Last Thursday (yes, I am about one week behind on blog posts), I had a chance to try the new High Summer 2026 tasting menu at Michael Mina inside the Bellagio Resort & Casino. I was lucky enough to be the first guest to try this limited-time tasting menu. To be clear, this wasn’t a special invitation or a promotional event, and I paid full price for my meal. It just happened to be coincidence that the day I showed up was the first day they started serving this menu, and my reservation was at 5 PM right when they opened, so I was the first diner through the door that day.

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.

I’m a bit behind on blogging right now, and after my recent trip to Hong Kong, I have since taken and finished another entirely separate trip (which I will blog about soon). However, in between those two trips, I returned to home base in the Las Vegas Valley to take care of some errands, and while in town, I met up with one of my friends who wanted to check out a new restaurant called Hayworth in Henderson, Nevada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joël Robuchon is often considered to be one of the best restaurants you can find in Las Vegas when it comes to high-end dining. Their dégustation (i.e., their tasting menu, but in French because it is a French restaurant) is frequently described as one of the best culinary experiences in town, and I know of a few people who dine there annually to celebrate their favorite special events.

I want to go there at some point, but in the meantime, I decided to dine at the more casual version of the restaurant—L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. Their version of the dégustation is the menu découverte, or the seasonal discovery menu.

Because I was dining alone, I opted for a seat at the bar so that I wouldn’t be occupying a full table by myself, and so I could see the cooks and chefs in action.

Promptly upon my arrival, I was shown the menus and was served a basket of bread. Throughout my meal, I finished this entire basket of bread on my own, and also ate a few more with a refill.

There were three different types of bread, and each of the various dishes had a certain kind of bread with which it seemed to pair the best. For example, I had the miniature baguettes with the richer and fattier dishes, I ate the croissant with the lighter dishes, and I used the cheese bread to dip into any remaining sauces.

I also just generally appreciated that there was a gigantic portion of unlimited bread to go along with the meal.

One of the complaints that I hear from friends who go to omakase or tasting menu restaurants is how they sometimes leave hungry, which adds an unnecessary sense of disappointment to an otherwise great meal. With that being said, restaurants obviously can’t be expected to serve huge portion sizes to satisfy even the most starving diners. Even though prices are partially set by demand, they’re also set by the cost of the underlying ingredients, so the chef needs to find a good balance between portion size and the overall affordability of the meal.

One way to address this is to give cheap carbohydrates as a bonus filler dish for those who are still hungry. For example, some omakase restaurants will ask if you want more food, and if so, they will give you complimentary scoops of sushi rice until you are satisfied. The way L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon gave me a ton of bread reminded me of the scoops of sushi rice from Japanese restaurants, which I liked. The bread is going to be relatively cheap for them to make, but the return on investment in customer happiness will be huge.

I mentioned this in my recent review of Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen, but I’ve been short of time lately because I once again did my annual “12 Days of Christmas” live streaming marathon around Christmas and New Year’s time in late 2025. I’m finally getting around to catching up on blog posts, so these photos from L’Atelier are also a few weeks old.

When I dined there, they had winter season decorations set up everywhere, which was a nice, festive touch.

Once I let them know that I wanted to try the seasonal discovery menu and picked my preference of main dish, I was given an amuse bouche to sip on while waiting for my first item. I don’t quite remember what the individual components were, but I recall that it was pretty good.

The appetizer was la salade de pommes, which translates to apple salad, with fingerling potatoes, tomato confit, truffle vinaigrette, and fresh shaved black truffle. This was a nice, refreshing start to the tasting menu.

My waiter mentioned that they were offering a special truffle add-on where I could have more freshly shaved black truffle added to additional future dishes for a supplement. Although the truffle on this had a nice, mild, soothing flavor to it, I still opted not to get the supplement so that I could taste the other dishes in the way that the chef originally intended.

The discovery menu had a wine pairing, but because I don’t drink alcohol, I asked for a custom non-alcoholic pairing instead.

For my first drink, I was served their Blushing Mule made from Seedlip Grove 42 non-alcoholic spirit, lime, house-made raspberry syrup, and ginger beer.

I enjoyed this drink, and I thought it went along nicely mainly with the umami dishes. The intensity of the flavor was quite high, and it pierced through the fattiness very well. I’m also a big fan of ginger, so I thought having that familiar zing of ginger enhanced the overall flavor profile of the drink.

The next dish was la homard royale, which translates to lobster royale. This was a Maine lobster dish served under daikon radish marinated in a honey vinaigrette.

To my limited understanding of French cuisine, I was under the impression that the lobster being called “royale” usually means that it is particularly rich, buttery, and/or creamy. Funny enough, I would consider this lobster dish to be quite crisp and clean, rather than creamy. The lobster itself was lightly coated in a somewhat creamy sauce, but paired with the daikon radish, the overall dish was very refreshing.

Next was la châtaigne, which was light chestnut velouté flavored with cardamom and lardons.

Although it tasted good, this was probably my least favorite dish of the night. That is probably unsurprising considering that I’m not the biggest fan of bacon, and lardons are strips of fatty pork, which is basically bacon. I particularly appreciated the miniature baguettes and the the Blushing Mule to go along with this soup, as both helped subdue and offset the intense fattiness.

The pacing of the dinner was a bit slower than I would have hoped. Usually when you’re dining solo, dishes feel like they’re coming out slower because you don’t have a conversation with any dining companions to distract you from the wait; with that being said, I go to restaurants by myself with decent frequency, so even after accounting for that factor, I thought it was still a bit slow.

Fortunately, because I was seated at the bar, I had the entertainment factor of watching the cooks preparing other diners’ dishes.

After the soup came la noix de Saint-Jacques, which translates to scallop; it was prepared seared in a kumquat and coconut sauce, and came topped with a portion of caviar.

I thought this was a great scallop. It was cooked to a great level of tenderness where each bite was soft, but the outside had a nice firmness to it from the sear. The caviar had a strong saltiness you’d expect from good caviar, and that saltiness enhanced and intensified the overall flavor profile of the dish. After finishing the scallop, I dipped some bread into the leftover sauce and finished that as well.

Following the scallop was la morue noire, which translates to black cod, prepared à la plancha and served with mushroom velouté and champagne foam.

I thought the way this fish was cooked made its textural perks similar to the scallop—the inside was soft and flaky, and the outside had a firmer crispiness to it that made the fish taste very good.

At this point, my second beverage of the non-alcoholic beverage pseudo-pairing came out. It was the café noix de coco, which translates to coconut coffee, made with espresso and coconut syrup. This may be shocking considering how much I like fruity drinks, but I actually liked this coffee better than I did the Blushing Mule.

I would describe this more like a dessert drink than what you’d expect from coffee. Although it was overall pretty sweet, it still retained a good balance of both sweetness and bitterness. When I drank it along with a regular dish, the sweetness was emphasized; when I sipped it with my desserts, the bitterness was emphasized, thus creating a great balance in flavor profile with the sweeter desserts.

For my main dish, I opted for la caille, which translates to quail, prepared caramelized and filled with foie gras, along with a side of potato purée. There was a very small portion of potato purée served directly on the plate, but they also gave me an additional hearty portion of it on the side in a separate bowl.

The quail was cooked to perfection. The inside was already tender, but the fact that they stuffed it with foie gras made it even better. The outside had a subtle crispiness to it that enhanced the texture profile.

This potato purée might have been the best potato purée or mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. Usually, restaurants will just overload their potatoes with butter so that it tastes better, but if you’re someone who doesn’t eat much butter, the excessive butteriness becomes pretty obvious and off-putting. This potato purée had the deliciousness of a butter-loaded potato purée, but it didn’t taste insultingly fatty and it still had a strong potato flavor.

If it wasn’t for this, then the other option for the main entrée would’ve been le boeuf, which translates to beef, and was a Jack’s Creek New York Strip steak with braised endive, comté, and jambon.

Throughout my meal, some of the waiters who would come to clear my finished plates would also ask how the food was, and I gave them frank and unfiltered feedback each time. The level of detail of my feedback presumably led them to believe and conclude that I have a decent level of familiarity with food, and thus, we developed some rapport over the evening.

Part-way through eating the quail, a waiter checked in on me, and I let him know how much I liked it so far. After hearing my response, it sounded like he was eager to tell me a story that he had been holding in for the past hour or two. Earlier that evening, there was apparently a woman who ordered the quail, was shocked at how small the portion was, and started complaining about how they deceived her. He added on, “maybe she was expecting an entire chicken!”

I chuckled, but was a bit confused, so I looked down at my own plate. I confirmed that they had only served a quail leg and thigh, which is like a quarter of the bird. I looked back up and was about to suggest that maybe she was just anticipating receiving more components of the quail, but by that point… the waiter had already disappeared.

That concluded the main part of the meal, and we were now left with two final desserts. The first dessert was la figue en sorbet, which translates to fig sorbet, served with blackberry panna cotta and fig confit.

I don’t know if I’ve just been eating low-quality or underwhelming fig my entire life, but this fig sorbet and fig confit actually tasted like a naturally sweet fruit. Mixed with the coconut coffee drink I mentioned earlier, this was probably my all-time favorite fig dish.

The second dessert was la citrouille, which strangely translates to “pumpkin.” The dish was actually cinnamon ice cream with caramelized honeynut squash and pecan streusel.

I like nutty flavors, so as expected, I liked this dessert. The cinnamon ice cream flavor went along nicely with the streusel, and the crumbly texture of it made the ice cream more fun to eat.

Upon the conclusion of my meal and along with my check, I was given a macaron as my mignardise, also sometimes referred to as a petit four.

After biting into this macaron, it occurred to me that L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon did an overall fantastic job at textures on everything they served me. The macaron was soft on the inside and crispy on the outside as you’d expect from a good macaron, but there was also a ring around the edge of the shell that was extra crispy that added even more depth to the contrast in texture.

I thought all the dishes played around with texture in a more “advanced” way like this, which was nice.

I was seated at the main bar with a view of the kitchen, but there was a separate alcohol bar in the corner; this is what it looked like:

And finally, here is a shot of a flower arrangement situated outside the restaurant:

Seasonal discovery menu	$ 255.00
Blushing Mule	$  18.00
Café noix de coco	$  18.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  24.37
Gratuity	$  45.00
Total	$ 360.37

This table to the right shows how much I paid.

Although this was a very good restaurant, it wasn’t quite at the level of being a particularly stand-out experience. To be clear, the quality of the food was far better than many restaurants I’ve been to, and my taste buds had a great time eating everything. However, there wasn’t anything notably crazy, gimmicky, or memorable about it (which is not inherently a bad thing, and could be considered a positive for some).

This reminded me a lot of Jeune et Jolie, another French restaurant I went to when I was visiting Southern California. I was under the impression that French cuisine fundamentally relies heavily on butter, cream, cheese, and other fatty ingredients to serve as a foundation for their flavor profiles. However, both L’Atelier and Jeune et Jolie had cleaner and more refreshing dishes. This could potentially be attributed to local differences specific to regional specializations within France; if that is the case, then this region of French food is something that I much prefer over other French food I’ve had in the past.

Although I would say that I do recommend this restaurant, it isn’t such a strong recommendation that I would suggest prioritizing it if you have a limited number of days and a limited number of meals to try in Las Vegas. Also, keep in mind that this is quite a high pricepoint for a meal. Even without the two non-alcoholic beverages, this seasonal discovery menu exceeds US$300.00 per person after tax and gratuity.

With all that being said, I think this was a successful “trial” for me for the full-blown dégustation at Joël Robuchon. If I was being really picky about value for money, it might not be worth it, but in that case, I guess a lot of other fine dining restaurants also probably wouldn’t be worth it either. I heard that the complete dégustation can take up to four hours; my experience at L’Atlier took about two and a half hours, and I enjoyed it enough that I would not mind a four-hour version of it in the future as well.