Hello, Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Food, Las Vegas
 

I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, a premium credit card that comes with a US$795.00 annual fee but makes up for it in cardholder perks. Towards the end of 2025, Chase reworked the Sapphire Reserve give more credits and rebates on certain kinds of spend at certain retailers or websites, in exchange for an increase in the card’s membership fee. Unfortunately, I’m not really a fan of the “coupon book” style of rewards programs where they make you go to a bunch of different places and buy a bunch of different things in order to get full value from your benefits.

For example, I absolutely hate the StubHub credit. I think these ticketing websites are a huge rip-off that charge exorbitantly high fees for providing a service that has minimal value. I am eagerly waiting for someone out there to make a great piece of easy-to-use ticketing software so that it becomes industry standard for venues to install it in-house on their own websites (similar to how my blog is run on a customized version of WordPress) and forego these ticketing monopolies like Ticketmaster altogether. For events that already do have their own in-house ticket selling systems, I checked on StubHub for those same tickets to see if it was worth tapping into the Chase credit for it instead, and tickets on StubHub were literally over double the price compared to just buying it direct from the organizer.

Luckily, Chase does have one new perk that is worth it for me: the OpenTable credit. Although their selection of restaurants that qualify for the credit is fairly limited (i.e., it’s not just any restaurant available on OpenTable), there are some decent options in there. I like going out and trying interesting new spots, and I like taking guidance from curated lists of restaurants because it encourages me to expand my scope of dining outside of my routine preferred cuisines.

The OpenTable credit refreshes every half year, and the cut-off for the first round of US$150.00 in credits was the end of 2025. So, in late December, I decided to try out Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. (Yes, that does indeed mean that these photos are more than two weeks old; I have been short of time lately because I did my “12 Days of Christmas” live streaming marathon event again around Christmas and New Year’s, and I am now finally finding a chance to catch up on blog posts.)

 
I decided to order the three-course prix fixe menu along with a non-alcoholic beverage. Although often served with predetermined dishes as designated by the chef, this prix fixe menu offered two options, one of which was for the first course.

For my starter, I ordered pan-seared scallops topped with braised short rib and served alongside Brussels sprouts and delicata squash in a celery root puree. Although the presentation seemed a bit chaotic due to the seemingly unorganized and disheveled nature of the individual food items, it was actually quite good taste-wise. The scallop was a good balance of firm and tender, and I thought the flavor combination worked pretty well together.

My friend, on the other hand, opted for something else for his first course—roasted beets and burrata with prosciutto di Parma, Medjool dates, dukkah, clementines, and shallot vinaigrette. He picked this instead of the scallop because he doesn’t eat seafood (and yes, if this sounds familiar, this is indeed the same friend from my blog post from almost 10 months ago with whom I went to Stubborn Seed at Resorts World).

I sampled some of this, just to try it out and see how it tastes, in anticipation of writing about it on my blog. I ate one piece of the beets. I don’t really know how else to describe it apart from “very beets.”

The mocktail I picked was the Hell’s Red Infusion, made from apple, strawberry, rhubarb puree, and simple syrup in ginger beer.

When I took my first sip, I don’t think I mixed it well enough, because it was almost like I took a big swig of a highly-concentrated fruit smoothie. After going back and mixing it more thoroughly though, it became much better—the texture smoothed out, and the drink was sweet but not too sweet.

I’m curious whether the sweetness ended up becoming more subdued overall because I had accidentally taken a big gulp of the sweetest part upfront. Regardless, it ended up being better that way, because I don’t like excessively sweet things anyway.

I guess my friend thought the tasting menu wouldn’t be enough for him, so he ordered an additional bowl of mac and cheese.

This was my least favorite dish of the meal. I think this would probably be fine for someone who likes intensely cheesy and greasy foods, but for me, it was mouth-coatingly cloy. I stopped eating more after a single piece of macaroni in fear that the aftertaste of the cheese would negatively affect the flavor profile of the upcoming course. Luckily, the Hell’s Red Infusion had enough of an acidic fruitiness to it that it cut through that fat and helped reset my palate.

It’s time for a short intermission.

I often don’t eat at celebrity chef restaurants. I have no issue dining at restaurants branded under the name of a chef who got famous simply for being a world-class chef, but I avoid restaurants named after celebrity chefs who earned their fame off the basis of a television show or social media. I’ve grown a significant distrust of online influencers, and with the few examples that I do have from trying out celebrity chef restaurants anyway (like Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar at the LINQ), it just reinforced my notion that I should stick with restaurants run by regular chefs who focus more on their food than on being a broadcast personality.

With that being said, I still wanted to try one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, just for the experience. I vaguely recall joining my friends at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant almost ten years ago when I first visited Las Vegas and before I moved here, but I didn’t order anything, and I don’t even remember which Gordon Ramsay restaurant it was. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of videos about his iconic beef Wellington, so I figured I should try it at least once so I know what it’s like.

Back to the food. Fortunately, although the prix fixe menu came with only one option for the main course, it ended up being the beef Wellington—a black truffle beef Wellington served together with potato purée and a side of glazed root vegetables atop a red wine demi-glace. There were three ways to order it: with a foie gras add-on, with a lobster tail add-on, or with no enhancements. I knew for sure that I wanted to supplement a lobster tail, but I was considering asking whether I could get both add-ons instead of just one; I ultimately just went with the lobster tail as to not make the dish too overwhelming.

Believe it or not, I actually really enjoyed the beef Wellington. The meat was cooked to a great doneness level and was very tender. The puff pastry was nice and flaky, but still had a very subtle dougheyness to it that enhanced the texture. The vegetables were cooked in a way such that they had a good balance of firmness and softness. The lobster tail, although not particularly remarkable, was still a solid addition.

For the third and final course, I was served sticky toffee pudding topped with a scoop of speculoos ice cream for dessert.

The portion size on this was quite unexpectedly large. It was a bit too sweet for my personal preference, but it was still refreshing compared to the very rich beef Wellington that I had just finished. I also particularly enjoyed trying the speculoos ice cream, as that’s not a flavor that I have tried before, and I don’t often have an opportunity to eat even speculoos-adjacent flavors of ice cream in general.

This is a photograph I took of the front entrance area upon arrival. There was a large screen right at the door displaying a video of Gordon Ramsay speaking. Funny enough, I don’t remember a single word he was saying because I was too busy staring at the fact that he was basically wearing running shoes instead of standard slip-resistant clogs or work boots…

This was the bar area right near the entrance.

Deeper into the restaurant, this was the main dining area. My friend and I were seated at an edge table in the left-side area of the photograph, while the kitchen was just off frame to the right of the photograph.

This was the kitchen area. We didn’t pay the extra mark-up to be seated near the kitchen, so we didn’t have a good view of it while we were eating, but this area was wide open enough that I was able to just walk right up to it after we were finished dining and take some close-up pictures without needing to disrupt other customers.

This is a view of the front of the restaurant. Even though this Hell’s Kitchen location is marketed as being part of Caesars Palace and has the same street address as Caesars Palace, they don’t actually share the same building. Hell’s Kitchen is right up to Las Vegas Boulevard, nearby the Caesars Palace fountains in front of their main lobby entrance.

Here’s what the view looks like if you’re standing in front of Hell’s Kitchen and looking westward towards Caesars Palace and the Bellagio (with the Cosmopolitan and a small slice of the Vdara in the far distance).

Dinner prix fixe menu ×2$ 271.90
Lobster tail add-on$  25.95
Mac and cheese$  17.95
Hell’s Red Infusion mocktail$  13.95
Sales tax (8.375%)$  27.62
Gratuity$  50.00
Total$ 407.37
This table to the right shows how much we paid. This table does not show the aforementioned OpenTable dining credit; you are supposed to pay the full check at the restaurant, and then the US$150.00 gets deducted after-the-fact on your credit card statement.

My final verdict is… I would’ve liked it if I didn’t look at the price. The food was unexpectedly quite good, but not so good that it would warrant paying over US$200.00 per person for the meal. I think if the prix fixe included either the foie gras or lobster tail as part of the menu at no additional cost, and also provided a complimentary soft drink, then I think the base US$135.95 pricepoint for the prix fixe would be reasonable. However, with all of those being supplementary, the core prix fixe menu seems marginally underwhelming.

With that being said, it was surprisingly quite packed, even though it was early on in the evening during a weekday when you wouldn’t expect it to be so busy. Considering the popularity of the restaurant, it seems that natural supply and demand has determined these high prices, so I guess there isn’t much I can say about that.

One very interesting phenomenon I experienced at Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen that I have never before seen at another restaurant is how brutally efficient everything was. When you put in an order at a restaurant, you usually have to wait a bit for the food to come out. However, at Hell’s Kitchen, the food came out shockingly fast. I realized that this was probably a side effect of making the prix fixe menu their prominent, flagship option for dinner, and with the high volume of customers ordering it, the cooks can reliably constantly pump out the three core dishes over and over again without concern of the dish not being ordered. Consequently, those three dishes are always readily available to be served to diners with minimal wait time.

Although I enjoyed my dinner, I personally would not dine here again, and I see it more as a one-time-only kind of experience. As for others, I would probably only recommend this to people who either also have the Chase Sapphire Reserve OpenTable credit to use specifically in Las Vegas, or for people who are big fans of Gordon Ramsay who want a fun Hell’s Kitchen experience and are willing to pay a mark-up for the ambiance and the significance of the brand.

 

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Hello, Sushi Iso in Nakano City, Tokyo, Japan

by   •   Food
 

During one of the days I was in Tokyo, I met up with some of my friends, one of whom has lived in Japan for a while now and speaks Japanese fairly well. We went together to a more “hidden” sushi restaurant that doesn’t cater as hard to tourists—it is called 磯, which translates to Iso. This was basically my opportunity to try a much more authentic Japanese dining experience that I otherwise might not have been able to uncover on my own as an English-speaker.

As you’ll quickly see, I am very glad I went to Sushi Iso, and I consider this omakase meal to be one of the prime highlights of my entire trip.

 
The meal started with a small bowl of shirasu no okizuke, which is soy-marinated baby sardines.

This was my first time ever having baby sardines, and it was a very interesting texture. They were very small, and the way they were prepared made it so they separated from each other fairly easily and had a bit of sliminess to them, but the individual sardines were still large enough that I could get a few bites in of the soft body of the fish before it was ready to swallow.

Next was otsumami, which is a collection of small appetizers.

The left-most appetizer in the photograph is a few pieces of a fish and cucumber roll, though I don’t remember exactly what kind of fish it was. In the center is komochi konbu, which is herring roe on kelp; this was particularly fun to eat due to the texture. All the way to the right is hotaru ika, which is firefly squid; I especially liked the flavor combination of the chewy squid along with the rich and creamy innards.

Next was a scallop on seaweed. The scallop was very tender, and the seaweed was mild enough that it complemented the scallop’s flavor without overpowering it.

That was followed by seiko gani zushi, which is female Japanese snow crab pressed sushi, a very seasonal dish and one that is very tedious to prepare.

This had all the components of the snow crab—the unspawned eggs layered on top of the rice, the regular meat on top of that, and the crab innards off to the side. The pressed sushi piece also had some salmon roe as a topping to add a bit more pop to the texture (literally).

Next was basically a build-your-own negitoro hand roll bowl. A “do it yourself” kind of interactive experience with your meal is very rare in omakase (at least from the Japanese restaurants in the United States that I’ve been to in the past), so I thought this was a fun way to make the dinner more interesting.

Up next was shirako, or milt, which is fish sperm sac. Shirako is my second-favorite dish at sushi restaurants, only behind uni, which is sea urchin. Thus, I was pretty excited when I noticed that our chef was preparing shirako. This one was served with some sliced lightly-pickled cucumber and radish inside a ponzu sauce mixture.

This would have been my favorite dish of the meal, if it wasn’t for the oyster that you’ll see later.

After the intense creaminess of the shirako, we toned it down a bit with some shiromi sashimi, which is raw white-fleshed fish (I don’t remember specifically which type of white-fleshed fish it was). It was cut very thin, but when rolled up around some of the greens with which it was served, it was bunched up enough that it had a nice bite to it while mixing well with the greens.

Next was literally the best oyster I have ever had in my entire life. It was insanely large and fleshy, and had the perfect texture combination of tender and chewy. It had the strongest oyster flavor I’ve ever tasted, yet it had absolutely no gaminess that is often associated with highly intense animal meats. It was prepared perfectly, with the salt extracting and enhancing all the oyster flavor, and the juices tasting pure and clean.

I rate this oyster a 9.9/10, and that is coming from someone who considers a food rated 5/10 to be good enough for me to happily eat on a routine basis as one of my regular meals. Functionally, you could say that this oyster got a 9.9/9.9, because I’m one of those types of people who doesn’t give 10/10s simply off the principals that (1) the world is constantly evolving and improving, and (2) there is so much out there I don’t know about, even about my own self and my own preferences, that I am unwilling to declare something as unimprovably perfect.

After successfully recovering from the utter shock that was eating the most delicious oyster in existence to my knowledge, we went on to another amazing dish. I forgot specifically what type of fish this was, but I believe this was either chin or shoulder meat of the fish. With that being said, this was so amazingly fatty that, if the chef didn’t clarify otherwise, I would’ve assumed this was from the fish’s belly. This was as if I was eating the fish equivalent of Japanese A5 wagyu beef.

From here, we started the nigiri service phase of the omakase.

The shrimp nigiri also came with the shrimp head, which I perched atop the nigiri for the photograph. I believe this was kuruma ebi, which is Japanese tiger prawn. I usually prefer sweet shrimp (ama ebi) or peony shrimp (botan ebi), but this tiger prawn had an incredible fun texture to it when I bit into it, and I liked it just as much as the other premium shrimp cuts.

Nigiri service concluded with some eel.

At the beginning of nigiri service, we received miso soup to go along with our sushi. I liked this miso soup in particular because it had a clam in it, which added an element to the flavor profile that I liked.

For dessert, we received some unbelievably sweet pear and melon. This was easily on par with some of the best fruit I’ve ever had.

To complement the sweet fruit, we also received a small cup of mild green tea to go along with our dessert.

As is expected from a traditional Japanese omakase experience, we were seated bar-side, close enough so we could watch the chefs preparing our dishes while we ate.

This was a relatively small restaurant, and the only other dining area apart from the sushi bar was a small table nestled in the corner near the door.

Sushi Iso easily joins the top of the tier list as one of my favorite restaurants of all time. All the food was delicious and very high in quality, and the small plates that we were served prior to nigiri service were unique and uncommon relative to what I’m used to having at Japanese restaurants in the United States.

Another interesting element to this was the price. Something of this caliber could easily have a starting cost of about US$200.00 in the United States, and it could still be justified at the US$250.00 or US$300.00 price point simply because of how great the meal is. With that being said, this was only ~US$70.00 per person at Sushi Iso.

(I don’t have the exact price in Japanese yen because my friend paid for the meal and the chef just wrote the total price on a piece of paper instead of giving an itemized receipt, but when I saw the grand total, I thought it was suspiciously low, so I converted it to USD on my phone and saw that each person’s meal was right around $70.)

This was the favorite meal I had throughout my entire two-week stay in Tokyo. If you are in Tokyo and it is within reason to travel to Nakano City, I highly recommend this restaurant.

 

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Hello, Matsumoto in Los Angeles, California

by   •   Food
 

I have an international trip coming up soon. While booking my flight, I wasn’t able to find any non-stop service to my destination out of my home airport of Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada; rather than taking an itinerary with a layover, I decided to head over to Los Angeles, California ahead of time on my own to visit some friends for a little while before departing out of Los Angeles International Airport instead.

While in LA, I met up with one of my friends who had just gotten back from her own international trip. Her mom was in town too and had never dined at an omakase restaurant before, so we decided on going to Matsumoto together for dinner.

When I tried to book a reservation, I ran into some issues on their website. Rather than fighting with an online inanimate object, I decided to call the restaurant to see if they could just hold a reservation slot for me instead. The person who picked up the phone pretended like she was engaging in a conversation with me, but would answer my questions and statements with completely inapplicable responses and meaningless fragments. This would’ve been completely fine if she had just said that she doesn’t speak English—that isn’t an issue for someone running an authentic Japanese restaurant—but instead of disclosing her communication barrier, she just kept on pretending like she knew what I was saying. After I discovered that she was literally trolling, I bid her farewell and went back to the online booking system. I ended up resolving my problem by booking my reservation in two separate transactions.

Luckily, on the day of our dinner, everything went far more smoothly. I don’t know if the person who had previously answered the phone was there that day, but the service was great, both when we arrived and throughout our entire meal.

An overwhelming majority of the time, omakase restaurants I go to will charge a predetermined price for the meal. Sometimes, they will have different tiers of omakase experiences (i.e., starting with an entry-level tier with more basic sushi, all the way up to a very premium tier that has more desirable cuts of fish), but ultimately, you know what you’re getting yourself into before committing to the meal.

Matsumoto, on the other hand, left the omakase completely open-ended. Rather than charging a “bulk,” “discounted” rate for getting the full omakase, they basically charged everything a la carte. The reason I know this is because, when we received our check at the end of our meal, every single piece of nigiri we ate was itemized out with its associated price (which I will share throughout my blog post). This is obviously less optimal in terms of the cost-to-value ratio, but on the other hand, it allows for the maximum possible amount of customizability for your meal.

The nigiri came out in sets of two. For our first plate, we got bigfin reef squid (aori ika) atop a shiso leaf for US$9.00, and young sea bream (kodai) for US$7.00.

Next was Japanese halfbeak (sayori) for US$9.00, and horse mackerel (aji) for US$7.00.

Following that was soy-marinated tuna (zuke maguro) for US$9.00, and greater amberjack (kampachi) for US$6.50.

This was a traditional omakase experience at the restaurant’s sushi bar, which meant that we were able to watch the chef prepare our dishes throughout our meal.

Next was Japanese Spanish mackerel (sawara) for US$7.00, and Japanese barracuda (kamasu) for US$8.50.

The subsequent plate had medium-fatty tuna belly (chutoro) for US$11.00, and golden eye snapper (kinmedai) for US$9.50.

Afterwards, we got sweet shrimp (ama ebi) for US$11.00, and horsehair crab (kegani) for US$12.00.

Our second-to-last plate of the regular omakase had extra-fatty tuna belly (otoro) for US$13.00, and blackthroat sea perch (nodoguro) for US$12.00.

Here is a shot of the chef preparing the final pair of the regular omakase.

Our final plate consisted of two types of sea urchin (uni)—Bafun for US$17.00, and Mursaki for another US$17.00.

I’m a fan of colder beverages, but my friend likes to get hot tea whenever we go to a Japanese restaurant; this was her hot green tea, for US$3.00.

By this point, if you’re either familiar with sushi restaurants or have read a lot of restaurant reviews on my blog, you might have noticed that the fish we got served was fairly uncommon and unusual… which was one of my favorite things about the meal. As you can see, Matsuomoto did not serve any of the basics, i.e., no salmon, no yellowtail, and no lean tuna. All basics-adjacent fish was prepared in a way that was special, such as the fleshy tuna (akami) being soy-marinated, or the shrimp being sweet shrimp (ama ebi) instead of regular shrimp (ebi). This meant that I was able to eat an amazing variety of fish, some of which I had the opportunity to try for the very first time.

From here, we had the option of ending our meal or continuing. Each piece of nigiri was designed to be eaten in one bite, so we technically only had 16 “bites” of food so far. Although I was satisfied, I wasn’t anywhere close to full. I was having so much fun seeing so many intriguing different kinds of fish and trying new flavors that I told the chef I was happy to continue for at least a few more plates.

Our first bonus plate had jumbo clam (mirugai) for US$12.00, and baby white shrimp (shiro ebi) for US$11.00.

That was followed by kelp-cured Japanese horsehead tilefish (amadai kobujime) for US$8.50, and Pacific saury (sanma) for US$7.50.

Our actual final sushi plate of the meal had round clam (aoyagi) for US$9.00, and marinated salmon roe (ikura okizuke) for US$7.00.

As our meal came to an end, our chef began focusing on other diners. Here is a shot of him preparing a plate for some people seated at the tables behind us.

For dessert, my party shared one purple yam Yōkan for US$7.00, and one matcha pudding for US$9.00.

After finishing our meal and prior to departing, I snapped a photograph of the interior of the restaurant.

Cost-wise, this was a bit on the pricier end—just the 22 pieces of sushi came out to US$220.50 per person, excluding dessert, tax, and gratuity. With that being said, I’m very glad I got a chance to dine at Matsumoto because it exposed me to a lot of new types of fish that I think I otherwise would not have been able to try at other restaurants. The fact that sushi is my favorite food and I have gone to a lot of different sushi restaurants nationwide, yet still tried some cuts of fish at Matsumoto for the first time ever, should be a good indication of how unique of an omakase experience it provided.

I think if you’re relatively new to sushi, there are other restaurants that will offer much better value for your money by way of lower prices and larger portion sizes with comparable fish quality. However, if you’ve already been to a lot of sushi restaurants and are hoping to experience something fresh and novel, I think Matsumoto is definitely worth considering if you happen to be around the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles.

 

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Hello, Best Friend at the Park MGM on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada

by   •   Food, Las Vegas
 

No matter how strong my love is for Las Vegas, one of the things I adamantly hate about it is how it is commonplace and acceptable to smoke cigarettes inside casino buildings on the Las Vegas Strip. Basically every other area of the United States has justifiably banned smoking inside buildings (and even within a certain distance of the entrance of buildings), but casinos seem to be be the anomaly and are okay with jeopardizing the health of their visitors in order to satisfy smokers.

Fortunately, there is one property on the Strip that has banned smoking indoors—Park MGM. (As a side note, the Vdara also bans smoking, but it is just a resort and spa and doesn’t have a casino, and it also doesn’t have a Las Vegas Boulevard address.) In the spirit of voting with my wallet, I like to support businesses that support my beliefs, so for dinner, I decided to dine at Best Friend, a restaurant inside Park MGM.

I dined with two friends, which made us a group of three. All three of us decided to get the chef’s tasting menu for US$75.00 per person.

The first round of food came out, and as expected from a Korean restaurant, it consisted of a lot of 반찬, pronounced as “banchan” and meaning “side dish.” In addition, it also came with a side of buns, which is less common for Korean cuisine.

One thing that you might notice is that the buns came out as a set of four instead of a set of three. This is going to be a recurring theme that you’ll notice on an ongoing basis throughout this meal, which I will point out during my review whenever it was relevant.

As the first main entrée, we got slippery shrimp. This had a great balance of crispiness and tenderness. The flavor of the sauce was great, and it had a relatively light and reasonable amount of breading, which meant that the shrimp flavor was not overpowered. This was my favorite dish of the meal.

The slippery shrimp came out as two plates instead of three, so we thought that one plate was missing. However, when we pointed this out to the waiter, he replied that the chef’s tasting menu at Best Friend is more of a communal, family-style situation, as opposed to the neat, well-presented, singular dishes that you might find in a traditional chef’s tasting menu or omakase experience. Thus, he said that the slippery shrimp came out in a way where it was intended to be shared by the entire table.

Although that was unusual compared to what I am used to or was expecting, it was understandable, and it made a decent amount of sense considering that the family-style sharing of food is indeed something that is common in Asian cultures.

On top of that, the waiter said that a group of three is a fairly unusual group size for them to see, and that their tasting menu is often sized to be compatible for pairs. Thus, he said that, in situations where they can accommodate a portion size for three people, they would do it, but otherwise, we would end up getting portion sizes intended for groups of four.

Now back to the slippery shrimp. With all that being said above, there was another funny facet to this situation. In our group of three diners, we had one person who does not eat fish or seafood. This meant that this slippery shrimp entrée, which I now noticed was definitely intended for a group of four, is now being split between only two people. Luckily, it was very delicious and I was happy to eat a large portion of it, but it was quite satisfyingly filling.

Next up were Kogi tacos from Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ Taco Truck. Because these were individual tacos, we got our proper serving of three tacos. I thought these were solid tacos, and I was not surprised when I later found out that they were made to resemble food truck tacos, as it definitely gave off that impression.

Next up was the meat. One of the plates was garlic chicken; the other was 갈비, pronounced “galbi,” which is Korean barbecued short rib.

These were gigantic portion sizes, and again, I think we got the amount of meat that was supposed to go to four people instead of just three. The galbi was good, albeit a bit heavy on large chunks of fat. The garlic chicken was passable, with decent flavor but a bit dry in texture.

With that being said, this is the point where I was getting extremely full and realized that I was getting some amazingly great value for my money, considering just how much food I was getting and the fact that I was on the Las Vegas Strip where everything is upcharged for tourists. Even though the meat wasn’t the utmost highest of quality, I couldn’t really complain about it, because it was still tasty meat, and I felt like I was getting it for way cheaper than it deserved to be.

Along with the meat, we also got kimchi fried rice. I left most of this for my friends to eat, especially the one who wasn’t quite as full as I was due to him not having eaten any of the slippery shrimp dish earlier in the meal.

Finally, it was time for dessert. I believe this is another area where we got four people’s portions instead of just two, as I think each dessert dish is designed with two people’s portion size in mind, and our waiter gave us one of each.

The first dessert was date cake. I couldn’t really tell that it was date cake; to me, it just tasted more like a chocolately cake with some good ice cream on the side.

The second dessert was what they called a “strawberry shortie,” though from what I could tell, it looked like a generic grocery store ice cream pop adorned with some sorbet and cream on the side.

Both of these desserts were fine, but at this point, all three of us were struggling to keep eating, as we were all very full.

From the outside when walking through the casino, the restaurant looks tiny because the only area you can see from the storefront windows is the front “retail and bar” area. However, once you go through a hallway, there is a much larger dining area.

Here are some photographs I took of the inside dining area and kitchen, which includes its own bar:

And here are some photographs I took of the aforementioned retail and bar area, which does actually seem to sell merchandise, as well as have some bar dining options for people who just want a quick and more casual meal:

If you weren’t able to tell already, I have one very obviously and very important recommendation: if you want to try the chef’s tasting menu at Best Friend, go as a group of three instead of a group of two or four. Surely at some point they are going to address this loophole and figure out a way to not have to give an extra portion of food to every group of three, but until then, I think Best Friend is probably the one restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip where you will absolutely get top value for your money.

With that being said, even if they do patch this loophole, I still think Best Friend is a pretty good restaurant.

For context, I’m personally not a huge fan of Korean cuisine because I usually find it to just be way too salty and greasy for my preferences, and I think Korean cuisine tends to just overload your taste buds with primitive satisfaction (i.e., through egregious amounts of salt, sugar, and fat) rather than focusing more on refined, pure flavors that are considered desirable in fine dining. Also, my parents are Korean and I grew up eating a lot of Korean food that my mom made, but she was not a good cook, so my brain sort of has the idea ingrained in it that Korean food in general is not that good.

With all that in mind, and even as someone who might be biased and predisposed to not liking this restaurant because it’s Korean, I still liked Best Friend.

Now obviously, a US$75.00-per-person meal isn’t necessarily cheap either, but prices have gotten absolutely wild on the Las Vegas Strip lately, so comparatively, $75 is not bad. Considering that they’re basically serving you enough calories in a single meal to last you an entire day (or more, if you do the three-person hack), if you take into consideration the amount of food along with the unique atmosphere and dining experience that comes along with the restaurant, I think it is absolutely worth my recommendation.

 

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Hello, Jeune et Jolie in Carlsbad, California

by   •   Food
 

I recently did a very short road trip from Los Angeles County to San Diego, California to attend an event at the San Diego Convention Center. I took a few stops to be a tourist along the way, one of which was at Jeune et Jolie to try their French tasting menu for dinner.

I usually don’t care too much about the Michelin Guide; instead, I decide on places to dine through reading other normal people’s reviews online and browsing through restaurants’ menus to see if there are any unique experiences or innovative dishes that I can try. I found Jeune et Jolie through my regular process, but later found out that they also had a Michelin star for 2025.

I had a reservation for 5 PM, which was right at opening time. Because this was basically a dinner for me during a solo drive, I booked my reservation for a one-person seat at the bar so that I wouldn’t occupy an entire table that could potentially go to someone else. Unfortunately, this didn’t give me an ongoing view of the kitchen, but it did allow me to chat with some of the bartenders and dishwashers who were working on the opposite side of the bar.

Upon arrival, I was brought to my seat at the end of the crescent bar. The tasting menu here isn’t a preset menu, but rather, a selection of items from which you can pick a dish from each course category. After browsing the options, I pretty quickly knew what I wanted, so I placed my order with my waiter.

While my first dish was being prepared, I was given a complimentary caviar bite as my amuse-bouche. The intensity of the caviar was unexpectedly mild, but it was still a nice starter.

My first course was Anderson Ranch lamb tartare with apple, beet, and mustard seed.

Similar to the caviar, I thought the lamb tartare was a bit mild, and I would’ve appreciated it if it had a bit more intensity in the lamb. With that being said, it was served with apple and beet, which added a clean and refreshing taste to the flavor profile. Because of that, I’m not sure if the lamb was actually too mild, or if it was the juiciness of the sliced apple and beet that was prematurely cleansing my palate prior to being able to fully appreciate the lamb flavor.

I don’t drink alcohol, but I do like trying unique non-alcoholic beverages. Along with a wine pairing, Jeune et Jolie also had a sans espirit pairing to go along with their tasting menu, which I opted to add to my dining experience.

The first non-alcoholic drink to supplement the first course was Kally’s Early Cabernet with notes of cherry, Lapsang tea, black pepper, and thyme. As you’d probably expect from the description, this had a deeper fruit flavor accompanied by a subtle kick.

In between the leading two courses, I was given some bread with lemon butter. The texture of the bread was amazing, and the lemon butter had a fantastically delicious balance of citrusy and fatty flavor. The bartender conveniently encouraged me to save a bit of the bread for the next course to use as a dipping instrument for any leftover sauce.

My second course was San Diego spiny lobster with sweet potato, sherry, and sage.

This lobster had a great balance of tenderness and firmness such that it gave a very fun and satisfying textural experience during chewing that you’d expect from high-quality seafood. The sauce enhanced the lobster well, and after I dipped some bread into the leftover sauce like the bartender recommended, I felt like the sauce even enhanced the flavor of the bread as well.

The drink to go along with the lobster was called Vanille, containing notes of hojicha, burnt vanilla, and smoked shoyu. This was my favorite beverage from the sans spirit pairing; it had a deep, bitter flavor profile, but it was a good type of bitter that was rich in flavor and doesn’t make you reflexively scrape your tongue against the top of your mouth.

Next up was Deer Meadow trout with gooseberry, spinach, and matsutake.

To me, this tasted like a regular fish dish. I could tell that it was high-quality trout that was prepared well, but otherwise, it wasn’t particularly memorable. What was memorable, though was the sauce… because it was way too salty. I’ve only seen this level of saltiness work alongside extremely fatty foods where the salt has a lot of flavor to extract and work with; in my opinion, I don’t think this trout was quite at that level where the saltiness of this sauce worked in its favor.

The beverage paired with the trout was the Blanc, made from dealcoholized chardonnay and containing notes of gooseberry, tarragon, and vanilla.

The fourth and final course was gâteau au fromage with grape, Mascarpone, and puff pastry.

I liked this dessert because it wasn’t too sweet, and instead relied on a nice variety of fruity flavors (rather than sugar) to carry the dish. It was also fun to eat due to the puzzle of balancing all the components to make sure each ingredient was present in each bite.

The final beverage to accompany the dessert was Cerise with notes of cherry, sasparilla, licorice, and vanilla.

For drinks paired with desserts, I usually notice that the dessert is pretty sweet and the drink is pretty bitter, and those two flavor profiles combined strike a nice balance. However, for this gâteau au fromage and Cerise couple, it conformed more to the “birds of a feather flock together” philosophy rather than “opposites attract.”

And if you’re curious, that brown thing on top of the ice cube is a coffee bean. I did not notice what it was during my sips and it eventually made its way into my mouth, so I bit into it, only then identifying the object and discovering that it was not intended to be edible…

Upon the conclusion of my meal, I was given a cookie and a dusted chocolate truffle to eat while remitting payment and signing the check. I liked the cookie and enjoyed the berry coating on it.

During the waiting time in between my dishes, I snuck in some photographs of the restaurant.

When I caught a window of opportunity when the wait staff wasn’t in the way, I walked over to the kitchen to snap a photograph of that as well.

The restaurant also had an outdoor dining area, though it seemed like almost everyone preferred the interior that day instead.

Tasting menu$ 120.00
Homard$  25.00
Sans espirit pairing$  65.00
Sales tax (7.75%)$  16.28
Gratuity$  40.00
Total$ 266.28
The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Homard is “lobster” in French. Due to the extra premium nature of the menu item, there was a US$25.00 upcharge compared to the other items that you could select for the second course.

If you read a lot of my food blog posts, you might think that this is relatively cheap, but keep in mind that I went alone and this was the bill just for myself. When I dine at high-end restaurants, I usually go together with a friend (usually preferring a woman who is good at cooking and is a food enthusiast) because I like discussing the details of the food with my companion. However, that was logistically too difficult to arrange this time around, so I took this dinner solo.

When I first saw the price of the tasting menu prior to showing up at the restaurant, I thought it was surprisingly low, especially for a Michelin star restaurant in Southern California. However, after finishing my dinner, I knew why that was the case—the portion sizes are very small. At the end of this meal, I felt like I had eaten not much more than just a hearty snack.

Luckily, I was headed to my hotel after this, and because of my Marriott Bonvoy elite status, I had access to the executive lounge along with a food and beverage credit. To put things into perspective, after checking into my hotel, I was hungry enough that I ate a whole margherita flatbread, a bowl of risotto, and an assortment of miniature pastry desserts to fill the gaping void that this tasting menu left in my stomach.

To relieve the curiosity of anyone who may be wondering, I figured it would be worth sharing the other options from the tasting menu that I passed on in favor of the foods I selected above:

  • Premier: Amberjack crudo with plum, shiso, kombu, and verjus; or oeuf with sweet corn, chanterelle, coffee, and black truffle.
  • Deuxième: Potager with artichoke, zucchini, rhubarb, fromage blanc, and lardo; cabillaud with porcini, persimmon, and kombu; or Hollander Farms pigeonneau with green garlic and leek.
  • Troisième: Gnudi with ricotta, mimolette, carrot, lavender, and fines herbes; Klingeman Farms pork with fig, turnip, and walnut; or Lone Mountain entrecôte with sweetbreads, Swiss chard, mushroom, and bordelaise.
  • Quatrième: Pêche with corn, basil, and white chocolate; or chocolate with anise hyssop and cocoa nib.

One thing to keep in mind is that high-end restaurants like this regularly change their menu on the basis of what is available in season, so if you choose to also dine at this restaurant, not all of these options may be available for you, especially if you visit outside of autumn.

I’m torn on whether or not I would recommend this restaurant, and to whom. I think if you compare this to other Michelin star restaurants, it is completely reasonable… which is to say, pretty expensive (which is why I usually end up not going to much Michelin star restaurants, because I think the value proposition is not the best). I think the food was good overall, and the service was fantastic (which you can probably tell by the unusually high gratuity coming from me, someone who thinks tipping culture should be abolished in the United States).

I think if you want to go on a cute date to a special spot and don’t have a large appetite, then this could be an experience that is worth having. However, if going to a restaurant with a vibe and atmosphere of this nature is not one of your priorities, then you might want to keep searching for more restaurants to consider.

 

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Hello, Sushi Kisen in Arcadia, California

by   •   Food
 

This coming weekend, I’m headed to San Diego, California for TwitchCon. For that trip, I decided to start in Los Angeles County and make the ~120 mile (~195 kilometer) drive down south, making a few stops along the way. So, in preparation, I headed over from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. While in town in LA and before I left, I decided to stop by 江戸前鮨 㐂扇, which translates to Sushi Kisen, a Japanese restaurant in Arcadia, California.

I originally heard about this restaurant back in early 2025 during the highly destructive Eaton Fire due to this message they posted online during a power outage: “We cooked come proteins that we can’t store in our fridges. Any firefighters, police officers, [or] electricians who’ve been working hard fighting for our community … please come help us clean [out] our fridge.” I used to work in law enforcement and still have quite a few first-responder friends. I now work in a field that is far less stressful and has far greater earning potential, so one of the ways I like to help my former fellow comrades is to support business that support them.

After being on my “want to go” list for several months, I finally found a good opportunity to check them out for a lunch omakase experience costing US$90.00 per person.

The meal started with some sea snail.

My friend got some hot green tea with the restaurant name 鮨 㐂扇 printed on the side of the cup. She said it was great tea, and she was happy that the waitress promptly and regularly came around to give her refills. This was only US$3.00 and she thought it was great value.

The lunch omakase consisted primarily of nigiri. Pictured below were our first six pieces.

Part-way through our meal, we noticed that they were cutting up some tuna; one of the chefs was happy to show it to us and let me take a photograph.

Afterwards, nigiri service continued with four more pieces.

My favorite type of sushi is sea urchin, so I was happy to see that uni gunkan was part of the omakase.

As we were nearing the end of our omakase, we were given a negitoro hand roll.

I forgot to bring my Sony ZV-1 camera for this meal, so I took all my photographs with my phone. On my point-and-shoot camera, there is a single “action” button where you can prompt it to auto-focus by depressing it part-way, then command it to capture the shot by lowering the button all the way down. My phone, on the other hand, has a virtual capture button that immediately saves the picture, and if you want to get it to focus, you have to tap the screen atop the item on which you want it to focus. Obviously, my left hand was busy holding my hand roll and my right hand was busy holding my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is a pretty hefty device, so I used my nose to tap the screen and make it focus on the tuna. My friend found that quite amusing and said it was the “life of a content creator.”

After we finished the hand roll, we each got a bowl of miso soup containing some whitefish.

To conclude our meal, we got a nice, thick cut of tamago served nori-ribbon nigiri style.

As expected from a Japanese omakase experience, we were served at the sushi bar and were able to watch the chef prepare each item throughout our meal. This was the view from the perspective of my seat.

I snapped this photograph of the rest of the restaurant (including the regular table dining area) on our way out. We had the final reservation slot available prior to them closing for lunch, so the restaurant was empty by the time we had finished our meal, and most of the staff had already began their mid-day breaks.

Along with our check, we were given a survey so that we could share feedback about our experience, which my friend filled out. In the photo, you can see the chef eagerly peeking over the sushi bar to see what she wrote, which I thought was pretty funny.

This is what the exterior of the restaurant looked like; it was just a small and somewhat inconspicuous restaurant nestled in the re-entrant corner of this strip mall.

I originally wanted to try out their dinner omakase, but the timing didn’t work out this time around due to my friend’s tight schedule and my infrequent presence in the Los Angeles area. Being in Arcadia, this restaurant is further away from the more congested and unpleasant areas of Los Angeles, so I am definitely willing to go back in the future to try their dinner set as well.

With that being said, I was still satisfied with the lunch omakase. It was relatively light, but still reasonable for what you’d expect for lunch. There wasn’t anything particularly special or innovative about the omakase, which is not necessarily a bad thing—it serves as a good option for someone who is looking for a simple, predictable, traditional experience during a quick lunch break.

 

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