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.

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 complementary 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:

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.

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).

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 complementary 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.