get here are unmatched. If you have been to at least a few other omakase experiences before, primarily those focused on a traditional Edomae style, and you are looking for something more distinct and memorable, then I think Sushi by Scratch is absolutely worth a visit.

Considering that I only post about this once a year, you might not have any context behind this and have no idea what I’m talking about. If that’s the case, then there are two pieces of prerequisite reading to get caught up: my restaurant reviews of the Capital Grille in Costa Mesa, California and Bello by Sandro Nardone in Newport Beach, California. If you don’t know how to read, the simple summary is that I go to a high-end restaurant together with my Twitch moderator once a year to treat him to a nice dinner on the anniversary of him becoming my mod.

This year, Phummy asked me to take him to THE RANCH Restaurant in Anaheim, California. For those who read my most recent blog post, that’s the reason I was staying at the JW Marriott, Anaheim Resort—so I could be in relatively close proximity to the restaurant (and because I enjoy going for walks around the Anaheim Convention Center, Disneyland Resort, and Anaheim GardenWalk areas).

As a side note, for those who are paying extra close attention, this blog post is a bit late for a few reasons. First, we had our dinner last Friday, but I didn’t have a chance to get around to blogging about it until today because I recently had some extremely packed weeks of work, so I’ve been spending the last several days balancing it out by playing video games (which is rare for me now), watching movies (which is even rarer), and just relaxing in general after doing only core work of critical or time-sensitive importance. Second, our actual anniversary is in the middle of Phummy’s final exam week at his university, so we decided to wait for him to wrap up so he can focus fully on excelling in his academics.

 
Upon our arrival at the restaurant, the hostess confirmed our reservation and brought us to our table. While walking us there, she asked if we were celebrating a special occasion. Phummy, of course, confidently informed her that we are celebrating our anniversary, and ended it at that. I, of course, have to clarify that we are celebrating a work anniversary and that we are not a gay couple. The hostess found that very amusing.

After being seated, a couple of other staff members asked us whether we were celebrating anything special, upon which we repeated the process of Phummy proudly declaring that we are celebrating our anniversary, and me needing to stipulate that it is a work anniversary. Everyone who spoke with us seemed to find the dynamic very amusing.

Not long afterwards, Phummy let me know that, when he booked the reservation on the restaurant’s website, he put a note in the “special request” section to make the experience as romantic as possible for us. If you haven’t noticed by now, Phummy finds great enjoyment in intentionally making the “anniversary” term confusing or misleading for people in hopes that they think we are a gay couple.

After speaking with us, it seemed like all the staff members were very on board with joining Phummy in trolling me and really emphasizing just the “anniversary” part of “work anniversary.” What I think happened was that the hostess and staff saw Phummy’s special request, but when we walked in, we didn’t look anything like a romantic couple, so they held back under the belief that there had been some kind of error or misunderstanding. However, after confirming directly with us about our “relationship,” it seemed like every staff member enthusiastically committed to Phummy’s joke.

 
While we were deciding what to eat, we were brought out some complimentary bread. There were seven orbs of five different kinds of bread arranged in a flower shape. This is the first restaurant that I’ve ever seen do something like this, and I appreciated their creativity. The bread quality was also pretty good, though I didn’t have that much of it because I didn’t want to fill up my stomach too much with carbs.

I accidentally came into this dinner not hungry because there was a bit of a mix-up. Phummy originally told me that the dinner was on Saturday the 23rd, but then later said that apparently the reservation actually went through for Friday the 22nd instead. I confirmed the schedule change and updated it in my calendar, but I guess I forgot to update it in my brain. I accidentally ate some free dinner at my hotel’s restaurant on Friday with my elite status vouchers, and only after finishing two entrées did I remember that I was supposed to meet up with Phummy. Thus, my meal at THE RANCH was actually my second dinner of the day.

Our waiter asked if we wanted to order any drinks. I told him that I don’t drink alcohol, but gestured over to Phummy to see if he wanted anything. I then found out / remembered that Phummy is not yet of legal alcohol drinking age in the United States. So instead, we both ordered mocktails.

I ordered a hibiscus and jalapeño mocktail. It was quite strong and intense, and it gave a nice kick every sip.

While delivering our drinks, the waiter asked what kind of work anniversary we were celebrating, i.e., what we do for our jobs. This is a bit of a complex question, considering that my main job is being the Director of Corporate Operations at Tempo, and my secondary job is being a business consultant, and Phummy doesn’t work together with me in either of those. I told our waiter that, and then further elaborated that Phummy is a Twitch moderator, which in normal people terms, is functionally similar to being a personal digital media assistant. Our waiter was very interested in this, so he stood at our table for a few minutes while I fairly thoroughly explained everything.

Then I looked over at Phummy. His drink was already empty.

The waiter asked Phummy if he wanted another one, to which he confirmed.

For our appetizer, we got a Robbins Island Tasmanian Wagyu Beef carpaccio with white alba clamshell mushrooms, black truffle, wild arugula, and pecorino romano.

This was good, but the beef was sliced comically thin. And yes, I understand that the entire point of carpaccio is to cut the fish or meat into thin slices, but this beef carpaccio was so thin that it basically just ripped apart from its own weight when I tried to pick it up.

The greens supplemented the meat flavor very well. I took some of the vegetables and placed them on top of the carpaccio, then rolled it up as best I could; this made for some satisfying and well-rounded bites.

While we were having our appetizer, the waiter came back with Phummy’s second drink. I don’t quite remember exactly what all the components of the drink were, but as you can probably tell, it was a citrus-based mocktail.

The main menu had a lot of nice beef options, but was fairly limited in seafood. I’m still trying to avoid red meat where possible in order to reduce saturated fat consumption, lower cholesterol, and maintain heart health (and because I just like seafood better anyway). Thus, I was tentatively deciding on getting pan-seared halibut. However, there was also a special farm menu that day with a few additional options.

I ended up ordering pistachio-crusted Colorado lamb chops with whole grain mustard spätzle, green garbanzo beans, red spring onions, ramp chimichurri, and lamb jus as my main entrée. Yes, lamb is still red meat, but lamb is not as common as beef, poultry, or fish in the United States, so when there is a high-quality lamb dish at a restaurant, I will usually get it.

This lamb was great, but interestingly, I actually enjoyed the spätzle as the most notable part of the dish. The texture and doneness level of the pasta was perfect, both when eating it on its own as well as when combining it with a bite of lamb.

For my side, I got some grilled asparagus.

Separate from both the main menu and the side farm menu were a few special unlisted dishes, one of which was a filet mignon. Phummy is a fan of filet mignon, so that’s the dish he ordered; it came topped with a bone marrow compound butter sauce crust as a supplement, as well as with an included side of potato fingerlings.

For his side, he got lobster mac and cheese, composed of house-made pasta and Vermont white cheddar.

I ended up not being able to finish my lamb chops and asparagus, so I asked for it to be put in a to-go container. I technically could’ve finished it if I really pushed myself, but I wanted to still leave a little bit of room for dessert.

Phummy and I each ordered one dessert, but when the waiter came back, he had three plates. One of them was a complimentary celebratory dessert on the house—a Tahitian vanilla bean crème brûlée with seasonal madeleines. They wrote “Happy Anniversary” on the plate with chocolate from a piping bag.

My dessert was a hazelnut crunch bar with praline crunch, chocolate crémeux, caramelized hazelnuts, Valrhona Caramélia chocolate mousse, caramel sauce, and vanilla ice cream.

Phummy opted for the Milky Way, made with República del Cacao chocolate, malted nougat, and salted caramel ice cream.

While he was consuming it, we had an interesting discussion about the trademark implications of naming their dessert the Milky Way, and whether it would constitute infringement under the standards of likelihood of confusion. My conclusion was that, yes, the fact that they named this the Milky Way would indeed likely fall under infringement territory.

After we finished all three desserts, the waiter brought out our check. To further commit to the anniversary joke, he wrote “Happy Anniversary!” at the top of our receipt.

Here is a photograph of the main dining area of the restaurant.

While stopping by the restroom, I noticed that the door to a vacant private dining area was left open. I peeked inside and snapped a photograph.

On our way out, the hostess gave us one final departing “happy anniversary!”

This is what the restaurant looks like from the outside. The left door leads to the restaurant, while the right door leads to the saloon.

Thinking back, I probably should’ve checked out what the saloon looks like while I was there, even if it was just for a few minutes. The entryway was delineated with stanchions though, so I guess it is possible that they were having a special event there and we might not have even been allowed in as non-ticketed guests.

Wagyu beef carpaccio	$  25.00
Colorado lamb chops	$  74.00
Filet mignon	$  74.00
Bone marrow crust	$  15.00
Asparagus	$  18.00
Lobster mac ‘n’ cheese	$  30.00
Hazelnut crunch bar	$  17.00
Milky Way	$  17.00
Vanilla crème brûlée	$   0.00
Mocktail ×3	$  36.00
Bottled water ×4	$  40.00
Sales tax (7.75%)	$  26.82
Gratuity	$  90.00
Total	$ 462.82

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

The restaurant offers valet parking, but they also had a free self parking option in an adjacent lot right on the opposite side of a nearby fence, easily within walking distance.

I am about 98% sure that both Phummy and I drank regular house filtered water and not bottled water. However, I was charged for four bottles of water at US$10.00 each. Usually, the way to know for sure that you are getting paid, premium water is that they will bring the glass bottles directly to you and leave them on your table, and they definitely did not do that for us. Thus, I’m pretty sure that I ended up inadvertently paying for a different table’s luxury water supply. Having an excess US$40.00 on your bill isn’t really the best feeling, but I’m over it at this point; I had a chance to audit the check before remitting payment, so I bear a lot of the fault for not catching it before handing over my credit card.

If you’ve read my previous restaurant reviews, you may have picked up on the fact that I am very much against the United States’ tipping culture, and I will usually only add on around 15% in gratuity to my bill. However, I still assess this on a case-by-case basis, and when I notice that the staff is going noticeably beyond what I think is the standard of service, I am happy to tip more generously. Every single staff member we encountered at THE RANCH was stellar, and I could tell that they genuinely wanted to give Phummy a fun, memorable experience. Thus, my ~26% gratuity isn’t me being a hypocrite; I just thought they deserved it in this instance. Also, technically, considering that I paid an extra US$40.00 for water that I’m pretty sure we did not get, if you recalculate that as if it was extra gratuity, then I guess tipping US$130.00 on a new US$306.00 subtotal is… over 42%.

Overall, I thought the food was great, but I am undecided on the value for the cost. For comparison, this is right around the price point of last year’s Chef’s Table, and I thought the experience with Chef Frankie was a league or two above THE RANCH with regards to ingredient quality, dish preparation, and portion size. The service was top-tier at both locations, but was just different; Bello by Sandro Nardone focused on chef-to-diner personalization, while THE RANCH had a broadly supportive and attentive staff.

If you’re interested in dining at THE RANCH but are concerned about the price point, I think one thing to keep in mind is that you can be a lot smarter about assembling a good meal without spending as much as I did. I think our waiter noticed that I didn’t really mind what the price was of anything, so he did a great job upselling us by describing add-ons like drinks and supplements in a very appetizing way, and reminding us about side dishes. If you’re not getting what is basically the most expensive dish in every single category, then I imagine your bill will be much more manageable than this.

Phummy is already thinking ahead to next year’s anniversary dinner and figuring out what kinds of unique and special things we can do for it. I guess I have to wait patiently for another eleven and a half more months to figure out how he plans on trolling me next…

Chef’s Table is an upgraded experience that comes with an additional US$118.00 supplement. Because I purchased the unlimited premium dining package add-on prior to sailing, my upcharge was lowered to $59.00 (consisting of a $50.00 base price and a $9.00 mandatory 18% gratuity). The extra fee isn’t cheap, especially considering that all your basic meals are already included in your standard fare, but if you compare the quality of the food and service to other fine dining establishments on land, it’s actually not bad.

Chef’s tasting menus like this are usually rotated by season. Because my previous cruise was during the winter and it’s spring now, I was looking forward to seeing how they changed up the menu. Unfortunately, the course list was exactly the same as it was on my previous cruise, which was a bit disappointing. Upon the conclusion of my meal, I did some research about how frequently they change up the menu, only to discover that… they don’t. Apparently this menu is highly standardized and remains the same, year-round and fleet-wide.

I feel like this is a huge missed opportunity to hook the foodies into spending more money every time they’re on a Royal Caribbean cruise. Yes, having delicious, high-quality food is probably the most important facet of attracting customers, but if they want to monetize food enthusiasts as repeat customers, I feel like adding in at least some kind of novelty value every season would be a big plus.

So, if you already read my blog post about my previous Chef’s Table experience, then this one will probably feel like déjà vu. Regardless, I still decided to do a full post about it again because there are still some thoughts I had throughout this meal about the limited differences it did end up having compared to the one I experienced on Quantum.

I don’t drink alcohol, so in lieu of the wine pairing, I requested a non-alcoholic pairing instead. On Quantum, they had a designated non-alcoholic pairing prepared, and when I brought it up, they even asked if anyone else at the table wanted to pass on the wine and make a substitution too.

However, this time on Navigator, it felt like the non-alcoholic pairing was an afterthought. The waiter’s facial expression made it look like he was incredibly confused that I didn’t drink alcohol, and at one point during the dinner, he even asked me “would you like another one?” as if I was supposed to be ordering the mocktails myself rather than there being a pairing.

On Quantum, the waiter immediately took away my wine glasses, but on Navigator, I had six empty, unused wine glasses sitting in front of me for over half the meal, and the waiter only thought to remove them after the first three of six courses were already done. Additionally, because this was a circular table, it felt a lot more cramped. The rectangular table that was used on Quantum had more efficient usage of space because there was very little unused space on the table, but on a circular table, the entire center of the table is unreachable, so you end up having all the wine glasses really close to each other and your eating area is just basically a pie slice.

The meal started with some bread.

At this point, I noticed that there were 13 people at the table—six couples, plus me solo. I started having a sneaking suspicion that the capacity of the table was supposed to be 12, but because I was a solo diner, they squeezed in another couple so that they didn’t end up with 11 in this session and “miss out” on a spot if there is no other solo diner who signs up. That would give a partial explanation of why we all felt so cramped and had so little space.

The reason I found this out? They ran out of bread. They prepared 12 portions of bread, even though there were 13 people. I got my own blossom of bread, but the man sitting next to me didn’t get one and had to share one with his wife. He ultimately got his portion… after course number four.

After an unusually long wait, we were served the first course, scallop carpaccio with yuzu vinaigrette and crispy quinoa. This was very consistent with the previous scallop carpaccio I had on Quantum; it was cut extremely thin, so I rolled them up into tubes with the quinoa and some vegetables inside so that it had more substance per chew.

After finishing my dish, I looked up and noticed that the woman across the table from me hadn’t received one. I wondered if this was another case of the kitchen only making 12 instead of 13, but after someone else also noticed and asked her about it, she said that she had an allergy and requested a substitution. Considering how long we had to wait to get our first course, I figured that it would be plenty of time to prepare her substitute dish as well and serve everyone at once. A while after everyone at the table finished their scallop, the woman finally got her alternative dish.

I also finally received my “first” drink of the non-alcoholic beverage pairing. I say that this is the “first” because the actual first one I got was supposed to be in substitution for the welcome champagne. This one was the first drink of the actual meal.

For the second course, we received smoked tomato soup with garlic focaccia croutons. As you can see from the photograph, it was just focaccia and not croutons.

The smoked tomato soup was served plain at first, and then the chef came out to add the cream and basil sauces into the soup.

I remember from Quantum that I really enjoyed the earthiness and smoky flavor of this soup, and this is actually one of the dishes that I thought Navigator did even better. The flavor was much more intense here, almost as if the Quantum version of soup was diluted. I still had some of the bread left from before, so when I ran out of focaccia, I dipped the bread into the soup to clean my bowl.

The third course was Maine lobster salad with hearts of palm, pineapple, cilantro, and vanilla dressing.

I liked the Quantum version of this a little bit better because the Quantum’s lobster was prepared in a more pure and simple way, while this one had a lot of sauce, some of which was already soaked into the vegetables. With that being said, liking the more plain version of lobster is just a personal preference (mostly because I just really like the flavor of lobster itself); everything about this dish was delicious, including the sauce.

My next mocktail was a pineapple and coconut drink. It looks like a fruit slushie and I think it visually looks extremely sweet, but in reality, it was actually quite moderate in sweetness. That meant that it was easier to discern the flavors of the fruits themselves, which I thought made the overall flavor profile of the drink much better.

Our fourth course was roasted branzino with grilled zucchini, peppers, lemon confit, and pesto.

This was another dish that was very consistent between Quantum and Navigator. The fish was cooked very well, and the vegetables and citrus complemented it well. I noticed that the sauce here was a bit stronger than the one served on Quantum, but that was fine, as a majority of it was pooled in the moat of the plate and diners could personally decide how much to use.

A significantly noticeable difference between the dining experience on Quantum and Navigator was the skill of the sommelier. On Quantum, it was easy to tell that the sommelier was experienced and confident in the way that he explained and served the wine, but on Navigator, the sommelier made some questionable choices that even I, as someone who never drinks alcohol, found to be quite obviously unusual.

I don’t know if this was just him being nervous, but he was very fidgety with the wine bottles. I believe a reasonable expectation you can have of your sommelier presenting the wine is to hold it steady with a folded liteau so that there is minimal body heat transfer, and so the diners can still see the label on the bottle. The sommelier for our dinner seemed to really like touching the bottle with his bare hands, and not just touch it, but really get in there and massage it like he was loosening some cramps.

For one of the wines—specifically, the Leviathan Red Blend California—the sommelier poured it into a decanter first. Remember the pineapple drink I had earlier? It had a little too much in the glass, so some of it overflowed and ended up forming a puddle on the table. Do you know where the sommelier decided to place the decanter on the table so that people could look at it (after cradling it and massaging it too, for a bit)? Directly on top of the puddle. A blind man literally had a statistically higher chance to place the decanter on a dry spot of the tablecloth than this sommelier.

Here is a picture of the sommelier serving the wine to my next-seat neighbor. Hmm, I wonder why he still has so much bread left. Oh wait…

The fifth course of the evening was filet mignon.

Prior to serving it, our waiter (who, if it wasn’t clear, is the same person as our sommelier) went around the table collecting doneness level preferences. Most people ordered their steak medium rare, while the other half ranged from medium to medium well. During this process, he told an elaborate story about how it is worth trying steak cooked medium rare, even if you usually like it more cooked, and he shared some anecdotes about how he is slowly convincing his wife to eat steak cooked closer and closer to medium rare.

He had started this quest by asking the person next to me, so by the time he had gone all around the table (and also finished telling his story), I was last in line to give my order. I asked for my filet mignon to be cooked rare. He asked “oh, so you want it still mooing?” This is obviously a joke, but with this guy, I literally could not tell. Just in case there was a miscommunication, I clarified, “no, I’d just like it regular rare, not blue rare” (because blue rare is often the doneness level at which you get “your steak is still alive” comments). The waiter then repeated his joke, asking, “yes, so you want it still mooing?” to which I replied “yes, that would be great.”

Fortunately, the steak came out properly rare, and it was delicious.

The filet mignon was served with a side of potato purée, asparagus, carrots, and baby tomatoes. The chef also came around and added some bordelaise sauce to the moat; I ended up barely using any sauce because the flavor of the steak and vegetables was so great on its own.

On Quantum, the filet mignon had a nice quirk where it was served with extra crispy potato chips pressed into the potato purée. I enjoyed that the Navigator version also came with a few potato chips on the side as well. The portion was small enough that it added a nice little diversity of flavor and texture without being considered too significant a component of the overall dish.

For our final beverage of the night, we got espressos—a regular salted caramel espresso for me, and an espresso martini for everyone else.

By this point, because the service had been so excruciatingly slow, we were about to hit the end of hour 4 of our dinner and it was almost 9 PM (we started at 5 PM). Because it was so late, most people didn’t dare take more than a sip or two of their espresso martinis out of concern that the caffeine would keep them up all night. Luckily, I have the blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of being immune to caffeine, so I enjoyed my entire espresso. I thought it was extra great because I also really like salted caramel.

The espressos were served in conjunction with the sixth and final course, The World.

In theme with the slow service, they brought out our orbs of chocolate first, and then our waiter disappeared for a while. They were gone for long enough (and also did not give clear enough instructions) that the woman sitting two seats away from me started cracking open her chocolate orb with her fork. I had to stop her and told her to wait a bit longer, because there was a surprise coming.

The surprise, of course, is that the waiter comes out with some warm caramel sauce and pours it over your desserts to melt the outside chocolate shell and reveal the inside.

Inside was peanut butter ganache, Valrhona chocolate mousse, and salted caramel gelato.

On Quantum, I wasn’t able to eat much of this because it was so overwhelmingly sweet that it registered on my taste buds as bitter. However, I’m happy to report that the Navigator version was not excessively sweet. I was quite excited that I was able to taste all the ingredients this time, and in celebration, I finished the entire thing.

This was also time for celebrations. Two couples were celebrating anniversaries, so they each got a small slice of chocolate cake with a candle.

On Quantum, the Chef’s Table took place in a private room all the way in the back of Chops Grille. On Navigator, the Chef’s Table is actually inside the main dining room on the center floor. I wouldn’t say either arrangement was better or worse; it was just different. I guess this version on the Navigator is better if you’re the type who wants to brag to others that you’re having a nice meal, while the more private Quantum version is better if you don’t want to hear the quiet chatter and clinking of utensils on dishes from other regular diners.

Here are some photos I took from the perspective of our dining table.

This is what the Chef’s Table dining table looked like. While taking this photograph, I did not notice that one of the couples from the dinner was still there taking pictures, so that was amusing to notice after-the-fact while I was organizing my photographs. The couple there was very kind (as was everyone else at the table); I ran into this particular couple a few days later on the pool deck when I was out for a walk, and we had a great chat about their cruising adventures.

If you want to go on a fun scavenger hunt, you can zoom into the table to see where my seat was. It’s quite easy to figure out if you know that I am the only one who finished my entire dessert and drank my entire espresso.

Here’s another view of the Chef’s Table, but from the opposite side of the dining area.

After my second Chef’s Table, my assessment of the experience remains mostly the same as before. The thing that makes it special is the interactions and conversations you have with the other diners. There were some more shy diners this time compared to my dinner on Quantum, but after the alcohol got flowing, they got a whole lot more chatty.

If you want a high-class and elegant dining experience during your cruise away from the regular bustle of the main dining room or buffet, then I would recommend this experience for people who don’t have children to bring with them and have the budget or financial flexibility for the supplemental charge. My recommendation here still stands, even with the inconsistent service I experienced on Navigator compared to Quantum.

The base fare for a solo cruiser in an interior cabin was $1,156.00, but it came with a $347.00 discount as part of a sale, another $226.00 discount on top of that for a different promotion, and an additional $81.00 discount even on top of that for being a Nevada resident. (Apparently the resident discount applies to short-notice bookings for residents of states neighboring the port, which is a way to incentivize nearby people to book the cruise assuming that traveling the relatively short distance won’t be too much of a hassle for them.) With $155.82 added on for taxes, fees, and port expenses, my total base fare for this trip was US$657.82. I bought a bunch of add-ons so the grand total was closer to a thousand dollars, but for the base price, $657.82 is insanely low.

I’m a bit behind on blogging right now, and I’ve actually been back from this cruise already for one week. However, I’m taking a brief break from traveling and have a bit more time now, so I’ll be catching up soon. I used this extra free time to go through and organize my cruise photos, and I’ve decided to split it up into four blog posts (this one being the first one).

To start, here is a rundown of (most of) the food I ate on the cruise.

Like last time, I purchased a premium dining package add-on that allowed me to eat at any specialty restaurant for no extra charge (apart from the extra charge of actually purchasing the add-on, that is). Normally, all meals are included in your fare, but if you get this add-on, you get to go to more private and higher-quality on-board restaurants instead of the buffet or main dining room. This cost me $214.62 extra for the 7-night cruise, which is broken down into $181.93 for the package and $32.69 for a mandatory 18% prepaid gratuity.

Also like last time, I purchased The Key for $181.93 (this is separate from the dining package, and it is just a coincidence that they share the same base price, which was due to a pretty steep discount on The Key). The main perk of this is the fact that it includes on-board Internet access, but it also comes with a special welcome lunch and departure breakfast.

The welcome lunch on Quantum of the Seas was great—I had a nice, private window seat and enjoyed some delicious fish. The welcome lunch on Navigator of the Seas, however, was a bit… different. Instead of giving everyone a private table, they randomly grouped some strangers into larger parties. For example, rather than giving me a solo table, I was put in a group of nine at what is basically a really big family dining table. This is fine for something like the Chef’s Table where you’re intentionally opting into it, but it seemed weird for a regular meal like this.

Regardless, thanks to a handful of chatty people at our table, it wasn’t too bad. I got to know some new people, and many of them were intrigued at my mobile lifestyle of traveling non-stop and living out of hotel rooms most of the time.

As the main entrée of my lunch, I ordered some branzino with asparagus. Similar to last time, the fish came out looking sort of sad, but taste- and texture-wise, it was great.

For dinner on embarkation day, I dined at Izumi Sushi. I intentionally scheduled sushi night to be the first night because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get seasickness, so I figured that it would be best to try and get ahead of it and eat a lot of ginger from the sushi restaurant as a preventative measure.

As my appetizer, I had crispy rice spicy tuna, which was made from creamy tuna, masago, spicy aïoli, chili garlic oil, hot crispy rice, and jalapeño.

For my first main course, I ordered a poke bowl with seasoned tuna, salmon, avocado, sea salt, sesame chili oil, onions, scallions, masago, seaweed salad, and sushi rice.

I comboed that with my second main course, the assorted sashimi with salmon, yellowtail, and shrimp. It looked like getting the sashimi was much better value than getting the assorted nigiri in terms of portion size. Because the poke bowl came with plenty of sushi rice already, I fished some out and combined it with the assorted sashimi to have some build-your-own nigiri.

For dessert, I had assorted mochi ice cream. It usually comes with one piece each of mango, strawberry, and chocolate, but I requested for the chocolate to be replaced with a second piece of mango. It’s not that I dislike chocolate, but rather, I just find more consistency in liking fruity flavors instead.

This is what the entrance of Izumi looked like.

This is a shot of the interior of Izumi. I had a fairly late dining time, so it was pretty empty by the time I was there.

Next on my rotation was Jamie’s Italian. I dined there twice—one time for lunch, and one time for dinner on a different day.

On the day that I went for lunch, I started my meal with their ultimate garlic bread, which is made from warm artisan buttermilk buns, herby garlic butter, Parmesan, and rosemary.

For my main entrée, I ordered truffle tagliatelle.

I remembered from Quantum of the Seas that this pasta dish was borderline-inedibly salty, so for this one, I put in a special request with the waitress to minimize the amount of excess salt that was added to this dish. She passed along my preference to the chef, and it was very well honored; this came out at the perfect saltiness level, and it tasted great.

For dessert, I got some ice cream topped with fruits and caramel popcorn.

Jamie’s Italian was located inside the Windjammer Buffet in its own dining room along the edge of the ship. This meant that I got to enjoy a great view of the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling windows while dining.

On the day that I went to Jamie’s for dinner, I started with some crispy squid with a side of lemon and garlic mayo sauce.

For my main course, I had lasagne made from slow-cooked beef and pork, topped with herbs, baked in a Béchamel sauce with tomatoes, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I’m usually not the biggest fan of eating a ton of cheese, but the cheese in this dish wasn’t unpleasantly pungent like some other cheeses are. This was also specially made with low sodium, which made me like it more than I expected.

For dessert, I had a banana split with one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, topped with caramel popcorn and a caramel drizzle. This was incredibly delicious and possibly the best dessert I had on the ship. The caramel was torched in a way such that, combined with the banana, it tasted like a fruity crème brûlée.

Next is the big one: Hooked Seafood. Seafood is my favorite type of food, so I spent three of my dinners dining at Hooked.

Each dinner started with some cheesy bread.

The first night at Hooked, I selected fresh-shucked oysters with mignonettes as my appetizer.

That was followed by The Captain’s Platter as my main entrée, consisting of a four-ounce lobster tail, grilled halibut filet, and three jumbo shrimp. This was accompanied by some melted butter as the dipping sauce and some seasonal vegetables as the side dish.

Afterwards, I opted for a lemon tart for dessert.

The second night at Hooked, I started with some mussels steamed in a garlic white wine sauce.

For my main entrée, I ordered a grilled salmon filet. I got this because I figured the portion size of the fish would be larger, but it was about the same as what was served in The Captain’s Platter. The platter didn’t have an additional upcharge, so it seems like it is just categorically better, considering that you get to select the type of filet you want anyway, and you get the “bonus” lobster tail and shrimp as well.

For my side, I got some lobster mac and cheese. It was quite greasy and didn’t really have much lobster in it, so I would’ve probably been better off trying the coleslaw or corn on the cob instead.

For dessert, I got a cherry tart topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For my third and final night at Hooked Seafood, which was also the final dinner I had on the cruise ship before debarkation day, I ordered some baked oysters as my appetizer—half Rockefeller and half leeks and white wine. I’m glad I got to try this for the sake of variety, but I much preferred the fresh oysters and drunken mussels instead.

My main course this day was the surf and turf, which came with a lobster tail and steak. I’m still working on improving my heart health and minimizing my consumption of saturated fat, so I’ve been avoiding red meats where possible. With that being said, I figured that, even though filet mignon isn’t as low in saturated fat as cuts like the round, it’s lean enough that I could enjoy a surf and turf for one of the days.

For my final dessert at Hooked, I got a coconut cream pie, made from coconut custard and topped with whipped cream and toasted coconut. It also came with a few dollops of caramel and a few dots of chocolate sauce.

This is what the interior of Hooked Seafood looked like.

And finally, the last specialty restaurant I went to, which rounds out all the available options, was Chops Grille, Royal Caribbean’s popular American-style steakhouse.

Upon being seated, I was brought some bread: one piece of onion bread, and one piece of pretzel bread. It came with a side of butter, but I opted to just have the bread on its own because I didn’t feel like clogging my arteries that day.

For my appetizer, I ordered a pan-seared crab cake topped with fresh herbs and served alongside some chipotle aïoli.

For my main entrée, I ordered a hand-cut nine-ounce filet mignon cooked rare. According to the menu, their filet is sourced from the Midwest. I requested the sauce on the side in the moat of the plate and only used a very small portion of it, considering that I like the actual flavor of the beef and don’t want strong sauces to overwhelm or detract from the flavor.

For my sides to go along with the steak, I asked for half portions each of Yukon gold mashed potatoes and grilled jumbo asparagus.

To conclude my meal at Chops, I got some key lime pie as dessert.

And finally, the last thing I ate on the ship before disembarking was an Eggs Benedict with crab cake and avocado, along with a side of hash browns. This was part of the special à la carte breakfast that came with The Key, and luckily, I had a private dining experience this time and didn’t have to share a large family-style table with strangers.

Overall, I’d say that I liked the food on Navigator of the Seas a little bit more than the food on Quantum of the Seas. However, that comes with a few caveats. I enjoyed the Italian food on Navigator more because I learned from my mistakes on Quantum and asked for the sodium reduction. Additionally, I just really like seafood, so the fact that there was a dedicated seafood restaurant this time basically by default made me like Navigator’s food more. I did enjoy the creativity of Wonderland on Quantum of the Seas, but that was somewhat gimmicky and didn’t contribute as much to the overall perception of core food quality.

There are three things not pictured in this blog post:

The first is the food from Café Promenade. This is the late-night option for people who want something to eat after the buffets and main dining rooms are closed, and I usually only came here when I had intensive workouts at the fitness center and needed some extra calories before ending my night. I usually just got some pastries or pizza from here, and they weren’t particularly notable or special (the pizza tasted like generic grocery store frozen pizza).

The second is Johnny Rockets. Navigator of the Seas has a Johnny Rockets Express on the pool deck that usually sells burgers à la carte for an extra charge, but because of my premium dining package, I was able to redeem one combo (a burger, fries, and beverage) for free every day. I only went here a couple of times, and I guess I ended up forgetting to take a picture of my burger every time. The burgers and fries here were the equivalent of what you’d find at a decent fast food restaurant on land. It was worth it for me because it was inclusive in my dining package, but otherwise, it’s around a $15 additional supplement, which I think is way too high for the circumstances (specifically, the fact that you can get other good food elsewhere on the ship for no extra charge).

And finally, the third is the Chef’s Table. I had it last time on Quantum of the Seas and enjoyed the experience enough that I booked it again for Navigator of the Seas. It usually costs an extra $118 per person, but with my unlimited dining package, I was able to get it for a discounted $59 upcharge (composed of a $50 base price and a $9 mandatory 18% gratuity). I will have a dedicated blog post on the Chef’s Table coming up soon.

I am often fairly selective with restaurants that I blog about. I understand that online reviews can have significant influence on the success of a business, and even though I maintain that I am just a casual blogger who likes to write about my life, the reality of the situation is that my blog posts end up on the front page of search engine results for restaurants with surprising frequency. Thus, when I write reviews, I usually only write about chef’s tasting menus or omakase experiences such that someone else can go to that same restaurant and replicate my same experience. I avoid writing about à la carte restaurants because a bad experience could be attributed to myself doing a poor job at assembling a meal from the menu options, so for those kinds of restaurants, I usually do “food photo dumps” where I just share pictures but don’t go into too much detail.

With that being said, I do really want to stick with the idea that this is just the personal website of some random Asian guy from America. I don’t want to hold myself to too high of a standard for my blog, because I want this to be a fun and enjoyable way to leave a record of my life online, and I don’t want to fall into the trap of not releasing content because I don’t think it meets an arbitrary, meaningless standard.

The fact that I had to give that introduction probably foreshadows how I feel about this restaurant. However, I do think it is important to note that just because I did not have the best experience does not mean that you also will not have a good experience. As of today, Hayworth has stellar reviews online, and when I went in-person, I did not see any signs or receive any requests from staff that may have prompted those skewed reviews (i.e., nobody asked me to leave a positive review). Surely, that many people can’t be wrong, so make sure you’re only taking my opinion as one data point, rather than just trusting me entirely.

So with that out of the way, this was our meal.

 
For our starter, we ordered some warm challah knot bread topped with poppy and smoked sea salt.

At first glance, the texture seemed nice and it looked very flaky, but upon biting into it, I realized it was very dry. It was not flaky at all; instead, it was quite crumbly. It reminded me of when I was younger and my mom would tell me to buy dinner rolls at the grocery store, but I forgot to look at the expiration date on the packaging so I ended up accidentally grabbing a pack that expires tomorrow, and my mom would try and make up for my mistake by microwaving the bread, but that would only just make it worse.

The bread came with a side of whipped chicken schmaltz. My heart isn’t healthy enough for me to be eating globs of saturated fat, but I still gave it a taste—not only because I wanted to see what it was like, but also because I was curious if the fat would help soften the bread.

No, I did not like it. And no, it did not help the dryness of the bread.

For my beverage, I asked my waitress to ask the bartender to surprise me with their best non-alcoholic drink. She asked me to narrow it down a bit, so I let her know that I like fruity flavors. She came back with a mixed berry mocktail.

This was extremely intense in flavor and extremely sweet, as if it was overloaded with syrup. That wasn’t functionally a problem for me, though; I thought the flavor itself was good, and I had no problem sipping some of the drink and then following it up with a sip of water to help dilute it and make the taste less overwhelming.

For our second appetizer, we got steak tartare made from hand-chopped filet. This was prepared tableside as cart service.

As you can probably tell from the photographs, there were a lot of ingredients added to the steak and egg yolk. The server was at it for a while.

You might have noticed a strange blue ingredient mixed in with the beef. We asked what it was, and the server revealed that it was… Takis Blue Heat Rolls. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love when restaurants make innovative, experimental dishes and add new twists to their menu. But I feel like there is still some kind of threshold somewhere that should not be crossed. I’m wondering whether putting blue Takis in beef tartare exceeds that line.

I’m someone who loves beef tartare for the flavor of the beef. Unfortunately, this beef tartare had way too much going on for my preference. It had too many additions that masked the flavor of the beef, and then to top it all off, the blue Takis were so strong that they masked the flavor of the additions. Ultimately, it sort of just tasted like a mess.

My friend consigned this dish after trying only a little bit, so I ended up eating an overwhelming majority of it. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it so much that I would let it go to waste, so I finished it all. Throughout the process, I was secretly hoping that some magical culinary miracle would happen where my tastebuds would suddenly become taste-blind to the Takis and then a completely new flavor profile would emerge, but alas, the entire thing just kept on tasting like Takis.

I don’t regret having this, because now I can say that I went to a restaurant and they crushed some Takis into my beef tartare, and that just sounds absolutely hilarious. However, I definitely would not have this again.

For my main entrée, I ordered two pasta dishes. The first was cavatelli with brown butter whey, Grana Padano, soft herbs, and black pepper.

This was my favorite dish of the dinner. It was a bit too salty for my preference, but it was still delicious. The texture of the cavatelli was perfect. The overall flavor profile had a great combination of traditional savoriness with an unexpected kick of light earthiness. I think a lot of what made this dish great was the sauce, so the shape of the cavatelli was ideal for absorbing and retaining the sauce.

The second pasta dish was a disaster. It was beef tongue agnolotti with crème fraîche (which was comically written as “créme fraiché” on the menu), chicken jus, chili crisp, and duck fat crumble.

I’m someone who has tried the most expensive cuts of A5 Japanese wagyu, but even then, believe it or not, my favorite cut of beef is… tongue. There is just something about beef tongue that is very delicious to me. Maybe it’s because I’m tasting my food, my food is tasting me, and thus, great balance emerges into the world. However, there is a caveat to that.

I like to categorize beef tongue into two broad groups: Korean-style 혀 and Mexican-style lengua. Of course, there are many more ways to cook tongue than just those two variants, but basically, the key difference for me is whether it is sliced and seared or diced and braised. I still like the diced and braised style of cooking tongue, but I really like the sliced and seared way. Sliced-and-seared tongue is usually lightly or minimally seasoned, and because of the method of preparation, the flavor of the tongue gets to speak (or lick) for itself. And the best part of it all? The texture is chewy, bouncy, and snappy, and when seared perfectly, sometimes even comes with a light crisp—this all makes for a very fun eating experience.

Unfortunately, this agnolotti was prepared the braised way. Doubly unfortunately, whatever marinade they used was repulsively salty to the point that the shredded beef tongue in each piece of agnolotti tasted bitter. To top it all off, the sauce was also way too salty, and it was just covered in grease and fat.

My friend ordered a 20-ounce prime New York strip steak. When I asked him for a review of it so I could include it in my blog post, he shrugged. I sampled a small portion of it, and my assessment was, “this steak is steak.” He agreed with my analysis. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about it… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also isn’t preferred over being notably high quality.

The strangest thing about the steak, though, is the fact that it came with a side of kettle-cooked potato chips. I think it might have been better if it came with a well-balanced set of thick-cut fries and mixed vegetables as the sides, but I guess these potato chips definitely added to the memorability of the steak.

For dessert, we got a sticky plum pudding to share. The portion size was satisfyingly larger than expected, and the flavor profile seemed good, but this was way too sweet for my preference.

Here are some photos I took of the interior of the restaurant. This first picture is of the bar area; my friend ran into some unexpected delays and was about 15 minutes late for our reservation, so I waited in this bar area for our table to be assigned and prepared after he arrived.

This is what the dining area looks like. It is empty in these photographs because I took this right before departing and we were some of the last people there finishing our meals, but even just an hour before this, the restaurant was absolutely packed and bustling.

This is the exterior of the restaurant. The sign says they were established in 1976, but this particular location took over the spot and celebrated their grand opening only a couple months ago, in February.

Warm bread and schmaltz	$   9.00
Steak tartare	$  27.00
Cavatelli	$  25.00
Beef tongue agnolotti	$  27.00
Prime New York strip steak	$  69.00
Sticky plum pudding	$  14.00
Berry mocktail	$  12.00
Diet Coke	$   5.00
Gratuity (18%)	$  33.84
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  15.72
Total	$ 237.56

This table to the right shows how much we paid. My friend and I split the bill half-and-half and processed each of our respective halves separately on the mobile payment device, so he might have tipped more than I did; I used my own numbers and scaled it up accordingly just for the purposes of this breakdown.

It’s probably needless to say at this point, but I do not think Hayworth is worth the money. If I had shown up for a quick lunch and ordered only the cavatelli with the berry mocktail, then I guess I would’ve given this restaurant a glowing review, but overall, the dishes were hit-or-miss (with way too many misses).

The service was remarkable. All the staff seemed not only well-trained, but also just socially savvy and intuitive people who genuinely enjoyed working at Hayworth and interacting with customers. Another funny element related to that is, throughout our meal, I think we ended up speaking with and getting checked on by four or five different people. Near the end, my friend started joking about how it seemed like management was basically just throwing the entire kitchen personnel roster at us. If this restaurant was rated on service alone, it would be top-tier.

However, unfortunately, I think their style of cooking is a bit too crude and primitive. The way the dishes were far too salty, fatty, and/or sweet made me think that this kind of preparation would be satisfying for hunter-gatherers who are chasing after those biologically carnal dopamine hits that signal high-calorie survival foods. If you’re looking for more refined dishes where the individual ingredients are left to speak for themselves, then I don’t think Hayworth is an optimal choice for a multi-course dinner.

Feuille is the French word for “leaf.” This restaurant picked it as their name because they specialize in creating innovative dishes with vegetables. To clarify, it wasn’t a vegetarian restaurant, but they did avoid red meat throughout the whole tasting menu and instead used only seafood and poultry.

There were two options for the tasting menu: the discovery menu and the signature menu. At a lot of restaurants, the tasting menus have different items and follow a different flavor storyline. However, upon reviewing the two course lists, I realized that the discovery menu was just a shorter version of the signature menu. The discovery menu was HK$1,288 per person; the signature menu was only HK$400 more for what seemed like quite a lot more food. Thus, I ended up going with the signature menu.

The first appetizer was lamiaceae seed kombucha. I’m usually not that big of a fan of kombucha because it just tastes like I’m drinking vinegar and I don’t particularly like vinegar, but this kombucha was much milder than expected. It gave a nice, refreshing kick to start the meal, and it wasn’t so sour that it made me pucker.

Next was mustard seed and sea grape atop a shiso leaf. I think the leaf was dehydrated, because it had a very brittle texture to it, and it tasted “leafy,” but had less of the iconic shiso flavor than I expected. Overall, it felt like I was eating a miniature garden, which was fun.

Afterwards was a yeasty pastry with sobacha and comté. This tasted like a deeply earthy and satisfyingly nutty bread.

The menu said the next item had pointed cabbage, watercress, and nutmeg in it, but it was difficult to identify exactly what I was eating. I imagine those vegetables were mixed into the light, creamy substance placed atop the carb that served as a base for this bite.

Next was a creamy substance with a consistency in between custard and soup, made from chives, corn, and hazelnut. There was a small dollop of caviar included in the center.

The best way for me to describe all these grain and seed dishes is that they captured and extracted the essence of the entirety of each vegetable that they used as an ingredient.

Vegetables usually have a lot of natural water content in them, but all these dishes tasted like the vegetables were dehydrated so that you only capture the true crux of the vegetable flavor without it being diluted or watered down. On top of that, some vegetables come with an element of bitterness, but for all these dishes, it was as if that bitterness was pinpointed and surgically omitted. And finally, each flavor profile tasted more “complete” with all elements of the vegetable, rather than just the part that is sold in mass market (i.e., there was a perfect amount of flavor from what would basically be considered the entire plant, rather than just the popular vegetable portion).

Although Feuille had a wine pairing (four glasses for HK$688 or seven glasses for HK$988), they did not have a non-alcoholic pairing.

When I browsed their à la carte drink menu, there was one mocktail that caught my eye as something that is locally significant: 涅盤遊記, or the Voyage à Nirvana. This was made with lapsang souchong—a smoked Chinese black tea—and monk fruit.

This flavor profile and combination was very new to me, and it was not something I recall ever having tried in the past. It was quite a bit more strong and intense than I expected; I accommodated by just taking small sips to enjoy it throughout my entire meal, and then just drinking water as my primary beverage to go along with it.

Before the next set of courses, the waiter brought out some dough and set it within view on the corner of the table. This dough was going to become bread that I would eat later on during my meal, but it was freshly made so the yeast hadn’t risen yet. While we were waiting for it to finish rising, it was placed on the table so I could keep an eye on it and monitor its progress as a form of entertainment.

While that bread was in progress, the waiter also brought out some other bread that was already ready to eat. This was labeled on the menu as Feuille bread. I didn’t see any leaves on it, so I imagine it was just their signature bread that was named after the restaurant.

This was some great bread. The outside was crispy, crunchy, and firm, but not so much so that it was dry. The inside was very soft. The contrast in texture made the bread more interesting to eat, and the seeds sprinkled on top added an extra depth to its flavor that I liked.

The bread was served with a side of dill pil-pil sauce topped with edible flowers. There was a creamy element to it, but it was extremely light and refreshing, almost as if they had used a slightly thicker fat but then somehow extracted the fattiness from it and only left behind the texture.

I used a generous portion of this sauce with each bite of bread because it was so crisp and light. The best way for me to describe this flavor profile is as if I was eating a gourmet plant, but the only parts of the plant that hit your taste buds are the parts with brighter notes. It wasn’t bright in the sense of it being citrusy or anything; it maintained its core earthy identity, yet it had a very bright twist.

I had a lot of bread left over after finishing all this dill pil-pil sauce, but that was fine; I was already expecting future dishes to also come with great sauces, and I was anticipating finishing any leftover sauce by using this bread as an absorbent.

This is the point in the menu where things are a little fuzzy in my memory, considering that I am writing these blog posts after the fact and it’s already been almost three weeks since I actually had this dinner. I’m trying to cross-reference some of these dishes with what the menu says, but I have a suspicion that they didn’t follow the course list exactly.

The first thing that confuses me is what this is. The waiter briefly explained it to me, but I don’t quite remember what he said. This tasted very intensely of seafood, so I think it might have been something from the sea that was dehydrated and flattened.

Next was some kuruma prawn. This came with a little more of the dill pil-pil sauce that was served with the bread. The prawn had a perfect texture—firmer on the outside, and unbelievably tender on the inside.

The menu listed two components under the kuruma prawn dish, so I am guessing that these were supposed to contribute to the overall flavor profile of the prawn. The first was tomato water.

In the same spirit as how I described the vegetables above, this tomato water tasted like they took only the pleasant essences of tomato and got rid of everything else. I have no issues eating tomatoes as part of a dish, but I don’t often just snack on tomatoes like I would for different fruits like apples or oranges because, for some reason, I seem to sense the sourness of tomatoes far more acutely than the average person. This tomato water had absolutely no sourness to it, so it was as if they had, again, zeroed in on any undesirable elements of the dish and zapped it away.

The second component to go along with the kuruma prawn was celery. I am fairly certain that this was the celery dish (albeit, very unconventionally prepared)… but I think this might have also been the wild fish dish, which is listed as its own separate plate to be served along with algae and romanesco. You can only barely see it in the photograph, but the wild fish was under the sauce.

Next was Sai Kung’s spiny lobster with pumpkin and marigold. I liked this clean switch from green vegetables to orange vegetables; it served as a clear progression in the flavor storytelling, both in a visual sense and with the way it tasted.

The lobster was hiding underneath, so I lifted its cover and took another photograph from a different angle. Similar to the prawn from earlier, this lobster had a perfect texture—a balanced firmness and softness on the outside, along with extreme tenderness on the inside.

I’ve never had this kind of sauce to go along with lobster before, and I liked it much better than the general clarified butter that usually accompanies lobster. I felt like the pumpkin in particular was neutral enough that it didn’t really interfere with or alter the flavor of the lobster.

Next up was their fungus dish, a delicate pastry topped with a heaping portion of black truffle.

They brought out this plate to show it to me first, before taking it back to the kitchen to finish preparing it for my consumption.

I thought it was going to come out much more different, but the only final touches they seemed to have made were to cut it in half and add a small pool of sauce to the side, which the menu says is derived from shaoxing wine.

I like black truffle, so I was glad to see this on the menu. As expected from high-quality truffle, this had a mild, deep, earthy, nutty flavor that was enhanced and complemented by the sauce and the pastry underneath.

It was time for the main entrée.

This came with an optional supplement for some A4 wagyu striploin; diners could either replace the provided main entrée with the wagyu for HK$388, or they could add it on as a separate, second entrée for HK$488. I ended up passing on this, not only because the standard entrée was something that is not common in the United States and I wanted to try it while I had the chance to in Hong Kong, but also because I already had a lot of food high in saturated fat so far during my trip, so I wanted to be conscious of my heart health and not overdo it on highly-marbled red meat.

So, the main entrée I got was Shiqi pigeon served with Kyoho grape and arugula.

I really appreciated the creative presentation with the pigeon leg, though I’m sure it has spooked some people in the past if they are not as adventurous with their dining habits. Also, it’s not often that you get to eat poultry cooked medium-rare in the United States, so I savored the opportunities in which I was able to do so in Hong Kong.

This is probably the best pigeon I’ve ever had in my life. I guess that’s not really a difficult title to earn, considering that I almost never eat pigeon, but regardless, this pigeon was prepared very well. I’m the type of person who eats steak rare or blue rare and loves beef tartare, and that preference for seeking out that distinct texture of raw or undercooked meat extended to pigeon as well.

I’m not really a huge fan of eating chicken feet, so I assumed I probably wouldn’t really like pigeon feet either. The part of the foot that was on the opposite side of the string grip was the only section I left alone, though; I chewed the skin and meat directly off the thigh, which had a stronger flavor than the fleshy part of the breast.

Next came a beetroot.

Of course, the actual part I was supposed to eat wasn’t the entire beetroot. Instead, the inside was carved out and had a creamy substance made from beetroot, juniper, and roses.

I don’t think this was intended to be a dessert yet, but it had a nice natural sweetness to it, which signaled the beginning of the winding-down process of the culinary adventure. I like when foods are used as containers like this; although the beet wasn’t soft enough to eat and was only there to serve as a cup, it had absorbed some of the cream and gotten softer, so I scraped that part and ate that too for a stronger beet flavor.

This was the final confusing area of the menu. The course list said that the next dish was made from rosella, chocolate, and magnolia. I am guessing this was supposed to be a two-part item, but it didn’t really match the description too closely.

This first item was a frozen treat sprinkled atop edible flower. The texture was like eating aerated ice cream that was flash frozen using liquid nitrogen. That brittle texture paired with the flower petals made for a fun chewing experience.

This second item was a complete mystery. As you can probably tell, it was a vegetable-based “chip,” for a lack of a better way to describe it. It had a combination of a floral/fragrant and an earthy aroma.

Apart from that, I have no idea what it was made from. I guess one possibility is that the chocolate, which was missing from the prior serving, might have been reimagined somehow in a flowery way and served like this.

Remember the dough from earlier? Partway through my meal, the waiter came back to check on it, and after confirming that it had risen enough, he brought it back to the chef to turn into actual bread. I didn’t realize it, but this was actually part of the dessert—the bread was baked to accompany some black banana and vanilla ice cream.

Funny enough, even though there were some absolutely incredible seafood dishes as part of this tasting menu, this bread and ice cream ended up being my favorite dish strictly on a metric of how much it triggered my “wow, that is delicious” radar.

I usually don’t like black (i.e., overripe) bananas because I think it tastes like fermentation gone brutally wrong. One of the reasons I never drink alcohol, beyond just the fact that it is bad for your health, is that I think it tastes horrific; when I taste black bananas, I sense some of that alcohol flavor in it (along with a splash of acetone). With that being said, going along with the theme of the rest of the food items at this restaurant, this black banana and vanilla ice cream tastes like it precisely extracted only the good part of black bananas while completely cleansing it of all the chemical tastes of real black bananas.

To make things even better, the bread was cooked with some kind of nut lining the bowl. Because the nuts themselves were also cooked, there was an incredible Maillard reaction that gave it somewhat of a charred flavor, but without any bitterness. It tasted like the bread also absorbed some of that flavor, because the softer, inside part of the bread had a nutty element to it as well.

All of these elements combined—the soft, hot bread; the hard, warm nuts; and the smooth, cold ice cream—worked together to make this a truly orgasmic dish.

And finally, for the last dish of the dinner, I received a custard with cauliflower and coconut.

Because this came out at the same time as the other dessert, I tried sampling it with the bread. However, I realized that the chef had controlled the flavor profile of the bread and ice cream combo to such perfection that this custard made it seem underwhelming. So, instead, I had this standalone and on its own, which made both dishes much better.

The last bite, provided after the conclusion of the meal, was pâte de fruit. It was flavored with orange, which I guess is not too difficult to guess just from the fact that it is also the color orange, but I think there might have been some other fruits mixed in as well.

On the back of the course list, there was a map that showed the location from which each of the main ingredients of the dinner were sourced.

Here are some photographs of the dining area.

Considering that I was aiming for a bedtime of around 10 PM HKT during my trip (which is the equivalent of 7 AM PDT), I booked a reservation for the earliest time slot they had for dinner, which was 6 PM HKT. I was the first person to show up that day, so I managed to get some shots of the restaurant with no other customers having arrived yet.

Signature tasting menu	HK$ 1,688.00
Voyage à Nirvana	HK$   128.00
Still water	HK$    38.00
Service charge (10%)	HK$   185.00
Total	HK$ 2,039.00
Converted to USD	US$   260.63

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

If you’ve followed my blog with at least a little bit of interest, you most likely realized that I like experiencing new and different things in basically all aspects of my life, including with food. Thus, I get pretty allured when a restaurant does something novel with their dining, such as adding in their own special twist or coming up with experimental and/or uncommon dishes.

If you’ve followed my blog, you might have also noticed that I am very descriptive and precise when sharing what I’ve eaten at restaurants. Even though I am not a good cook and I have no formal culinary background, I can usually figure out what I’m eating just based on the broad background I’ve built. Even if the menu or course list is inaccurate or has mistakes (which, believe it or not, happens more frequently than you’d expect), I can easily identify that and fix it before writing about it on my blog.

The reason I loved Feuille so much is that it threw me off a lot in both of those aspects. I don’t actively seek out vegetarian restaurants (or restaurants that do fine dining with a focus on vegetables) because I find vegetables to be somewhat boring. However, Feuille took vegetables and made them fun, exciting, and delicious. On top of that, while eating these innovative dishes, I had a very hard time figuring out (and remembering) what they were made of and how they were prepared, as is probably apparent by the unusually vague and confusing way I wrote my review in this blog post.

Another thing I appreciated about Feuille is their philosophy. The waiter told me about how they try to minimize waste by using as much of the whole ingredient as possible, and how they make their logistics more efficient by sourcing ingredients from as local as possible. I think that consuming (or at least utilizing) the entirety of an ingredient is how we are “meant” to interact with the world around us. Restaurants end up having a shocking amount of perfectly usable food products discarded as waste, so it is intrinsically satisfying to me when an effort is made to optimize this.

This is obviously a pretty high price for a single meal, but if you analyze it within the context of fine dining, I think that Feuille offers extraordinarily high value for money. The food was top-tier, the experience was captivating, and the service was functionally flawless. If you are seeking a meal within this price range, I highly recommend Feuille.

The restaurant was arranged as multiple bar-style tables wrapped around the kitchen area in curves. I was seated at the final spot of one of the center tables. Obviously, this kind of table arrangement isn’t really conducive to privacy, but I feel like I lucked out by getting as private a seat as possible, while also still being in the middle of the action so I could watch all the different areas of the kitchen with a simple turn of my head.

When the host brought me to my seat, there was an envelope already there waiting for me.

The envelope contained two items: the course list for the tasting menu, and a mission statement describing what VEA aims to do with their food.

The tasting menu started with some savory snacks. The first was a delicate pastry-style dish topped with greens and served with a side of a creamy sauce.

The sauce was served in a small music box that played an instrumental melody on repeat that diners could listen to while eating the first snack.

The pastry was already great, but the sauce somehow still made it significantly better. The sauce tasted like it captured the deliciousness of an extremely rich and fatty cream while somehow keeping it light and eliminating any greasiness.

There was a little scroll tucked into the music box. Upon unraveling it, I found the lyrics to the tune to which I enjoyed the snack.

The second snack was another delicate pastry, but this one was topped with some prawns.

This was also served with some sauce. Just like the first snack, the prawns were amazing on their own, but the sauce elevated it to perfection. This was after I was very impressed at the first sauce and my expectations were already raised pretty high, and this sauce still somehow blew them away.

This was quite a large portion of sauce, and I think one sauce bowl was intended to serve two people dining as a pair. I was dining alone for this meal, but I ended up getting a full bowl anyway. That was great news for me considering how much I loved it; after finishing the prawn pastry, I proceeded to finish the rest of the leftover sauce with the side spoon I was given as if the sauce was yogurt or pudding.

While eating the snacks, the waiter came by to finalize my selections for any modifications I wanted to make to the tasting menu.

The first modification was to decide whether I wanted to replace one of the courses with fish maw, Oscietra caviar, and quinoa for a supplemental cost of HK$1,280. What I appreciated was that there was a replica of what the different special dishes were like so that diners could visually see what they would get prior to committing to a large upcharge.

Although I’m a big fan of caviar, I saw that there was already a caviar dish on the tasting menu, and HK$1,280 was quite a large additional fee (especially considering that it is a substitution and not just a bonus dish), so I passed on this supplement.

The second modification was to decide whether I wanted to replace a different one of my courses with 28-head dried abalone pithivier and sweetbread for a supplemental cost of HK$2,030. As you can probably guess, I opted to pass on this one as well, though I did like taking a look at these replicas too.

And finally, the third modification I had to decide on was whether or not I wanted to add on a beverage pairing. I noticed that they had a spirit-free cocktail pairing curated by their executive mixologist. Usually, non-alcoholic pairings like this are more abridged compared to their alcoholic pairings, but the one at VEA had seven drinks listed, which I thought was quite a lot. That sounded like pretty good value, so I ordered the spirit-free pairing.

The first drink of the pairing came out soon afterwards, which had elderflower, yuzu, cucumber, and soda.

For the first of eight courses, I was served Kristal caviar with spring peas in a smoked coconut sauce. Usually, caviar is used as a way to enhance a dish, but to my absolute joy, this was a dish where the main element was a generous portion of caviar.

This was my favorite dish of the dinner. The caviar, as expected, was delicious. The spring peas were small enough that the shape went nicely with the caviar and the roundness of both items made for a fun textural experience. The peas were firm enough that they had their own variant of a “pop” when I bit into them. The smoked coconut sauce was a bit of a phenomenon on its own, because it tasted both rich and mild at the same time; all the positive aspects of coconut were emphasized and strong, while the somewhat “watery” flavor you sometimes detect in coconut was completely absent.

The next drink of the non-alcoholic beverage pairing had prickly pear, apple, cardamom, lemon, and cinnamon.

That went along with the striped jack served with pumpkin and two-year preserved turnip.

It’s a little bit difficult to tell from the photograph, but this was basically a sphere that was assembled with slices of fish and vegetables. It made for an easy eating experience, as I was able to layer one slice of each together and get a well-balanced and refreshing bite each time.

The third drink came in a tall glass and was made with dried plum, Chinese vinegar, and ginger beer. The outside of the glass was affixed with a sugary cinnamon powder.

This was my favorite drink of the night. Just based on the ingredient list, I wasn’t expecting to like this due to the presence of vinegar, but this was not sour at all. The sugary cinnamon on the outside was also amazing, and every modicum of etiquette and class went out the window as I rubbed the lower portions of the glass on my lower lip to get more of the powder per sip (even though powder placed on the bottom of such a tall glass is mostly just assumed to be decorative).

As the next dish was being prepared, they brought out another replica of it so I could see what was coming up.

Here it is in cooked form: sea cucumber in tiger prawn sauce with a few spritzes of aged Shaoxing wine.

The server recommended that I cut the sea cucumber into small pieces ahead of time. I’m glad she suggested that, because it was a great idea—it allowed the sea cucumber more time to absorb more of the amazing tiger prawn sauce and made each bite juicier. The sea cucumber itself had a perfect balance of tenderness and bounciness. I couldn’t really tell what element the Shaoxing wine added to the dish, but that subtleness is probably what was intended.

The next beverage was peony tea with quince and rhubarb.

For the fourth course, I received rough scale flounder with some white turnip in a Longjing tea sauce.

This was a classic, straightforward whitefish dish with nothing too fancy or crazy. The sauce was mild (but still tasty), the flounder was tender, and overall, this checked off all the boxes for what you’d want in a light and clean whitefish dish.

The next beverage was a genmaicha with Paragon white Penja pepper.

This concluded the first half of the tasting menu. Upon entering the intermission phase, I was given a roll of haw flakes to munch on while preparing for the two main entrées.

I took this opportunity to check out the washroom. There was limited space in the restaurant so it was a bit cramped and I couldn’t get a good angle for the photograph, but I think this is quite literally the most luxurious public washroom I have ever been to in my entire life.

Upon returning to my seat, finishing my haw flakes, and catching up on reading the news on my phone, the brief wait was over and I was presented with my first main entrée: Yunnan mushroom congee with preserved turnip. If you remember from before, this is the dish that I could have replaced with fish maw instead.

This mushroom tasted like it had multiple different flavor profiles at once. While chewing, I sensed a bit of nuttiness, savoriness, earthiness, and sweetness at the same time (though I’m not sure which of those were from the mushroom itself and which were from other ingredients in the congee). For a lack of a better way to describe it, it also tasted “meaty,” and if a vegetarian wanted to eat a meat substitute, I think this mushroom would act as a great alternative.

The second-to-last drink of the spirit-free pairing had tangerine, monk fruit, dark plum, liquorice, and Prunellae Spica.

In a similar fashion as the previous dishes, another replica was brought out to show the core ingredients of the next upcoming dish.

To go along with the second main entrée, I was given a small cup of tea. This was just some bonus tea and was not part of the beverage pairing.

As the grand finale, I was served Aveyron lamb with carrot purée and angelica root.

This was the dish that otherwise would have been replaced by the abalone had I opted to order the supplement instead. I actually really like lamb and would consider it my favorite kind of red meat, so it especially would not have made sense for me to swap it out.

The lamb was milder than I expected, and extremely tender. The root vegetables and the sauce were also proportionally mild, so it did not overpower the lamb.

The final beverage of the spirit-free cocktail pairing was strawberry mango tea. It was prepared inside an infusion vessel, and more specifically, The Porthole by Crucial Detail. This probably had the most “basic” flavor profile out of all the beverages, but because of its refreshing and familiar fruitiness, I would still rank it as my second favorite drink of the night.

Each segment of the kitchen had a different course that they specialized in preparing, depending on what kinds of equipment were present in that section of the kitchen. By the time my dinner was soon coming to an end, it was already getting pretty late, and the section of the kitchen right in front of me transitioned from making appetizers to making dessert. I got a nice view of one of the cooks intricately preparing my next dish.

The tasting menu’s first dessert was cucumber and green apple sorbet with stinky herbs. I was spooked when I saw “stinky herbs” on the ingredient list because I didn’t know just how stinky the stinky herbs would get, but they weren’t actually stinky at all, which I assume was a consequence of proper preparation.

The smaller orbs below the sphere of sorbet were actually orbs of cucumber and apple, rather than more sorbet. I enjoyed that textural contrast, as having that soft crisp made the chewing experience more fun.

The second dessert, and the final course of the tasting menu, was black truffle cheesecake with soy sauce toffee.

The truffle was mild and delicious, and the cheesecake had all the positives of the cheesecake flavor you expect, but without any of the heaviness or greasiness. The toffee was also quite special; it tasted like an elevated version of toffee, with the saltiness of the soy sauce enhancing and making more prominent the caramelized flavor caused by the Maillard reaction.

And with that, the eight-course tasting menu came to an end. I was given a mignardise along with the check.

I don’t know if this was just a special thing they were doing that day because it wasn’t mentioned on the course list, but a server came up to me and asked me if I was interested in some durian ice cream as if it was a bonus. Of course, I eagerly agreed; durian is not a flavor that you see often in the United States, so I wanted to have it in Hong Kong while I could.

This was more of a multi-faceted durian dessert than it was just durian ice cream. As expected, it had a bit of that iconic durian stink to it as I brought it up to my mouth, but as I bit into it and chewed, it got replaced by custardy sweetness.

Here is a photograph of a different section of the kitchen. The area with the ovens was furthest away from me, which I guess is a good thing, because that meant my seat maintained a comfortable temperature throughout my meal.

This is the VEA sign by the entrance.

On my way out, the hostess stopped me to give me a little goodie bag to bring home (or in my case, to bring back to my hotel). I opened it after my train ride back to my hotel in Admiralty and found a Chinese hickory nut marshmallow chocolate chip cookie inside, which I enjoyed as a late-night snack before going to sleep.

I’ve eaten a lot of nutty cookies, and I’ve also eaten a lot of chocolate chip cookies, but I don’t often get to have both at the same time. This cookie combined the best of both, and it tasted great. On top of that, the addition of marshmallows added a second dimension of sweetness that complemented the sweetness of the chocolate.

Tasting menu	HK$ 2,280.00
Mocktail pairing	HK$   580.00
Still water	HK$    60.00
Service charge (10%)	HK$   292.00
Total	HK$ 3,212.00
Converted to USD	US$   409.99

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

This is one of the most expensive meals I’ve ever had on a per-person basis (though I guess a decent chunk of it was from the mocktail pairing, which I thought was great, but I still would’ve had no problem just having only water throughout my meal).

With that being said, for me, I think it was worth it. The portion sizes were satisfying, the selection of dishes fit my personal preferences perfectly, the service was fantastic, and I felt great about all aspects of the meal in its entirety.

Although the fish maw and abalone supplements might be alluring to some, I would not recommend them (though keep in mind that this suggestion is coming from someone who did not actually try them). If they were strictly additive to the eight-course tasting menu, then people who really love fish maw or abalone might be able to justify getting them, but keep in mind that they are replacements. They are quite expensive, and they are replacing dishes that are already very delicious and fit well with the flavor storyline of the overall tasting menu.

If a ~US$330 meal (which excludes the beverage pairing) is within your budget, then I highly recommend trying out VEA. It offered all the components of a top-tier tasting menu, both in terms of the food and the overall experience, and everything about it either fulfilled or exceeded my expectations.

I had the luxury of just being able to tag along with my friends without putting in the effort of planning anything; they did all the research, picked the restaurant, and handled the reservation. Unfortunately, one downside to this was that the reservation was put in for 8:30 PM local time, which is the equivalent of 5:30 AM Pacific time, without me having an opportunity to ask if there were any earlier available time slots. I stay up pretty late and usually sleep after 5:30 AM PT anyway, but note that this dinner started at 5:30 AM PT. This made for an extremely drowsy dining experience.

The dinner lasted about three hours, which is lengthy, but not particularly unusual for a teppanyaki experience like this. In fact, I’d argue that the longer it is, the better it is, because watching the chef cook in front of you can be an entertaining and enlightening experience.

With that being said, about one-third of the way into the dinner, I was already mentally asleep. You might notice evidence of this from the fact that, for the first handful of dishes, I took a lot of photographs of the chef preparing the food, but for the later courses, I just have pictures of the dish. I didn’t do this intentionally and didn’t even notice I had done that until I was going through and organizing the photos I had; I was just so sleepy that my brain wasn’t working and I was just on literal auto-pilot of snapping a picture of the food and then putting it in my mouth.

There were a few different options for the teppanyaki menu. Because I like trying out limited-edition or seasonal options, I went with the spring special seasonal menu. It seemed like everyone else also got it, so I’m not sure if this was one of those situations where everyone in the party had to pick the same option and the decision had already been made for me without my input, and my personal selection didn’t matter.

Communication was tricky for this dinner—I showed up exactly on time, but the rest of my group was early, so it looked like I was late, and I was seated all the way at the far edge of the bar-style table in the last remaining chair. Thus, I was basically only able to chat with two of my friends directly next to me, and everyone else was too far away. Funny enough, even communication with the waitress was near-impossible; I have no problem understanding Chinese accents, but this waitress also had a United Kingdom accent layered on top of it, which I do have a major problem understanding. In my sleepy state, it felt like I was splitting brain cells in half trying to understand what in the world she was saying.

With all that context out of the way, here is what the seasonal menu consisted of.

To start, we received firefly squid with kinome vinegar miso. The squid had an amazing, intense flavor that I liked a lot, but somehow, I liked the sauce even more. The squid was plentifully drenched in it, but it was mild enough that it complemented the squid well without overpowering it.

Next was some seasonal sashimi.

This was great taste-wise, but unfortunately, the portion size was comically small. Each piece of sashimi was cut so small that by the time I recognized that it was high-quality fish and was enjoying it, it was already fully shredded in my mouth and ready to swallow.

For my beverage, I noticed that the only way to get water was to pay for bottled water, so I figured that if I was going to pay money for a drink anyway, I might as well get something unique and flavored. I browsed through the non-alcoholic section of the beverage menu and picked one that I didn’t recognize so I could try something new. I don’t remember what exactly it was, but it tasted like a more earthy variant of plum.

At this point, all our orders were in and all our food was inventoried, so the wait staff started bringing plates of raw ingredients out from the back so the teppanyaki chef could cook everything in front of us on the grill.

While all this was coming out and being put on display, I got my next dish, Hokkaido sea urchin. This was a supplement to the spring special seasonal menu for an additional HK$300. Considering that sea urchin is my favorite kind of seafood, I of course had to get the supplement.

Flavor-wise, it was very good. However, even though this was intended as a sashimi dish, I wish that they had still included a small portion of rice along with it. I think sea urchin goes very well together with rice because the individual grains of rice give a lot of surface area to “spread out” the sea urchin, thus engaging with a larger part of your tongue and taste buds.

While I was eating the sea urchin, the chef started preparing the first entrée.

We were served sautéed surf clam with caviar and Japanese hollandaise sauce.

This was my second-favorite dish of the meal. This was an absolute explosion of umami and flavor. The sauce had all the good parts of a creamy sauce without actually being that creamy or fatty. The caviar added a nice saltiness to it. The slice of zucchini added a subtle element of refreshing vegetable without diluting any of the umami.

While we were eating our surf clam, the chef started grilling our shark fin, which was to be served in creamy chicken soup. For those who did not want shark fin, there was a substitution available for grilled fish maw, but all seven people in my group picked the shark fin.

Shark fin is illegal for me back at home. The United States passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. Prior to that, Nevada passed Senate Bill 194, also sometimes referred to as the Wildlife Trafficking Prevention Act, in 2017.

I have had shark fin before in the United States when I was a kid and before it was outlawed, but I didn’t remember what it was like. So, of course, I seized the opportunity to try it legally while in Hong Kong.

The soup and shark fin were delicious, but upon research, it seems like the shark fin doesn’t really have a standout flavor on its own, and the flavor came mostly from its ability to absorb and retain the flavor from the creamy chicken soup.

A lot of people apparently love shark fin for the texture, and I can confirm that the texture is definitely one-of-a-kind. It was a very fun eating experience, but not so irresistibly incredible that I would become a regular consumer of shark fin.

Next was my favorite dish of the dinner: grilled mantis shrimp with soy sauce butter. Similar to the surf clam, this was an absolute explosion of umami and flavor.

My guess is that the innards of the mantis shrimp were removed, mixed together into a smoother consistency, seasoned, and injected back into the shrimp as the orange paste that is visible in the photograph. I tried to confirm exactly what was done with it with the waitress, but I couldn’t understand her United Kingdom accent.

Next was grilled amadai in basil-flavored clam consommé soup.

The fish was very tender and the soup complemented it well by balancing the fish and seafood flavor with vegetable undertones, but the most intriguing part of this dish was the texture of the fish. As you can probably tell from the photograph, there was a crispy layer on top of the fish that almost tasted like miniature shrimp had been attached to the skin. This added a very fun additional element to chewing the fish.

The next dish was broiled ezo abalone with sea urchin sauce and bamboo shoots.

By this point, I was basically falling asleep while upright. I do recall that this was delicious, but I don’t remember much more beyond that.

After the abalone, the menu had a second supplement option of grilled Australian lobster with Barilla Genovese and tapenade sauce for an additional HK$298. Although seafood is my favorite kind of food and I love lobster, I opted to pass on this supplement because I was already still residually full from overindulging until bloatedness for the past few days.

Labeled as the main entrée, the long string of seafood dishes was followed by two different cuts of beef: A4 Kumamoto wagyu sirloin and A5 Takamori “drunken” wagyu tenderloin.

I appreciated that they had two different kinds of wagyu beef. Having only A5 can get overwhelming and you often find yourself quickly reaching your limit due to how rich and fatty it is. Having some A5 wagyu and then rounding out the rest of the portion with A4 wagyu made it so we were able to eat a larger and more satisfying and fulfilling portion of wagyu without it feeling too heavy.

It’s just barely out of frame in the photograph, but of course, this was served with salt. I ate each bite with some onion, a bit of wasabi, and a heaping pinch of salt; all that worked together very well with the wagyu to really extract its amazing flavor.

As the grand finale, we all got to pick a rice dish. The options were grilled eel kabayaki, foie gras teriyaki, snow crab and salmon roe, red sea bream and sakura shrimp, or seared Hokkaido flounder fin and salmon roe.

This was prepared all together and presented to us inside the clay pots in which they were cooked.

My friend sitting next to me opted for the seared Hokkaido flounder fin and salmon roe donabe, which came with an extra HK$150 supplemental cost.

I went with the grilled eel kabayaki donabe. Interestingly, even though I liked it, I noticed that, for some reason, it wasn’t quite as top-tier as the other dishes were. I sampled some of my friend’s Hokkaido flounder fin and thought it was much better and comparable in quality to the excellence of the other dishes served that night.

For dessert, we were allowed to pick from four different options. I went with the homemade matcha warabi mochi with vanilla ice cream.

At this point, I was on the verge of collapsing and crashing my head onto the table in sleepiness, so I took this opportunity to stand up and walk around and take pictures of some of the other desserts as well.

This was the strawberry soup with homemade vanilla ice cream. The menu labeled this vanilla ice cream as homemade while it didn’t include that designation for mine; I don’t know if it actually was any different, or if it even makes business sense to have two different kinds of vanilla ice cream on hand to serve for two different desserts, but I guess the texture did visually look a tiny bit different.

This was the custard cream sakura crêpe with homemade sakura gelato.

The final dessert, which isn’t pictured here, was almond blancmange with orange compote.

I really do not function well at all when I have not gotten enough sleep, and by the conclusion of the dinner, it was almost 9:00 AM PT. I wish I could give more insightful thoughts about my experience, but one of the areas in which I lose function with lack of sleep is my memory. With that being said, I had as great of a time as I could have possibly had, with this level of sleep deprivation in mind.

My friends paid the full bill for this restaurant so I don’t have exact numbers on hand, but the spring special seasonal menu was HK$2,280 per person, which is a little bit under US$300.00 at current exchange rates. That is quite expensive, but fine dining in Hong Kong seems to be pretty expensive in general. Also note that this is a teppanyaki restaurant, so there was also a material performative element to it as well in the sense of being able to watch the chef prepare your food in front of you.

Overall, if you are well-rested and are interested in having a splurge meal, I think Teppanyaki Mihara Goten is a spot worthy of your consideration.