However, I recently found out that Partage rotates their food offerings regularly, and their tasting menu is completely overhauled once a month (or even more frequently in the case of special events). This is perfect for me, as I have been really enjoying tasting menus lately, and I have been going out of my way to search for novel culinary experiences. With that new knowledge about Partage’s cadence in mind, I promptly booked a reservation last week on September 30, just in time for the final day of the September 2026 tasting menu before they switch over to their October 2026 one.

While I was getting settled in, I was given an amuse-bouche. In the scramble of asking about the three different tiers of tasting menus, discussing Le Club and whether it has any useful benefits for people who don’t drink alcohol (it doesn’t), and selecting a non-alcoholic beverage from the drink menu, I actually forgot what was inside this opening bite. I do remember that it tasted good, though.

For my beverage, I ordered a drink off their non-alcoholic menu—their Passion Lavender, made from house lavender syrup, lemon, raspberry, passion fruit, and cranberry. It was a solid drink, but to me, it sort of tasted generically fruity and didn’t offer anything unique or special.

I asked the bartender about their selection of non-alcoholic beverages and whether those also rotate with the same frequency as the tasting menu. He said that they originally started with six non-alcoholic drinks, but everyone just ordered three out of those six drinks over and over again, so they narrowed the scope of their non-alcoholic beverage menu. He said that those three drinks ended up becoming staples, and they don’t really swap them out.

Partage has three different levels of tasting menus: a five-course tasting menu for US$120.00, a seven-course tasting menu for US$150.00, and a signature nine-course tasting menu for US$198.00 (and of course, the pricing is as of the day I dined; considering how much they change the contents of the menu, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pricing sometimes got tweaked as well). For my very first dinner with Partage, I opted for the nine-course signature tasting menu.

The first course was a crab trio. First was some crab meat served on top of a puffed rice and furikake crispy chip, alongside some Hokkaido-style triple-milk ice cream. Inside the cup was crab bisque flan with live Dungeness crab meat topped with croissant foam. The third of the trio was buttery king crab wrapped in crispy kadaifi.

I was confused when the server said that one of the items contained ice cream and thought he might have just meant that it was a dollop of extra creamy thick sauce, but when I bit into it, I confirmed that it was definitely actually ice cream. With that being said, the ice cream worked really well with the crab and didn’t taste like I was starting my meal with dessert.

The flan was very flavorful, and the amount of crab inside was quite generous.

For the king crab wrapped in crispy kadaifi, I tried to eat this in two bites, but when I tried to bite it in half, the kadaifi crumbled and started flying everywhere, so in panic, I just put the entire thing in my mouth. The kadaifi was extremely crispy, yet still had a sense of lightness to it such that it wasn’t crispy to the point of being sharp and cutting my mouth. The kadaifi didn’t really have any greasiness to it that you’d expect from something fried to this level of crisp, which is good, because that allowed the butter from the crab to control the primary fatty element of the flavor profile.

The second course was Scotch egg stuffed with corn purée, served atop farro risotto, wild mushrooms, and baby corn, sauced with chicken jus.

I wish I had taken a picture of this after I sliced into the egg, because it was very amusing seeing the egg cut open and seeing the corn purée ooze out as if it was a thicker and lighter-colored runny yolk. Overall, this was quite a bit too salty for me, but if I set that part aside, then I still enjoyed the dish.

The third and final appetizer course was lamb Wellington with olive tapenade, red bell pepper, baba ghanoush, and lamb Choron sauce.

As you can most likely see from the photograph, the ratio of puff pastry to meat was extremely high compared to what you’d expect from a beef Wellington. I am not sure if everyone would agree with me, but I personally thought this was fantastic. Rather than just going for a lamb variant of beef Wellington, this tasted like it was a fully reimagined bakery dish where both the pastry and the meat share the spotlight. On top of that, because lamb generally has much more intensity of flavor than beef, I think this worked out very well.

The only thing that I did not prefer about it was how salty the sauce was, though that was obviously fixed by just using less of it. For someone who doesn’t love pastries as much as I do, using more of the sauce will probably lean the dish a bit away from the pastry realm and deeper into the Wellington territory.

The fourth course was the foie gras signature dish. Foie gras always exists in some form in the signature tasting menu, but they change how they prepare it each month. This month, it was seared foie gras with reduced Muscat, caramelized grapes, and baby grapes. It also came with a crispy roll wrapped with grape leaf and topped with artichoke. Both were sauced with duck jus.

I like when dishes take an item and prepare it in multiple different ways to make a certain dish. A very common example of this is how some sushi restaurants will serve salmon bowls atop sushi rice and serve the salmon three different ways: dorsal loin sashimi, belly sashimi, and roe. This foie gras dish basically did that, but with a bunch of different kinds of grapes.

The grapes and artichoke helped balance the fattiness of the foie gras. I pretty much always prefer foie gras to be served with a generous amount of fruits and/or vegetables; I think this dish met the bare minimum of that threshold such that it tasted great, but it still maintained as much of the powerful, rich, savory kick as possible.

Course number five was the seafood dish. This month, it was premium white fish and clam chowder with celery, fennel, potato siphon, bacon, and crispy tuile.

I mentioned this at the beginning of the blog post, but I had this meal last week on the final day of September, so it’s been a little while since I ate this. In the time that has passed, I forgot what I thought about this dish. In every situation where that happens, it always means that the dish was decent, because I pretty much never forget a dish if it is remarkably good or remarkably bad. Thus, I am guessing that this was an all-around solid white fish dish, and I most likely enjoyed it, but there was nothing special about it that would prompt me to remember it in detail.

Next up was the signature course. Apparently this is the most popular dish in the entire tasting menu, and they allegedly attempted to swap this out in the past, but this was such a fan favorite that people kept asking for it back. This is the one course that stays consistent month-to-month, and is the reason a lot of regulars will get the nine-course signature tasting menu instead of the seven-course or five-course versions.

The signature course is wagyu oxtail croque-monsieur.

Believe it or not, this was my least favorite dish of the tasting menu. The first few bites were brain-bustingly delicious, but by the time I finished two of the seven layers, it was already getting very cloying. The fat content in the wagyu oxtail was insane, and although it’s amazing in smaller portions, the amount in this croque-monsieur was excessive in my opinion. I did end up finishing the entire thing, but by the time I was done, I was almost relieved that it was over.

Honestly, this actually works out perfectly well. I’m glad I was able to enjoy this signature dish one time. However, it’s not something that I would get repeatedly. This means that for future visits to Partage, rather than ordering the nine-course signature menu, I can get the seven-course menu and then supplement a foie gras add-on. That way, I can get the eight dishes that rotate each month, while saving a bit of money passing on the ninth dish, and also make my heart happier by eating less saturated fat.

Course seven was the meat course. This month, it was Black Opal wagyu beef tenderloin on one half of the plate, and a celery risotto with glazed and caramelized beef cheek bonbon on the other half. Both were sauced with some parsley-garlic coulis and beef demi-glace.

I think the tenderloin was around AUS-MEAT BMS 6-7, rather than BMS 8-9+. This meant that the marbling was top-tier, but not the highest tier. I actually prefer this over BMS 9+ (or A5 on the Japanese scale) because you can taste more of the beefiness and you can have a larger portion of the meat without feeling overwhelmed. I was also glad that this tenderloin had lower fat content after having the wagyu oxtail croque-monsieur.

This is what the inside of the celery risotto looked like. The fact that it was celery atop the beef cheek was very amusing, but the combination actually worked quite well. Even the texture matched up almost perfectly to the rice in slow-cooked risotto, so calling it celery risotto was definitely justified.

Next up was the cheese course for course number eight. This was Brillat-Savarin cheese served alongside candied baby beets and beet bread, topped with salted peanuts and drizzled with raspberry vinaigrette.

This is the best cheese I’ve ever had in my entire life.

I am usually not a fan of cheese because I think it tastes like mold, and I tend to pick up on the moldy flavor profile much more easily than other people. However, this cheese did not taste at all like any other cheese I’ve ever had. This cheese was buttery, creamy, milky, and fresh. In fact, I’d say that this Brillat-Savarin is the best dairy product I’ve ever had in general.

I spread generous portions of it on the beet bread and took bites of the candied baby beets to go along with it. That, combined with the greens and the peanuts, and it basically hit every single metric for every single possible thing you could ask for to go along with a world-class cheese dish.

I literally think I could’ve eaten three more plates of this and still wanted more.

To conclude the meal, there were two desserts. I’m not sure if the course list is entirely accurate here just based on what the dessert looked like, but this apparently had caramelized pear, pear gel, oatmeal, and cocoa crumble. Realistically, this tasted like an elevated version of a s’more.

The second dessert was a vanilla rice pudding mousse. I remember the server introducing this with the term Snickers for some reason; it didn’t really remind me of Snickers at all, but I thought this was better than the chocolate bar. It was like a light chocolate brownie, and it was quite sweet, but it wasn’t the sickly or cloying kind of sweet; instead, this was a much brighter sweetness that you usually get from crystallized sugar.

Along with the check, I was brought some petits fours to enjoy at the end of my meal. The left bite was blueberry meringue, and the right bite was a miniature tart with a custardy and nutty flavor profile.

Because I was dining alone, I took a seat at the bar so I wouldn’t be occupying a full table that could be used by a larger party. Sometimes I read the news on my phone during the downtime between dishes, but occasionally, the bartender would have some free time between making drinks to come chat for a bit at a time.

This is what the dining area looks like. I had the first reservation slot of the evening at 5:30 PM, which is right as they opened, so that’s why it looks so empty. The bartender mentioned that they plan on changing their business hours and opening half an hour earlier at 5:00 PM starting from October.

Next door to Partage is Le Club by Partage, and in between the two dining areas, there is an area where they store and sell wine. I was several minutes early for my 5:30 PM reservation and Partage hadn’t opened yet, so the hostess asked me to hold tight for a few more minutes until she could confirm that the staff was ready to start service. In the meantime, I browsed the wines set out for display (though I had no idea what anything was, considering that I do not drink alcohol).

Signature tasting menu	$ 198.00
Passion Lavender	$  12.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  17.59
Gratuity	$  40.00
Total	$ 267.59

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I thought that the meal was a little bit pricey, especially considering that it didn’t have any of the iconic expensive-to-procure items (such as caviar, truffles, Japanese A5 wagyu, lobster, and other rare or supply-constrained seafood) that tend to drive up the price of some other tasting menus to around US$200.00+ due to the cost of goods being passed along to the diner. On top of that, Partage is in Chinatown out in the suburbs, and it doesn’t qualify for the expected Las Vegas Strip upcharge from high rent and high roller capitalization.

With that being said, I think it was still within reason, primarily if you account for the relatively high intricacies and complexities behind each of the dishes. I guess the fish was somewhat straightforward, but everything else looked like it involved high-effort, time-consuming preparation processes. Partage is big on wine, and they seem to have a very successful wine club, so my guess is that their primary target audience consists of older wine enthusiasts who have more spending power and don’t mind not milking maximum value per dollar on food, presumably due to being desensitized by the generally high price of alcohol.

Based on my experience during the aforementioned dinner, I am definitely going back again this month (in October) for the new menu rotation. With a few minor adjustments and optimizations to my order (specifically, getting an eight-course menu instead of the full signature one, and sticking with just house water instead of also getting a decent-but-not-amazing non-alcoholic cocktail), I think the price point will be chipped down enough that it won’t be bothersome to me. I want to support chefs who prioritize exploration, innovation, experimentation, and seasonality, and I think becoming a regular at Partage would be a great way to do that.

I’m always looking for unique, creative, innovative, and limited-edition dining opportunities. While browsing for options near me, I came across the Caesars Palace 60th Anniversary Teppan Experience at Nobu on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. This was great news because, not only would I be able to try a special teppanyaki dining experience that was concluding at the end of September (I had this meal approximately one week ago), but I also remembered off the top of my head that Nobu was a qualifying restaurant for the OpenTable credit.

After I found it, I promptly booked the reservation for the same day, and then showed up at 5 PM for the first seating. I finished my dinner, paid for my meal, then checked my Chase app to confirm that the charge had gone through properly as “Nobu” instead of just a generic “Caesars Palace food and beverage” so Chase would know to award me the credit. Somewhere along this process, I found out that, about three months ago, Chase removed Nobu from the eligible OpenTable credit restaurants. And of course, they didn’t release a proper press release about it; out of all places they could’ve picked, they announced it on reddit.

It is entirely my fault. There was an absence of the Chase Sapphire Reserve logo on the OpenTable booking page for Nobu, but it didn’t register in my head that it was gone when I opened it to make the booking. Chase also gave a two-month grace period after they removed Nobu (in addition to a bunch of other restaurants), and my dinner fell outside of even that grace period. And of course, Chase and OpenTable reserve the right to change qualifying restaurants at any point, and it is up to me to check for participating status at the time of booking.

Regardless, it is obviously disappointing going into a meal expecting a US$150.00 discount and then finding out that you have to pay full price. Luckily for me, I dine at restaurants a lot, so it won’t be an issue for me to go to another restaurant—this time, one that is actually on the list of participating restaurants—to spend the credit that I wasn’t able to use at Nobu.

 
With all that being said, I’m still glad I got the opportunity to try this special tasting menu. Was it a high-value experience for the money? No, not really, as you will see later on. But was it still a good experience? Yes.

What made the experience extra good was the fact that apparently I was the only one who booked a reservation for that particular time slot on that particular day. When I showed up at the restaurant, I was a little bit early and they hadn’t opened yet, so I waited about ten minutes in the lobby; once they were ready, the hostess walked me to the teppan table, and I noticed that only one of the spots was set with a linen napkin and chopsticks. When I pointed with a confused look and asked if I was the only one, she said “yes.”

Sadly, the positioning of the teppan grill was very unfortunate. Because Nobu is inside Caesars Palace, it is directly connected to the hotel. The far back walls of Nobu are not solid, and instead have diamond-shaped spaces that show a view out into the hall. Because of the casino, cigarette smoking is legal inside Caesars Palace. This meant that I would occasionally get repulsive waves of cigarette smoke odor coming into the restaurant, and being so close to the back wall, my table was the first one hit. This alone is enough for me to never return to Nobu for another teppan meal again.

The meal started with a collection of sashimi: kanpachi jalapeño, ama ebi, and salmon nashi pear with sliced truffle.

The greater amberjack was solid, but there was nothing particularly special about it. The sweet shrimp was incredibly delicious, but the shrimp head that came with it was fairly average. The salmon was my favorite bite; the pear sauce and truffle to go along with the salmon made for an amazing combination.

Whenever I go to a restaurant, I like to browse their non-alcoholic mocktail menu to see if there’s anything interesting that I might want to try. At Nobu, the drink that stuck out to me was their Shiso Peachy, made from white peach Calpico, aloe juice, simple syrup, lemon, and Fever-Tree soda, topped with a shiso leaf.

This actually ended up being one of the best drinks I’ve ever had. It was a very unique flavor profile that I’ve never had before. It had a smooth and subtle fruitiness to it that was sweet, but not too sweet. I think shiso leaves can be tricky to use because their flavor can very easily pierce through and overwhelm other flavors, but the fact that this leaf was just gently placed on top made it so that it only had a gentle contribution to the overall flavor profile to the extent that it matched, but did not overpower, the rest of the drink.

Next up was the nigiri. The three pieces included toro with miso and caviar, Japanese snapper with shiso and lemon, and snow crab tiradito. This was also accompanied by atsuyaki tamago.

All of this was pretty good, but I particularly liked the snow crab nigiri. The crunchy garnish on top gave it a fun texture and added a very slight kick of mild spice.

After the first two courses, the chef came out and prepared the teppan grill.

He seemed to have no reaction whatsoever to the fact that I was the only one dining that round. I asked him how often this happens, and he said that it has actually been occurring a lot more frequently lately. I guess the fact that I showed up on a weekday and early on in the evening (as opposed to the weekend during the late evening dinner rush) also contributed to it as well.

After doing a little juggling show with his cooking tools to show his agility, the chef started cooking my meal.

First off the grill was Hokkaido scallop with charred negi goma, sesame chili oil, and shiitake mushrooms.

The quality of the scallop was great, and the accompanying sauce was fantastic. I often don’t prefer over-garnished scallop because it’s easy to overpower the milder flavor of scallop. However, this sauce had the perfect intensity such that it got right up to the limit of flavor while just barely not overwhelming the scallop. The mushrooms also worked great with this, as they were charred and almost crispy on the outside, while being soft and tender on the inside.

Next up was Glacier 51 Chilean sea bass with yuzu kosho chimichurri and broccolini.

This was an interesting take on chimichurri. I often see chimichurri paired with steak and other red meats, but this was infused with a more citrus-heavy twist, and it complemented the fish well. It had an element of spiciness to it, but it was more of a “throbbing” kind of satisfying spicy aftertaste, rather than it being a front-loaded spiciness that is often associated with spicy foods.

While I was enjoying the sea bass, the chef started working on my next dish.

For the next course, the chef cooked some lobster tail and served it atop some rocoto sweet chili garlic miso and micro arugula.

I like lobster, so I appreciated this dish. I suspect that the sauce here was quite special, but I think the highly innovative and unique nature of the sauces of the previous two dishes made it so that, in comparison, this rocoto sweet chili garlic miso didn’t stand out as much as it otherwise would have had I eaten this as a separate entrée.

With back-to-back-to-back seafood dishes done, it was time for some beef.

The chef’s next plate was Miyazaki A5 wagyu drizzled with soy mirin reduction served with pickled daikon and a dollop of karashi.

This was delicious wagyu beef and matched the quality I would expect from a cut graded A5. However, the thing that stood out most to me about this was actually the spicy mustard. Wagyu is often served with flaky salt and pepper so that the beef flavor is enhanced, but there is nothing diluting or altering the flavor profile. Even though I’ve eaten quite a lot of A5 wagyu at this point in my life, I think this is actually the first time that I ever had it served with karashi.

For my first bite, I accidentally put way too much of it on the beef, so all I ended up tasting was the spicy mustard. However, for subsequent bites, I used the spicy mustard far more conservatively, and with a small dot of it on the wagyu, it made it much better. The best way for me to describe it was as if the wagyu was served with a more unique variant of wasabi.

While I was enjoying the wagyu, the chef started preparing a bunch of different ingredients for my final savory course before dessert.

After I finished all the wagyu, a waiter came over to take away my empty plate and drop off a bowl of miso soup.

I sipped the soup to go along with my bowl of Nobu fried rice, made from lobster, wagyu, scallop, black garlic, and crispy allium.

Up until this point, I was noticing how small the portion size of each dish was, and the limited number of overall courses offered in the tasting menu. Although this fried rice didn’t single-handedly “fix” the problem, the fact that the chef prepared a large, heaping bowl of rice did definitely help lift me out of continued hunger and into the “fine” territory.

For his final act of the meal, the chef seared a crust on some banana slices and then lit them ablaze to flambé them.

When I saw him do that, I told him an abridged version of the story of my friend’s botched pineapple rum flambé upside-down cake at STRIPSTEAK and let him know that I’m glad he knows how to properly use the technique. He seemed to have found the anecdote quite amusing and funny.

The bananas were brought back to the kitchen, where the pastry chefs finished preparing the dessert. This is the final product that came out: banana kinako with nougatine, walnut, and Maldon salt, served with a scoop of milk gelato. According to the description on the menu, this is inspired by Bananas Foster.

This was great. It was fun combining all the individual elements into cohesive bites, and I particularly enjoyed the nuttiness and how it complemented the baseline banana flavor.

This is a picture of the front of the restaurant near the hostess’ podium.

I didn’t have an opportunity to capture any other photos inside Nobu because of how far back I was seated. The teppan grill tables are tucked away in a little alcove, so it’s fantastic for privacy, but not the best if you want to take pictures. The restaurant also filled up pretty quickly after I arrived, so I didn’t want to go for a walk taking pictures when a ton of diners were already getting settled in for their meals.

Instead, here is a photo of the statues and fountain near the hotel registration desk at Caesars Palace. I passed through here on my way out of the building after finishing dinner.

Teppan Menu	$ 266.00
Shiso Peachy	$  15.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  23.53
Gratuity	$  50.00
Total	$ 354.53

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

As I mentioned before, I enjoyed the meal and I enjoyed the experience. However, I think this price is quite steep for what you get.

Nobu is a very reputable brand. After this dinner, I do think that Nobu is deserving of praise and acclaim. However, with that being said, I think Nobu is overrated. I think the way that people perceive Nobu as some kind of ultra high-end luxury brand is a bit overblown for what you actually get. Again, to be clear, the food was fantastic. However, you can also get food of comparably high quality at other high-end, authentic Japanese restaurants for substantially less money and larger portion sizes.

Obviously, restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip charge quite a bit more than regular restaurants out in the suburbs, or compared to restaurants in other cities that aren’t designed to attract high rollers. However, even with that in mind, I think the US$266 price point is still too high. In my opinion, I think the “Nobu mark-up” here is somewhere around the US$60-70 range, i.e., if this exact experience did not have the Nobu name attached to it and was instead given to you at some generic “Mr. & Mrs. Lee’s Teppanyaki” restaurant on the Strip, it would probably be priced closer to a flat US$200.

So, my final verdict of whether or not I would recommend it? It depends. If you’re taking a gold digger out on a date, or if you yourself are a gold digger and want to milk good value from your date, and you care about the prestige of dining at Nobu, then I think this is a great place not only to stroke your ego, but also to actually eat very good food. However, if you’re just a normal person and you want to dine at a restaurant that will give you more bang for your buck, then I think it makes sense to pass on Nobu (at least the one at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip).

However, no matter how amazing Bazaar Meat was, there is still one minor problem for me: their dishes are heavy on red meat. Unfortunately, I still need to be heart-health conscious and minimize the amount of saturated fat I eat; although my cholesterol levels have become far more manageable now, I’m still at high risk for hereditary heart conditions. Thus, I like to indulge in red meats sparingly, and where possible, I shift my diet towards focusing more on fish, poultry, and vegetables.

There is some great news though. Bazaar Meat is known for their delicious and high-quality steaks that have incredible marbling and impeccable preparation, but they also have a sister restaurant that upholds the same reputation but focuses on seafood instead. That obviously is a great match for me, so late last week, I dined at Bazaar Mar by José Andrés, located inside The Shops at Crystals on the Las Vegas Strip.

Bazaar Mar also had two different tasting menus: The Bazaar Mar Experience for US$175.00 per person, with an option to add a discovery wine pairing for a supplemental US$150.00 per person; and José’s Creative Experience for US$235.00 per person, with an option to add the ultimate wine pairing for a supplemental US$220.00 per person. For this meal, I decided to try out The Bazaar Mar Experience, with an intent to come back and try José’s Creative Experience on a later day if I have a good experience.

I’m glad I don’t drink alcohol, because it’s wild to me that some sips of wine to go along with your meal can end up being almost just as expensive as the entire tasting menu itself. Instead, I opted to get two non-alcoholic beverages. One of them was given to me complimentary because Bazaar Mar is running a special promotion right now where locals get one free drink with a purchase (though I’m not sure whether any Nevada ID would qualify, or if the ID has to have an address listed that is within the Las Vegas Valley). The second one is one I selected and paid for.

 
The first course, called “a bite or two to welcome you,” came with three items. The first was oyster ceviche with leche de tigre and corn nuts.

I love the flavor of oyster so I usually don’t add anything to it that could potentially diminish the strength of the flavor of the oyster. If a restaurant serves oysters with a set of sauces, I usually don’t use any of the sauces and end up eating the oysters plain (or with a very small amount of lemon juice) because I like oysters that much. Sometimes, if there is some sea salt available and the oysters are extra good, I will salt the oysters to further enhance the flavor of them.

With that in mind, I think it’s reasonable to assume that I don’t like oysters that have a lot of preparation behind them. However, this oyster ceviche was actually quite good. The sauce added a bit of sourness to the overall flavor profile, but the level of sourness stopped at the perfect level such that it didn’t interfere with the taste of the oyster. I like nutty flavors, so the corn nuts not only added a different angle to the flavor profile, but also added a fun textural contrast to the bite.

Along with the appetizers, my complimentary drink came out: the Emerald Coin, made with Seedlip Grove 42 non-alcoholic spirit, honeydew, lemongrass, lime, and celery. If I wasn’t a local, this would’ve cost US$16.00.

This is a flavor profile that I don’t have often, so I enjoyed the unique aspect of it. It was a nice, balanced mixture of sweet fruitiness and earthy vegetable…ness. At first, I thought the portion size was a bit small, but I think the shape of the glass was deceptive; I sipped this throughout my first few courses, and it was enough to last me past when my second drink came out.

The next bite was José’s Taco with jamón Ibérico de bellota, Ossetra caviar, nori, and gold leaf.

I’m usually not the biggest fan of jamón Ibérico because the flavor can be a bit basic and overpowering, but this jamón was great. It was relatively mild, yet still had a rich, meaty flavor. The seaweed was relatively mild as well, which allowed the taste of the caviar to come through prominently.

The third bite was a river trout cone made from Smoke in Chimneys trout shaped into a flower, with preserved Meyer lemon and dill.

The presentation was nice, but even if it wasn’t formed into the shape of a flower, it would’ve still been fantastic. The trout had a strong but very clean and crisp fish flavor. When the server brought this out, she recommended that it be eaten in two bites at once, i.e., bite the top off, then put the rest in your mouth and chew together. The sauce at the bottom of the cone was very complementary to the fish, so I’m glad she pointed that out.

The next course was called “a trip around the world, The Bazaar world.” This started with monkfish ssam containing fried monkfish atop gem lettuce, sauced with black garlic romesco and aioli, and topped with lemon foam.

The fried monkfish tasted very clean. It felt like it was grilled and seared monkfish, but with a light and refreshing layer of breading on it, and injected with all the positives of the fried flavoring without any of the greasiness. I couldn’t really pinpoint the specific flavors of the sauces, which I found to be a good thing; they meshed well with the fish flavor and didn’t overwhelm it at all.

Next was kueh pai ti, described on the course list as Singapore’s favorite street food. Inside, it contained ama ebi shrimp, peanuts, and chili sauce.

This was my favorite bite of the dinner. It was an incredible explosion of flavor containing basically all of my favorite elements—seafood, nuttiness, and spiciness. I feel like I literally could’ve had ten more of these and still wanted more.

Afterwards came Hokkaido sea scallop crudo with tomatillo and seeds aguachile, green grapes, and jalapeño-cucumber oil.

This was my second favorite dish of the night. The quality of the scallop was incredible. Scallops are usually on the milder side with flavor profile, but these tasted quite strong. The sweetness of the grapes worked really well with the scallop. The oil was absolutely packed with flavor, and it seems like they dried the other ingredients well enough that the oil really stuck to everything and enhanced every bite. The oil was so delicious that I grabbed a spoon and literally scooped and drank it like soup after I was done with the solids.

In preparation for the next course, my second drink came out: Mediterranean milk punch made from lemon, lavender, mint, green cardamom, orange blossom, and grenadine. The liquid itself was clarified from Greek yogurt and milk. This was not included in the tasting menu and cost an extra US$18.00.

If I’m paying extra for a drink at a restaurant, I want to make sure that it’s something I can’t get at a grocery store somewhere. This Mediterranean milk punch far exceeded my expectations in that regard, because it was unlike anything I had ever tasted before. It had a very subtle and smooth underlying dairy base, but the top notes were a dynamic mixture of a lot of fun, fruity flavors.

The third course was called “from ocean depths to garden heights.” This started with their Po Boy José! made with fried baby squid and aioli packed inside a steamed brioche bun, served with a pepper to nibble on on the side.

I think people underestimate how difficult it can be to make the perfect sandwich. I think our expectations of sandwiches are reasonably pretty low, and if it just generally tastes like meat, vegetables, and bread, then most people are satisfied. However, if you really consider the flavor profile of a sandwich, you will often realize that it is very easy to get a proper balance of flavors of all the different elements of the sandwich.

This po boy nailed the balance perfectly. Not only was the squid nice and flavorful, but the way it was fried made it so you could detect the fried flavor, but it was still a seafood-forward flavor profile overall. I think the bread was intentionally slightly underseasoned, which ended up being great because it allowed it to supplement the squid flavor rather than making the sandwich too bready. Even the pepper was perfect—it was a relatively mild pepper, but it still had enough sourness to it to help cut through the creaminess of the sauce.

Next up was a tomato salad made with heirloom tomatoes inside ginger lime syrup and topped with citrus soy glaze.

I think these might have been some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever had in my entire life. The tomatoes themselves were high quality and had a natural sweetness with no sourness. However, the sauce was world-class. I think the soy glaze had a very similar flavor profile to soy sauce, but without any of the excessive saltiness, so it tasted like these tomatoes were marinated in and then brushed with a thickened version of just the flavor of soy sauce, with no salt, and diluted perfectly to the point where its intensity matched the intensity of the tomatoes exactly.

As a side note, this was a comically large portion size of tomatoes, and I think it is sized for two people to share. That was obviously no problem, though; these were delicious enough that I happily ate the entire thing.

And finally, the last dish before the main entrées was a Maine lobster croquette with lobster and shrimp fritters, served with a side of saffron aioli.

This was decent, but probably the most underwhelming dish of the tasting menu. Compared to the other dishes tasting extra clean, crisp, refreshing, and well-balanced, this croquette was far more “normal” and on the heavier side.

It was now time for course number four: “where the sea meets the land.”

At the beginning of my meal, my waitress asked which dish I wanted for the main course, with my options being chicken or salmon. Of course, I picked the salmon. However, after reviewing the course list again, I realized that I was supposed to get both the main entrées, rather than needing to pick just one. The next time she came around, I brought it up and asked her about it. She said that the tasting menu only comes with both if you are dining as a group of two, and solo diners only get to pick one or the other.

I asked her if it was possible for me to get half portions of each. She said she would go to the back and ask the chef; after several minutes, she returned to my table and said that the chef said they’re willing to let me have both, and that wouldn’t be a problem.

The first entrée was pollo al ajillo made with Josper-roasted chicken and ajillo sauce.

When this came out, I was confused. This was such a large portion of chicken that I suspected they might not have given me a half-portion of it like I had mentioned to the waitress. Subsequently, I was concerned that, not only did they not give me half-portions of both, but they ended up just giving me a full portion of chicken and skipping the salmon.

I think I had a very unlucky first bite of this chicken, because the edge piece of the pre-cut section was quite dry. However, that first bite was definitely a fluke. When I ate more of the chicken, the next part was immediately far more tender and delicious. This ended up being a bit too salty for my preference, though I’m not sure if the saltiness came from the chicken brine or the sauce.

Shortly afterwards, to my surprise, the salmon came out too—this was Ōra King salmon grilled over wood fire and served with salmon roe atop Meyer lemon sauce.

Now I was even more confused, because this also seemed like a full portion of salmon. When I had a chance, I asked my waitress whether the kitchen forgot that I was alone and inadvertently gave me full portions instead of half portions. She then responded that the kitchen doesn’t actually do half portions of anything, so they made me full portions of both. I thanked them and offered to pay an upcharge for receiving a second full-size main entrée for free, but she said it was fine and that the kitchen said it was all good.

This is the best salmon I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was cooked pretty rare, so I was able to get both the raw salmon and cooked salmon flavor combined in each bite. The salmon in general was absolutely packed with flavor. The fish tasted almost as if it was denser, as in, there was more salmon flesh and fat packed into each cubic centimeter. The skin was also incredible and added a fun crisp to each bite. To top it all off, chewing into the salmon roe coated my tongue in its oozy goodness so I had a rich flavor to keep my tongue occupied in between bites.

The side dish to go along with the chicken and salmon was Josper-roasted carrots with olive oil labneh yogurt, carrot gastrique, and sumac.

The carrots were cooked to perfection. They were both soft and firm at the same time, and had a rich broiled texture on the inside with a more charred exterior. For lack of a better way to describe it, there was also a facet of the carrots that made me think that they were very slightly dehydrated as to intensify the carrot’s sweeter element.

I think the sauce was a little bit too strong and overpowering, but that was obviously easily solved by just using less of it when I dipped the carrots into it.

To conclude the meal, the fifth course, serving as the dessert, was named “seaside treat, lime and sweet.” It consisted of their key lime beach, made from key lime mousse, graham cracker crumble, and lime air.

It’s as if this dessert was custom-modified to fit my personal preferences. I like key lime pie, but funny enough, my favorite part of it is the crust. This key lime beach, as you can tell by the name, had a far more generous portion of the graham cracker crust (in crumbled form) than what you’d find in a regular slice of key lime pie.

The fact that it had the lime foam was also fun. When eaten alone, it was very light and mild; when combined with bites of the key lime mousse and graham cracker crumble, it was unnoticeable. Regardless, it obviously made the presentation much better, and it made sure the tasting menu ended on a positive, artistic note.

Here are some photos of the interior of the restaurant.

It’s empty because I booked my reservation for 5 PM when they first opened, and I took the pictures while I was waiting for my first course to arrive. My meal took right around two hours, and as I progressed through the tasting menu, it got fairly busy to the point where it felt pretty packed by the time I finished my dessert.

For full transparency’s sake, I also got an additional 10% discount on my meal. However, that discount had nothing to do with this restaurant in particular, the discount has a set of external requirements in order to qualify for it that are unrelated to me as an individual, and there was no favoritism or subjectivity surrounding the discount. I did not receive a special invitation to this restaurant, and the staff did not know I was coming beyond a reservation I put in through their public booking portal a few hours before I showed up.

With that discount, which was separate from the complimentary beverage I received for being a local, my subtotal came to US$173.70. Sales tax at 8.375% came to US$14.55. I added a gratuity of US$60.00, which brought the grand total for the meal to US$248.25. For the record, I am still fairly staunchly against tipping culture and generally only tip around 15%, but I felt the almost 35% tip this time around was well deserved due to the fact that I seemed to not only have gotten far more food than I was supposed to, but also got it at a great price.

It’s probably needless to say at this point based on my detailed descriptions of how much I liked the food and why, but I highly recommend Bazaar Mar. This restaurant is probably a seafood enthusiast’s dream come true with the variety of different kinds of seafood they serve, and the innovative and unique nature in which they prepare the dishes. I would consider my meal an oceanic success, and I’m looking forward to going back to try José’s Creative Experience in the future.

Since then, several months have gone by. I had been keeping an eye on Gymkhana’s reservation availability, but very often, they were fully booked out around 45 days in advance. Because of my erratic travel schedule, I generally don’t put in reservations too far in advance, so I ultimately just decided on waiting until the hype settles down before I go to Gymkhana myself.

Throughout this waiting process, I noticed something intriguing. On Google Maps, Gymkhana’s listing settled at around the mid-3 stars in rating and did not really show any signs of climbing up into the 4s. This made me even more interested in dining there, because Gymkhana has an award-winning location in London, and I figured that at least some of that food and culinary skill would carry over to Las Vegas. I wanted to find out for myself whether the poor ratings were justified, or if people were just getting upset about certain things and then being extra harsh in their reviews.

Last night, I had some friends in town whom I decided to join for dinner. They had a few options for restaurants already in mind, and they ended up picking an Indian spot in Town Square. They mentioned that they had a prior obligation scheduled for the evening, so they would have to book the dinner late at night. Well, it happens to be that Gymkhana is also an Indian restaurant; it’s only about 4 miles further north; and lately, if you don’t want to book too far in advance, the only available time slots are around 8:30 PM and after. I checked seating availability for the same night, and 9 PM happened to be open. I proposed changing our dinner venue to Gymkhana instead due to its circumstantial similarities with their other choice; my friends happily agreed.

We dined as a party of three. Apparently, according to the reservation platform, that counts as a “large party,” which unlocks a special tasting menu called “The Vault.” When I go to tasting menus, I usually go either alone or with only one other person; thus, I realized that this may be a rare instance where I will be able to try Gymkhana’s “The Vault” menu that I otherwise would not be able to try in my routine dining system, so I locked that in during booking. This cost US$195.00 per person.

Before I start, I want to point out that the lighting in the restaurant was nice to set a certain mood, but horrific for photography. Gymkhana was probably one of the darkest restaurants I’ve ever been to. We were seated very deep in the restaurant where there were no windows, neither to the outdoors nor to the resort. There were some chandeliers hanging above some tables, but the table at which we were seated had little lighting. The only reason we could see was because there were small lamps on the table, but they were aggressively orange. When preparing my photographs for upload, I made a frail attempt at white balancing the color temperature before realizing how futile my efforts were and just posting them as-is.

The tasting menu started with two appetizers. The first was a pappadum selection. There were four different kinds of pappadums: lentil, chickpea, potato, and rice. This was served alongside three accompaniments: coriander and mint chutney, sweet lime pickle yogurt, and Goan prawn chutney.

I enjoyed the pappadums, and it felt like this was a more premium substitution for a bread basket that would be served by other restaurants. Because I’m not familiar with the ingredients (which will end up becoming a recurring theme throughout this entire meal), I couldn’t tell which accompaniment was which. Visually, my favorite was the reddish one that had a chunkier consistency, and then the creamier one that looked like spicy mayo (but definitely did not have the taste of spicy mayo). The runnier green sauce was good too, but I liked the other two more because the other two seemed like they had more depth to their flavor.

The second appetizer, which was served at the same time as the first, was a set of gol guppas. This came out as fried wheat puffs with a side of potatoes and moong lentil sprouts. Some of it was served as a pastier sauce consistency, while some of it was served in a miniature cup-pitcher hybrid with mint and cumin water underneath.

The waiter advised us to poke a little hole in the top-center surface of the wheat puffs, which were hollow inside. We would then scoop and pour in the potatoes, lentil sprouts, and mint and cumin water. I think I didn’t make the hole large enough because it was tricky to get everything inside the wheat puff, but once I got as much as I could in there, I ate it all in one bite and it was very flavorful.

According to the course list, the next dish was supposed to be aloo chaat with crispy fingerling potatoes, sweet yogurt, tamarind chutney, and gram flour vermicelli. However, this next plate is what we received instead. Because I don’t know much about Indian food, I’m not sure if this is just a modified version of aloo chaat, but visually, this is significantly different from what I see when I search up pictures of aloo chaat.

Regardless, this was delicious. We still had pappadums left from the first appetizer course, so I broke them up into smaller pieces and then used them to grab heaping scoops of this. If this is hypothetically also considered an accompaniment along with the other three that were provided with the pappadums, then this would’ve overwhelmingly been my favorite.

For my beverage, I ordered salted lemon nimbu pani, which the menu described as a take on Indian fresh lemonade with salted lemon and spiced salt. This was supplemental to the tasting menu and cost an extra US$15.00.

It’s not very obvious from the photograph, but there is a gigantic block of ice stretching vertically from the bottom to the top of the glass, and the slice of lime at the top of the drink is sitting atop the block of ice. The actual volume of beverage I got for this was very small, and it did not come with refills. It was good lemonade, and the spiced salt did add a unique facet to it that is otherwise not found in regular lemonade, but it was absolutely not worth it for the price.

The next dish was amritsari shrimp and scallops with red chili and carom seed batter, with a side of dill raita.

This was an overwhelming explosion of flavor. This had an underlying taste of being heavily fried, but because there was so much flavor to it, it didn’t have that oily, greasy taste or sensation that you get from eating regular deep-fried foods. The spices had a bit of a kick to them, so after finishing my portion of this, my nose started running a bit. Adding a generous portion of dill raita to each bite helped counteract and smooth out the spiciness.

The shrimp was great, and even though the batter and spices were very intense and piercing in flavor, I thought it went along well with the shrimp. However, using this preparation method for scallop felt a bit suboptimal. Maybe this is because I don’t eat much Indian food so I am highly sensitive to the pungency of the spices, but the flavor of the scallop seemed to just be completely drowned out by the other flavors. (For those who are not aware, scallops have a relatively milder flavor, so it’s usually served with minimal garnishes.)

Afterwards, we each received one tandoori masala lamb chop with red chili, ginger, fenugreek, garam masala, and walnut chutney. (Yes, there were originally three, but one person was very eager and expeditiously grabbed a lamb chop before I had an opportunity to snap a photograph.)

Just like the amritsari shrimp and scallops, these lamb chops were also an overwhelming explosion of flavor. This not only had a high intensity of flavor, but it also had a high variety of flavor in each bite.

I am generally not a particularly expressive person if I’m just doing regular day-to-day things and not fulfilling a role in entertainment or performing arts. I have been told that I am especially inexpressive around men, but even around my regular female friends, it has been a running joke about how it’s a funny puzzle to try and guess whether or not I like something I’ve just eaten, because I am usually in deep thought and analysis about the food in my mouth, and that often results in me having a serious face.

This lamb chop inadvertently induced an expression on my face. My reaction to this was so intense that apparently my body had to spew it out somewhere. I looked up and declared “there is so much happening in this lamb chop that I have no idea what’s going on.” I could tell that it was a great-quality lamb chop, but the seasonings and flavors covering the lamb chop were so over-the-top that it was hard to get a handle on it. It felt like my entire mouth was used as a stewing pot for the entire spice cabinet.

With that being said, it wasn’t bad. Usually, if you are ambushed with a ton of different flavors all at once, there is some degree of dissonance among the flavors. I imagine that if this kind of situation happened in any other context, I’d be taken aback and likely wince at the taste. However, this lamb chop wasn’t bad at all. It’s been a day since I had this, but thinking back on it, I am still confused about it right now. I still don’t know where to even start in terms of figuring out what it was seasoned with, let alone whether or not I genuinely enjoyed it. If I was committed to figuring that out, I reckon that I’d need to eat at least a few more of these on multiple more occasions so my taste buds can get more accustomed to it first.

After we finished the lamb chops, it was time for the main courses. One of them was Goan lobster curry with coconut milk, coriander, and red chili. This was served alongside black lentil dal maharani, saag makai, a bread basket, and some basmati rice.

The curry was good, but I’m not sure if I am particularly impressed by the lobster. The best way for me to describe this is that the curry was sort of off doing its own thing, and the lobster came along for the ride as an afterthought. Seafood is my favorite type of food and I very much like lobster (not because it’s expensive, but because I actually like the flavor of it), so I am far more alert to the nuances of the quality and preparation of lobster. The lobster in this curry acted not as the headliner of the dish, but as a supplemental addition to the curry itself.

The naan was incredible. There was a bunch of different kinds of naan, and all of it tasted amazing. I wasn’t able to have as much of it as I wanted because my friends also really liked the naan and ate a lot of it. The waiter offered to bring us more naan, but unfortunately, because of how late we got to the restaurant, the kitchen was already wrapped up by that point and had already discarded the charcoal they use to cook the naan, so we weren’t able to get a refill.

The second main course was supposed to be beef short rib pepper stir-fry with South Indian spices, coconut, and flaky Malabar paratha. However, the waiter let us know that there was an alternative for this dish that he would recommend instead: their venison biryani with braised venison, saffron pilaf rice, and pomegranate and mint raita.

When there is a pre-determined course list for a tasting menu, I usually like to stick to the menu, not only because I trust the chef who designed it with the flow and progression of flavor profiles in mind, but also because, when I share my experience on my blog, I want it to be replicable by other people (i.e., by going to the same restaurant and ordering the same tasting menu, if it is still in season). However, the waiter made it sound like it was a very appealing substitution, and my friends were on board with it, so I agreed to get the venison biryani instead of the beef short rib pepper fry.

The biryani came uncut, and its preparation was finished tableside. The server used a knife to cut off the top, then mixed the rice, venison, and spices together until it was ready to eat.

I think they made it wrong.

I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous coming from someone who knows nothing about Indian food, but the taste was noticeably off. Unfortunately, I know that I know nothing about Indian food, so rather than bring it up with the waiter, I instead second-guessed myself and just assumed that this was another one of those new, wild, crazy, intense flavors, just like I had already experienced many times earlier that dinner.

This entire dish tasted ashy. For lack of a better way to put it, this tasted like someone had crushed up a bunch of nearly-spent wood embers into powder, soaked it into water, strained the water so all the solids were left behind, and then used that water to cook the rice. To be clear, it didn’t directly taste burnt; it just tasted like ash. I prodded at the rice and mixed it around some more to see if I was able to find any excessively charred or discolored portions, but it looked pretty normal. There was no particular single component or element of the biryani that tasted ashy; the ashiness was such a core part of this dish’s identity that it was almost as if the intended flavor profile was to be ashy.

The reason why I suspect that this was prepared incorrectly is because, contrary to the intense flavors of the shrimp and lamb chop, the biryani actually induced an unpleasant sensation. More specifically, the flavor of the lamb chop was so intense that it was overwhelming, but there was something about it that made me not want to stop eating it. On the contrary, the ashiness of the biryani was also overwhelming, but it overwhelmed me to a point of not wanting to have more.

The tasting menu came with enough food that we had a lot of the main course left after we were all full, so we requested for the leftovers to be packaged into takeout boxes. I ended up keeping a majority of the leftovers, which was good, because I wanted to investigate this biryani further. The next afternoon (i.e., earlier today), I heated up the saffron pilaf rice and venison in the microwave to try some more and see if my taste buds would be more receptive to it. Unfortunately, the ashy taste persisted. The venison was palatable so I ended up finishing most of that as a good source of protein, but I threw out the rest of the rice.

For our first dessert, we were served rasgulla tiramisu made from soft cheese dumplings soaked in coffee and marsala, along with mascarpone cheese, pistachios, and rose petals.

This might be some of the best tiramisu I’ve ever had. It was noticeably different than other regular tiramisu I’ve had; it was greatly enhanced with extra earthy and floral flavors from the pistachios and rose petals.

Our other dessert was gold leaf gulab jamun, which were fried milk dumplings served with almonds and pistachios inside rose syrup and basundi milk.

The dumplings were pretty good, but the sauce was incredible. I made sure to re-dip the dumpling in the sauce continuously after each bite to get as much of it as possible. My friends just grabbed their dumplings without indulging much in the sauce, so I took advantage of the lack of utensil cross-contamination and finished all the remaining sauce myself as if it was soup.

Upon the conclusion of our meal, we were brought out some petits fours: candied fennel chocolate truffles, and passionfruit and chili jelly. The waiter let us know that those particular nuts and seeds on the chocolate were selected because they are known to help with digestion.

Because we had a very late reservation slot, most of the dining room was already empty by the time we were done. Thus, I managed to get a few shots of the interior before we wrapped up and headed out.

This is the bar area between the front and rear dining sections.

This is the front dining section, closest to the entrance. Because they were closing and cleaning, they turned the chandeliers on at maximum brightness, so I was able to actually see what the dining area was like.

This is another bar that was right across from the front dining area. Again, this is well-illuminated due to the chandeliers being boosted to seemingly maximum brightness for utility purposes during closing, but usually, this area is extremely dim.

Overall, I am tentatively satisfied with my experience at Gymkhana. Obviously, the ashy venison biryani is an issue, especially considering that it was talked up as a great substitution for the main course in The Vault menu, and even on their regular à la carte menu, it is prominently highlighted as one of their flagship entrées. However, I am still not confident enough in my understanding of Indian cuisine to make a certain statement about it.

The service was excellent. Our waiter was very attentive, he responded to all our questions in a thorough and knowledgeable way, and he demonstrated great care for our enjoyment and satisfaction. Beyond our waiter, we also encountered a few other staff members throughout our dinner, all of whom carried out their roles in a polished and efficient way, while still relaying warmth and kindness.

As I mentioned before, I opted for The Vault menu because it was an opportunity to experience a tasting menu that I might not otherwise be able to in the future. After assessing this experience, I do want to return to get the regular tasting menu for US$165.00 per person, though I may wait a season or two to see if they rotate some of the dishes, as I noticed that there is some overlap with the appetizers between the regular tasting menu and The Vault tasting menu.

As for whether or not I recommend this restaurant to other people… I’ll let you know next time, after I learn more about Indian cuisine.

As you can probably tell from his name, YakitoriGuy specializes in yakitori. Yakitori, or 焼き鳥, translates to “grilled bird”; practically, it is small portions of chicken threaded onto skewers and grilled over charcoal. He sources Jidori chicken for his dinners, which he appropriately names “The YakitoriGuy Experience,” and he builds a “course list” (which, in his case, would be a “skewer list”) using as much of the chicken as possible, even including portions that people who aren’t particularly chicken enthusiasts would not even know existed.

For those who know me for my restaurant recaps and my (sometimes unconventional and unusual) reviews and analyses on different tasting menus and omakase experiences I go to, I want to clarify that this blog post does not count as one of those. Not only is this just not a regular restaurant where you can show up and order off a menu, but even if I tried or wanted to do a detailed breakdown, I don’t remember enough specifics about what part of the chicken each skewer was made from to be able to provide much value in my commentary beyond “it tasted good.”

Overall, the dinner was fantastic, both food-wise and experience-wise. I learned a good amount about yakitori, and YakitoriGuy was very interactive with all of us throughout the dinner, which is what you’d expect from a quality experiential dinner like this. I think the skewers with only chicken were decent, but I really enjoyed the skewers that had both chicken and vegetables. In my personal opinion and for my own culinary preferences, I think chicken on its own has a lower ceiling of deliciousness than other kinds of meat. However, if you’re building combination skewers with chicken and other complementary items, I think that’s where the food really shines. Thus, although I still liked the chicken with simple sauces and garnishes, the ones you’ll see grilled together with large cuts of vegetables were my favorites.

As a side note, YakitoriGuy does serve members of the public sometimes, but he does it in an exclusive and limited pop-up structure, and the dinner I was able to enjoy was a fully private group hand-picked and curated by my friend. If you’re interested in potentially attending one of his pop-ups, he mentioned that the best way to do that would be to check out his website (linked above), register for his newsletter, and follow him on social media for his latest updates.

With that all being said, consider this to be a casual photo diary of my dinner:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While in town, I met up with a different friend (than the one for whom I was catsitting) to get some dinner together before I headed back home to Las Vegas. When I asked her where she wanted to go, she picked Kojima in the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles. Her reasoning for it was because they received a Michelin Star relatively recently, so she expected the price to go up soon and wanted to try it out before it got too expensive.

I’m fairly transparent about my dislike of the Michelin Guide, but I feel like it’s been a little while since I’ve last complained about it, so I can re-summarize a limited selection of a couple of my biggest grievances about it.

The deal-breaking problem is that Michelin offers a paid service. The state of California and the country of South Korea are two very well-known examples of regions that paid very large sums under very large contract sizes to Michelin to fund them to come to their markets. Any time there’s money involved, the money becomes an incentive and inherently takes away the absolute neutrality of a ranking system. If a jurisdiction pays for Michelin inspectors to show up, then restaurants that inevitably don’t deserve Michelin Stars are going to get some, otherwise the Michelin Guide is going to feel bad about the state or country spending that much and getting little to nothing out of it. We also don’t know what other monetary transactions are happening behind the scenes that haven’t had public press coverage. To those who argue in support of the Michelin Guide’s integrity in remaining neutral and honest… if they actually had that much integrity, would they collect that much money to begin with?

The Michelin system also “dooms” restaurants into an unsustainable cycle. Restaurants that want to earn and maintain a Michelin Star need to push certain aspects of their operations to levels that result in extremely high stress for employees and unrealistically low profit margins for the business (even after raising prices). The Michelin system has a certain set of metrics that it uses to determine whether a restaurant is deserving of a Michelin Star, and in order to satisfy those requirements, many restaurants have to change the core identity that made them unique, and instead, end up just being vaguely homogenized with many of the other Michelin Star restaurants.

For these reasons, among a handful more, I myself never intentionally go out of my way to seek out Michelin Star restaurants. Instead, I search for restaurants that have a good reputation among regular people, or are offering well-designed tasting menus, or are doing something creative and innovative with their food. However, I will never not go to a restaurant due to the Michelin Guide. As you can see from me having visited this restaurant, if a friend specifically wants me to come along for a Michelin Star dinner, I have no problem joining.

I swear that all this is actually relevant specifically for Kojima, and I’m not just being a geriatric man ranting into the void. Remember how I said that the Michelin Guide implicitly encourages the homogenization of restaurants due to needing to excel in certain performance indicators? Well, Kojima earned a Michelin Star, but is not falling into that trap. Other restaurants often stop experimenting with new concepts in fear that one of them will be bad and make them lose their Star. However, Executive Chef Hayato Kojima is so experimental that he apparently changes his menu on a near-weekly basis. Unrelated to the Michelin Guide, restaurants like Kojima are ones that I want to support—ones that try out new things in an effort to make discoveries and advance the culinary arts.

When my friend and I arrived at the restaurant, we were fortunate enough to be seated directly in front of the chef, so I had a great view throughout the entire dinner.

For the first appetizer, we received lightly fried pieces of fish and vegetables. It was visually obvious that this was fried, but flavor-wise, it was a very intriguing type of fried food—the fried flavor profile was there, but it had none of the greasiness.

As a side note, keep in mind that, because the menu is changed so frequently, there is no set list or written menu of what we had. The waitress explained how each dish was made as she brought it out, but because it’s already been a week, I don’t remember all the specifics and all the ingredients of each dish.

For my drink, I selected Kimino yuzu sparkling juice from the non-alcoholic beverage menu.

While we were eating our appetizers, the chef was already hard at work slicing and preparing some beef tongue.

As the beef tongue was cooking, the chef plated small bowls of potato salad, and also started preparing some scallops for the next dish.

The beef tongue dish was incredible. Tongue is my favorite cut of beef, and I think this might have been the most tender and delicious beef tongue I’ve ever had. The potato salad had an incredibly soft and fluffy texture, and it had a very light and clean creaminess to it.

While we were enjoying the beef tongue, the chef grilled the scallops.

The scallop was served under some mushrooms. The scallop had the perfect consistency of tender and chewy, and the flavor combination of both the scallop and mushroom was complementary.

Next up was some broth. If I remember correctly, it was simmered with fish bones and other unused-but-still-edible fish products so it could extract all the rich flavor.

I don’t quite recall what the solid objects in the middle were made of, but the best way I can come up with to describe it was that they were “premium fish balls.” The consistency was that of ground and processed seafood, but the quality was as if it was just regular seafood.

Afterwards, we got a small bowl of noodles. The noodles were cooked relatively firm, so there was still a bit of a resistant bite to them on the outside, and the inside was chewy. It was a very fitting texture for this cold noodle dish, and it also aligned perfectly with how I like my noodles cooked.

The soup was intensely flavorful, and the strength of it reminded me of an in-between of regular broth and dipping ramen broth. The tempura-fried vegetables served on top resembled the fried appetizer we had at the beginning of the meal.

When you go to a Japanese omakase restaurant, you generally expect to have a decent amount of sushi and sashimi. Thus, at this point of the meal, I was surprised that we hadn’t gotten any yet. Later on, I asked the waitress about the very low ratio of raw fish dishes to other dishes, and she clarified that they are not a sushi restaurant (and are simply a Japanese restaurant) because there is already a sushi restaurant elsewhere in the strip mall (and of course, Kojima’s tenancy reasonably comes with a non-compete clause).

However, this doesn’t mean that there are no fish or sushi-adjacent dishes. For the fish dishes that we did have, the chef was creative about making it so that it was actually a specialty dish and not just, for example, a piece of nigiri.

This next dish was a very thick piece of seared trout placed atop some brown rice and served alongside a few cuts of abalone. I approached this similarly to how I would approach eating nigiri, so I put the entire thing in my mouth. However, the portion size of the trout was so massive that I immediately regretted not just breaking the Japanese social norm of eating nigiri in one piece, and just biting it in half instead.

When this next small plate came out, I was concerned that the dinner might already be approaching its end, but luckily, this was just an intermission. As a palate cleanser, we received some fig with hojicha cream on top. It looks like it would be a good dessert, but it had very little sweetness to it, so it did indeed serve much better as an intermission dish.

In the meantime, the chef brought out a large portion of kinmedai, also known as splendid alfonsino.

This was served as sashimi along with some freshly ground wasabi and some minced okra. I had never seen okra used like this before in combination with fish, and I appreciated being able to try a flavor profile that was completely new to me. The fact that there were no other garnishes or sides to go along with this meant that I was really able to focus in on the taste of the okra and kinmedai without any distractions, which I ended up liking a lot.

Next was some sea urchin, but instead of being served as gunkan atop some rice and wrapped with seaweed like it’s often found, this was served on top of some whitefish.

I am notorious for almost never using soy sauce with nigiri because I really like the original flavor of fish and rice, and if it’s not some kind of special-made soy sauce, then I think it too frequently detracts from the flavor profile such that it’s not worth the risk. However, upon the chef’s recommendation, I had this uni and whitefish combo with some of their house soy sauce. It was fairly light, so the extra saltiness helped enhance the rich flavor of the sea urchin.

Afterwards, we were served a tuna hand roll. I don’t recall anything particularly remarkable about this (which, to be clear, is not always a bad thing). I think it was just simple and straightforward and didn’t stand out compared to all the other creative dishes of the omakase, but there was nothing wrong with it such that I would remember the tuna roll for any shortcomings.

Next up was a bowl of crab and tomato. I often associate tomato as being prone to having an underlying sourness that needs other flavors to counteract it, but this tomato didn’t have much sourness to it and tasted refreshing. However, I’m not sure how or why this happened, but the crab seemed like it was somehow watered down a bit and wasn’t strong enough in flavor to properly complement the tomatoes.

As we were approaching the end of the night, the chef started preparing the grand finale dish.

Thanks to my lucky seat, I had a great view of him grilling our wagyu beef. The grill didn’t flare up much when he was using it previously, but as expected, the wagyu created a nice spectacle due to the high fat content that rendered off and hit the flames.

This is how the wagyu dish was served—a few slices of meat with some greens and garnish.

At this point, the chef had built up such high expectations for himself that I was hoping that something more interesting would’ve been done with this dish. However, there is also some rationale for serving this in a very simple way—it creates a stark contrast from and emphasizes the creativity of the previous dishes we ate, thus making us appreciate the prior dishes even more. With all that being said, the wagyu quality was fantastic, which is the most important part that actually matters.

The last dish before dessert was some rice with vegetables and anchovies. The server showed us the full portion of rice inside the pot in which it was cooked.

The rice came served alongside some pickled vegetables and some broth.

I’m a big fan of seafood in general, and that includes the small anchovies in the rice. When I was younger, I would snack on dried anchovies, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a properly-cooked anchovy-driven dish, so this rice was nice to have again.

That was a lot of rice cooked for just nine people, so I was able to enjoy a second serving of rice after everyone got their first portion.

One of our fellow diners was celebrating her birthday, so when it was time for dessert, the restaurant staff brought out hers with a candle inside.

For dessert, we got a scoop of sorbet. As expected from a Japanese restaurant, it wasn’t excessively sweet, which I appreciated.

As a parting gift, we received some rice. Every solo diner received one bundle, and two women who showed up as a pair received one bundle each, but all the couples only got one to share. Unfortunately, it seems like the staff thought my friend and I were a couple, because they only gave us one. We didn’t bother asking for a second portion, and I gave the whole thing to my friend so she could bring it back home to her boyfriend.

Here are some photographs of the outside of the restaurant. It’s located on the second floor of the strip mall, in the northwestern corner.

Parking is available in the underground lot for a small fee, but because our dinner went a little over time, the parking attendant went home before we were done, so there was nobody there to process the payment and we were able to leave the garage without paying.

Omakase ×2	$ 400.00
Kimino yuzu sparkling juice ×2	$  14.00
Service charge (15%)	$  62.10
Sales tax (9.75%)	$  46.42
Total	$ 522.52

The table to the right shows how much we paid.

A few quick notes about payment logistics: At the time of booking this reservation, there was a 50% required deposit on the price of the omakase, presumably to combat no-shows, which is obviously credited against your grand total once you finish your meal. Kojima bills a mandatory service charge of 15% in lieu of gratuity; because the service charge is included in the sales tax calculation, it becomes an effective ~16.5% addition to your check in exchange for being able to skip the tip.

As my friend mentioned, I’m not sure if the pricing on this is going to go up at any point in the near future or if reservations will become prohibitively difficult to secure, all due to receiving a Michelin Star. However, in its current state, I think the value you get during Kojima’s omakase experience is very reasonable.

The facet that makes me the most hopeful about the future of this restaurant is the fact that Chef Kojima continues to do his own thing and changes up the menu regularly to what he thinks is the best for his diners, without being influenced by external factors. His system is also great for repeat customers, and if a dynamic Japanese restaurant like this was in Las Vegas, I’d definitely become a regular there.

Overall, if a meal at this price point is within your budget, then I think Kojima is worth checking out.

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

… I was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The second side dish was spicy pork belly fried rice.

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

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

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

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

This is what the interior dining area looks like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.