This one has a little bit of a funny story behind it.

I obviously don’t expect everyone who stumbles upon my blog to know who I am, but those who do know me at the most fundamental level will most likely know about Tempo, the company with which I’ve been working together for over the past decade. One of its products is The Bazaar, a strategy game.

I oversee corporate operations at Tempo. In my case, that covers matters related to legal, finance, and human resources administration. Furthermore, being on the corporate side means that, although I’m not involved in the day-to-day activities of the company’s individual subsidiaries (such as the game development subsidiary), I still contribute to all projects as a whole. One facet of contribution is intellectual property.

In the process of conducting research and collecting materials for The Bazaar’s trademark applications, I came across a different The Bazaar owned by Bazaar IP Holder LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. As is fairly self-explanatory by the name of the company, it was an entity organized for the purposes of holding the intellectual property of “Bazaar.” Curious what this was, I started doing some digging and looking into the LLC’s other holdings.

I soon learned that a man named José Andrés had a restaurant at the SLS Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California called The Bazaar. Upon further investigation, I saw that he also had a restaurant called Bazaar Meat not too far away from me, at the SLS Las Vegas. As of today, neither of these two locations exist anymore—The Bazaar at the SLS Beverly Hills closed in 2020, and Bazaar Meat at the SLS Las Vegas relocated in 2025. Even the SLS Las Vegas no longer exists—it is now back to being called the Sahara Las Vegas.

And that’s how I found out that José Andrés’ Bazaar existed. (And if you’re curious, yes, Tempo was able to secure its trademark for The Bazaar; trademarks are issued by class, so you can have a The Bazaar video game and The Bazaar restaurant owned by two different companies co-existing, and that is fine.)

I have a friend in Las Vegas with whom I go to dinner on a routine basis. When we were arranging and planning another one of our regular meet-ups, my friend suggested a list of prospective restaurants, and I made the final decision from the small set of options. When I noticed that a Bazaar restaurant was on the list, I figured that now is as good of a time as ever to finally check it out and see what the restaurant counterpart of my company’s video game is like.

Thus, we decided to go to Bazaar Meat by José Andrés, located at its new home as of September 4, 2025 inside The Palazzo at The Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

Upon our arrival, we were asked whether we had a preference as to where we were seated. I like being close to the action, so when possible, I like to be seated near the kitchen or at the bar so that I can watch the chefs cook food and the bartenders prepare drinks. Bazaar Meat had a nice and fancy bar in the middle of the restaurant, so we asked to be seated there.

There were two different tasting menus available—José’s Ultimate Tasting Menu for US$295 per person and The Bazaar Tasting Menu for US$215 per person. I am interested in trying both at some point, but for this visit, I decided on The Bazaar Tasting Menu.

To start, I was served a bagel and lox cone with marinated salmon roe and dill cream cheese. I thought this was an interesting take on the bagel and lox, which is usually made with cured smoked salmon instead of salmon roe. This was a very small bite, but it was nice and flavorful, and I liked it.

Next was José’s taco, assembled tableside. They brought over a leg of jamón ibérico secured onto a jamonero and shaved some off to place it atop some nori.

They then placed a dollop of Ossetra caviar atop the jamón ibérico, then garnished it with a gold leaf.

This is what the final product looked like.

I’m usually not a big fan of jamón ibérico, but I actually quite liked this cut of it. It was fairly mild, and the texture was a great balance of firm and chewy, so I was able to continue chewing it for a long time and continue extracting flavor from it. I made sure to keep the seaweed wrapped around it as well, which contributed a complementary flavor. That, combined with the initial burst of flavor from the caviar when I first bit into it, led to me enjoying this dish in all aspects.

Next was super-giant pork skin chicharrón with Greek yogurt, wasabi, and furikake.

I usually don’t prefer pork rinds because I think it’s way too gamey and it tastes like I’m just licking a live pig. However, this pork skin chicharrón was incredibly mild and smooth in flavor. It encapsulated all the meaty flavor of the pork while getting rid of all the gaminess. The dip was also incredible—it had a nice creaminess and kick to it that worked very well with the umami of the pork skin.

Afterwards was a pair of tartare. The first was “beefsteak” tomato tartare with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, cucumber, black olive, and romaine leaf.

The fact that the “beefsteak” was in quotation marks on the menu, as well as it being labeled as a tomato tartare, makes me think that this is their take on a vegetarian beef tartare. The flavor profile was a little bit confusing, and it sort of dissipated quickly in my mouth before I could chew it for long enough to really analyze what it was like. It was a bit strange, but not bad.

The other was “the classic” beef tartare made from beef sirloin with egg yolk, mustard sauce, and anchovy atop a Parker roll.

This was rich and umami. The sauce worked well with the meat and was very flavorful. I usually prefer light or no sauce on beef tartare because I like the flavor of the beef itself and don’t want extra flavors to tarnish or detract from it, but the sauce used on this tartare was delicious and I thought it enhanced the bite overall.

Next was shrimp cocktail with piquillo cocktail sauce and avocado.

This was fine. There wasn’t really anything remarkably special about this, but it wasn’t bad either. It was decent quality and just tasted like a simple and straightforward shrimp cocktail dish.

Afterwards came the “not your everyday” caprese salad with half a cherry tomato, liquid mozzarella, a miniature crouton, and pesto.

This was small enough to have in a single bite. It said it was a caprese salad, and it definitely delivered on that promise. It was like eating a salad, but you get the perfect amount of each ingredient so that you get the full flavor profile of the entire salad all at once (which I guess is the entire point of deconstructing it like this). Also, this was an interestingly fun bite to have; I’m not really sure what exactly was fun about it, but it ended up being more memorable than I expected.

Next was sobrasada toast with pan de cristal, drunken goat cheese, honey, and chives.

I did not like this item. It was excessively greasy and heavy, and for lack of a better word, it tasted cheap. The syrupy sweet sauce was nice, but no matter how good it was, there was nothing it could do to counteract the thick greasiness that coated the inside of my mouth.

The next dish was served in a ceramic shoe. The waiter told me a story to go along with this about how this used to actually be eaten out of a shoe; that seems a bit unsanitary, so I’m glad they replaced it with a ceramic shoe instead.

Inside the shoe was some chicken croquetas.

I didn’t really like these either, and thought they were a bit overfried. The flavor profile of the filling was vague and felt as if I was eating a salty sausage of chicken blended with some other mysterious things that I couldn’t pinpoint.

This tasted like a more premium version of Costco’s chicken bake (though these chicken croquetas were actually edible). For context, I dislike Costco’s chicken bake so much that I threw it out after a handful of bites. That’s a pretty big deal because I’m someone who is notorious for not wasting food and still finishing most things, even if it’s just for the sake of consuming calories for sustenance.

Next up was the main entrée, a Washugyu chuleton ribeye steak.

Usually, if you want to have a tasting menu, you need the entire table to participate. Also, some tasting menus are made for two people to have together (which is why, for example, you might have noticed from the photograph of the bagel and lox cone that the serving container had two holes for two cones, but only one of the holes was filled). With that being said, the friend with whom I went to Bazaar Meat doesn’t eat seafood, so the wait staff made an exception and allowed me to get the tasting menu by myself while my friend orders à la carte.

It seems like this was communicated for the previous dishes forming the appetizers and small plates. However, for this ribeye, there seems to have either been a breakdown in communication, or it just might not have been feasible to prepare something like this for only one person. The reason I say that is because the portion size I got of this steak was absolutely massive, which makes me suspect that this plate was intended for two people to enjoy together.

The steak itself was fantastic. The doneness level was perfectly to my preference, and the meat was flavorful and well-seasoned.

To go along with my meal, I ordered a non-alcoholic beverage. This was not part of the tasting menu, but I figured I would enhance my experience by adding on one of their mocktails. I opted for the Emerald Coin, made from Seedlip Grove 42, honeydew, lemongrass, lime, and celery with a streak of beet paint on the outside.

The portion size on this was much smaller than I would have hoped, but flavor-wise, I liked it. Its flavor profile is not something that I drink often, so I enjoyed the unique element of it.

The ribeye steak came with a few sides. This one was Julian de Tolosa piquillo peppers.

I wasn’t a big fan of these, but I think that has more to do with my own personal preference, rather than it being a problem with the actual dish. They were a bit mushy and slimy texture-wise, but not so much that it was off-putting. They also did not taste like any other peppers that I’ve ever had before.

The ribeye also came with some buttered potato purée. The menu says the ingredient list for this was “butter, butter, more butter, and some potatoes.”

Quite frankly, this was disgusting. It was basically just a glob of butter with a little bit of potato flavoring in it. In their defense, the menu makes it very transparently and blatantly clear that you are basically ordering butter and not real potato purée. With that being said, I wish they would’ve at least given me an option of having a side of butter or a side of actual edible mashed potatoes.

I took one bite of this, literally had a gustatory shudder, and pushed this aside, never to be touched again.

My third and final side was Brussels sprouts petals with apricots, grapes, lemon purée, and lemon “air” (which I believe is just them referring to the foam on top).

I liked this side, and it was very helpful to cleanse my taste buds and counteract the lingering repulsion I had in my mouth from the butter purée. It had a bitterness to it, but it was a deep, earthy, flavorful kind of bitterness. The ribeye was also somewhat of a fattier cut, so the Brussels sprouts helped balance that out as well.

Considering that I pretty much got two people’s worth of steak, I was extremely full after this. I didn’t touch any more of the butter purée and I only had about half the peppers, but I completely finished the ribeye steak and Brussels sprouts petals. The only thing left on my steak plate was a little bit of the fat cap.

For dessert, I was served Spanish flan with crema Catalina, fresh passionfruit, orange, and almond brittle. I was so full that my body was just waiting for the moment that I was finally done, but even then, this still tasted good. Considering that context, I think this would’ve been incredibly delicious if I was a bit hungrier.

I also randomly had this banana-shaped dessert as well. This wasn’t on the tasting menu, so this was as if I was being taunted by the waiter and given a free bonus dessert when my stomach had no room for it.

… I finished the entire thing anyway. I believe this was a browned banana cake with layers of banana ice cream, coated with white chocolate molded and painted as if it was a banana.

Before I had my dessert, I literally went for a walk around the restaurant because I was so full that I wanted to see if I could move my body and prompt it to digest faster. My friend and I were seated at the bar near the entrance; I walked deeper into the restaurant and went around the corner, and to my pleasant surprise, I saw where they cooked the meat.

This area also had dry agers.

Inside one of the display cases, there was a little trophy and plaque. At first, I didn’t know what this was, but I took a picture of it anyway because it looked interesting. However, after looking back on the photographs and translating the text, I found out that it says:

兵庫県但馬牛
神戸肉
神戸肉流通推進協議会会員の証

Maybe it was just intuition, but yes, apparently I had snapped a picture of their official certification from the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association. For those who are not aware, Kobe beef is a very specific type of beef from Japan, and it is very frequently counterfeited by other restaurants. I had actually forgotten that Bazaar Meat is one of the restaurants that is actually formally certified by the Association to serve Kobe beef, but seeing this was quite the reminder.

As I’m typing this blog post, I also just noticed that it says “Kobe Beef” directly on the gold part of the trophy, in English. I didn’t see that before because I was too busy looking at the cow.

There were two bar areas; the main bar with the alcohol is the bar at which we were seated, and there was another bar off to the side that had a view of one of the preparation areas. Although those bar seats were set, it seems like that area was not used for service (at least for that day) based on the fact that there were a ton of plates stacked right in front of where the diners would be looking.

On the opposite side of the grilling area was the formal sit-down dining table area. I’m actually quite glad that we were not seated here, as it seemed like a lot of the smoke from the grill made its way into the air over here. The large, flowing lighting fixture here looked nice though.

Here is a clearer view of the alcohol that was suspended on shelves above the bar area where I had dinner.

The Bazaar tasting menu	$ 215.00
Emerald Coin	$  18.00
Gratuity	$  35.00
Sales tax (8.375%)	$  19.51
Total	$ 287.51

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Overall, I enjoyed this meal and thought it was absolutely fantastic value. With that being said, I am still thoroughly convinced that I had two portions of main entrée and sides; if I take that into consideration and assume that I would’ve only had half the amount of steak and sides, then I would downgrade my assessment from absolutely fantastic value to good value.

Some of the items in this tasting menu were a hit-or-miss, while some of them were just not to my preference. However, the entire point of a tasting menu is for a restaurant to show off a bunch of different offerings they have, and unless you are going to a very curated tasting menu experience, it is almost inevitable that there will be some dishes that you might not like. With that context in mind, I’d say that The Bazaar tasting menu was overall pretty good.

The Emerald Coin was way too expensive relative to the portion size of the drink. I would’ve probably been satisfied if they used a glass that had double the volume as the one that I was given. I do appreciate that I got to try a new flavor combination with this drink, but at that price, I would not order it again in the future.

Although I wouldn’t consider Bazaar Meat to be a mandatory addition to everyone’s must-go list, I do still recommend it if a meal of this price point is within your budget and you want a tasting menu that gives you a broad variety of Spanish-inspired food. If you’re not as adventurous with your food and just want a great high-end steak, then Bazaar Meat seems to be a great candidate for that.

 
… You thought I was done? Of course not. This is a two-in-one blog post. Remember how I said that my friend did not get the tasting menu with me because he doesn’t like seafood, and just ordered à la carte instead? Here is what he had.

This is cotton candy foie gras. The menu says that this came with crispy corn nuts, but I think they either forgot to bring that, or they meant that they somehow integrated it directly into the cotton candy. This cost US$12.

Next was patatas bravas made from fried potatoes and topped with dollops of aioli, served with a side of spicy tomato sauce, for US$14.

My friend also got some beef tartare (the real one, not the tomato one). As you can see, his portion is substantially larger than mine, because he got a full portion while I just got a tasting portion. This was US$32.

Inspired by my Emerald Coin, my friend ordered a different non-alcoholic beverage on the menu, Squaring the Circle. This was made from Kentucky 74, Lyre’s Amaretti, maple, and cumin. This was also US$18, and I think this is also very not worth it in terms of portion size; notice that a majority of the glass is occupied by a gigantic chunk of ice.

After finishing this drink very quickly, he ordered a Diet Coke. It did not come with refills, so he had to pay US$6 twice, once per small glass bottle he drank.

For his main entrée, he ordered the Vaca Vieja, which is an 8- to 10-year-old black Angus steak from Stemple Creek, California. They sell this by the cut; considering that he was having this solo and I had my own steak from my tasting menu, he asked for the smallest one available, which was 1.75 pounds (which is about 0.8 kilograms). This cost him US$166.

For his side, he got some Okinawa sweet potato with smoked butter miso, Fresno pepper, and citrus for US$15. He also got a side of buttered potato purée that looked exactly like mine for US$18.

His dessert was a chocolate hazelnut mousse for US$22.

For his meal, he paid a subtotal of US$309, and with US$25.88 in sales tax, his total came to US$334.88 (I don’t know how much he paid in gratuity on top of that because I didn’t look at his check after he signed it).

So yes, as you can see, you get substantially better value for your money with the tasting menu. You obviously forfeit the freedom to get whatever you want if you get a tasting menu, but if you’re someone like me who prefers to have a chef pick what you eat on your behalf, then it becomes a very alluring concept.

 
To wrap up this double blog post, here are some photographs of the exterior of the restaurant (considering that I already shared pictures of the interior).

On the opposite side of the hostess’ podium, there was a very large statue of a very happy-looking bull.

This is what the entrance of the restaurant looks like; it is right in front of a set of stairs down to the lower level of The Palazzo.

Nearby was some interesting bovine art.

The Palazzo is part of The Venetian Resort. The property has a large collection of dining options; this is what is available as of today, as advertised and on display on one of the walls near Bazaar Meat.

And finally, here is a view of The Palazzo as seen from the sidewalk running parallel to South Las Vegas Boulevard.

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.