For my latest restaurant adventure, I went to Mr. Shota AYCE Sushi in the unincorporated town of Spring Valley in the Las Vegas Valley.

To start, I got salmon and yellowtail carpaccio with ponzu and truffle oil.

Next was the seafood salad.

For my third dish, I received a sashimi roll with tuna, salmon, whitefish, and crab wrapped with cucumber and topped with screaming orgasm sauce. At other restaurants, this roll is often called the Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Following that was seafood aioli with assorted fresh fish topped with fried onion and drenched in creamy aioli and eel sauce.

Then came towering sashimi poke with assorted fish and crab on wonton chips with ponzu, spicy mayo, and eel sauce.

Next was an oyster.

After that was amaebi, or sweet shrimp.

My final plate consisted of salmon belly, ocean trout, salmon, and sea urchin.

For dessert, I got ube ice cream… but more on that later.

If you look through my photos, you’ll notice that this is substantially less food than I usually have at all-you-can-eat restaurants. It’s not because I wasn’t hungry… it is because Mr. Shota had the literal worst service I have ever received at an all-you-can-eat restaurant in my entire life.

I spent about two and a half hours at the restaurant and the waiter came to my table six times. The first time was to give me water and take my first or­der. The second time was to bring me my first round of food. Then nobody showed up for about an hour, before I managed to flag someone down to put in my second round of food. My second round took over half an hour to show up, during the waiter’s fourth visit. The fifth visit wasn’t even a real visit, but I flagged someone down again to get myself some dessert. The sixth visit was to drop off a small container of ice cream. I went straight up to the register to pay, then left.

Decent waiters at AYCE restaurants will check on you once every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure you have all the food you want, or at the very least, show up once they notice you’ve finished eating everything on your table. I understand that some AYCE restaurants have policies in place to in­ten­tion­al­ly place delay in food ordering and delivery, thus trying to make you feel more full and en­couraging you to eat less food to cut costs… but Mr. Shota has done this to an unacceptable extreme.

The reason the table in the background of the ice cream photograph is different is because I took it back with me and ate it at home, because I was way too frustrated with the restaurant and didn’t want to stay any longer.

Never go to Mr. Shota.

I’m back home in Las Vegas for a bit before my next trip, and for my first nice meal back, I met up with my friend Aidan who owns the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube for another food adventure.

This time, we decided on Gaetano’s Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in the Siena Promenade in Hen­der­son, Nevada.

When we arrived, we were served a basket of complementary bread. This was actually one of the nicer bread baskets I’ve had; there were three different kinds of bread, and they were more “premium” pieces than just the plain white bread that you get at a lot of other restaurants.

Like usual, so I can try as many different dishes as possible, I did a “build your own” dinner where I ordered multiple appetizers instead of just a single main entrée. My first appetizer was tenderloin carpaccio with raw filet mignon, arugula, shaved parmesan cheese, and Sicilian olive oil.

I thought this was fine. There was way too much cheese, and I think I would’ve liked it more if it had about a quarter of the cheese that it came with, but I think that particular aspect of the dish is highly subjective, considering that I’m not really that big of a fan of cheese in general. I ended up only using a quarter of the cheese along with the carpaccio, then finished the remainder of the cheese afterwards as a topping for the bread.

Unfortunately, the filet mignon slices were more like shavings instead of slices, as they were a bit excessively thin. It would’ve been nice if the portion size was a bit larger, but when the slices were separated and swirled around, there was still enough substance in them to have a satisfying bite.

Aidan’s appetizer was three stuffed mozzarella sticks with pistachio pesto and marinara. As you may have deduced from what I just said about cheese, I wasn’t particularly interested in them, so I didn’t sample any.

Aidan also got a house salad with mixed greens, carrots, shaved parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

My second dish was grilled Calabrese mild sausage with rapini, olive oil, and garlic. I’m usually more of a fish and seafood person, but surprisingly, this sausage was my favorite plate of the meal. The sausage wasn’t too salty, it had a deep and rich flavor, and the greens complemented it well. At this point, we had also requested a second bowl of bread, and the bread enhanced the flavor of the sausage and rapini very nicely.

My third and final dish was brodetto, made from fresh black mussels sautéed with a lightly-spiced marinara sauce served with crostinis.

I probably should’ve Googled “brodetto” prior to ordering it so I could see that it was basically Italian fish stew. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it wasn’t too bad either. I like the isolated oceanic flavor of raw seafood, so it was a bit different to have the cooked mussels along with tomato sauce. The crostinis were a bit too crispy to the extent that it was a little painful to chew, so I ended up soaking them in the marinara to soften them up first.

Aidan ordered truffle mac and cheese for his main entrée.

For dessert, we split a spumoni, made with layered gelato and whipped cream with a cherry in the middle. The flavors we got were vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio. To me, it just tasted like regular ice cream, which was refreshing after having such a thick and meaty meal.

This is what the inside of the restaurant looked like.

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

One thing I found comical about this restaurant is that it aims to be an upper- to high-end restaurant, but it’s located in a major shopping center area. In order to give off the impression of being premium, they have a valet parking option (which I obviously did not use). Hilariously, the “valet parking” was nothing special—the valet spot was marked off with cones, there was one single valet spot, and it was literally about 20 steps away from the front door. To compound the humor, there is a Buffalo Wild Wings a few doors down, and it was absolutely packed with people who had shown up for Super Bowl LVIII who were just desperately park­ing their cars anywhere there was space. I already despise the concept of valet parking anyway, but this en­tire situation just made the stupidity of the concept even funnier.

Also unrelated to the food, but still something I want to mention: their service seems to be a little scat­ter­brained. Throughout my dining experience, I think there were either four or five different people who served us, so it was difficult to tell who exactly our waiter was—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but definitely different. When the first waiter showed up to take our appetizer order, he listed off so many off-the-menu specials (I’m talking probably like 6+ options) that it would’ve probably been worth it for them to create a special mini-menu for the daily features. He also did not have a notepad, so when we ordered, he tried to memorize everything, then came back to us twice because was second-guessing himself on what we ordered and wanted to re-verify with us.

A recurring theme I’ve noticed from most Italian restaurants is that they serve their food extremely salty, but Gaetano’s seemed to be an exception to that, which I appreciated. The food definitely was still a bit salty, but it was nowhere near the level of other Italian restaurants where it felt like the inside of my mouth was basically getting pickled.

Overall, I’m happy with what I got, but I think there might be some better options that you may want to check out at this price point where you’d get better value for your money.

I have another trip to Southern California coming up, so for my last nice meal in Las Vegas before heading out, I decided to go to Naked Fish’s Sushi & Grill in Spring Valley, an unincorporated town in Clark County, Nevada.

They didn’t have any all-you-can-eat options, but upon browsing their menu, I found a seven-course dinner that I thought would be nice to try out. I expected the dishes to arrive omakase style, but they delivered five of the courses all at once and fairly quickly after ordering.

First was yuzu salmon. This was prepared as rolls of salmon belly sashimi topped with some garnish. The fish quality was incredible, the salmon fat had a powerful flavor, and the texture was some of the smoothest salmon belly I’ve ever had. The cuts of salmon were fairly thin, but because they were rolled into cylinders, it gave the effect of falling apart in your mouth but still having enough depth to it that it was satisfying.

Next was my choice of sushi roll. I picked a tiger roll, but my other options were a Lisa Lisa roll and Japanese lasagna. The tiger roll I received was a little bit different than what I’m used to getting at other sushi restaurants, but it was for the better—it had plenty of fish and a good balance of all ingredients such that no single flavor was overpowering.

Following the roll was six pieces of nigiri: bluefin tuna belly, tuna, salmon belly, yellowtail, scallop, and eel. Every single piece of nigiri was made with very high quality cuts of fish, and the ratio of fish to rice was perfect.

For sushi of this grade, I am used to the chef having already added a small smear of wasabi between the fish and rice so that they can control the potency; these pieces of nigiri did not have that, so I added in the wasabi myself (which obviously is not an issue, but I think is still worth mentioning, considering that the restaurant might want to raise the class of service and account for small luxuries to match the quality of the fish).

After having a lot of rich, fatty sushi, I was able to balance out my taste buds with some miso soup and tempura.

There were seven pieces of tempura: three shrimp, two different kinds of potato, one mushroom, and one onion.

For my final dish, which came out after I was close to finishing the prior five courses, I received grilled salmon collar. I usually think collar is overrated because of how difficult it is to eat and how little meat you get relative to the pricepoint at most restaurants, but this was the best salmon collar I’ve ever had. There was basically an entire salmon filet still attached to it that was perfectly cooked rare with a nice, crispy sear on the outside. This was also an extremely fatty cut, which made me happy that I was eating plenty of omega-3 fatty acids and improving my heart health.

For dessert, I got two pieces of mochi, one mango and one strawberry. This was very generic mochi and tasted about the same as the mochi you get from pretty much every other sushi restaurant.

There were a few other parties seated while I was eating, but I managed to snap a photo of the vibe of the restaurant between guests. Unfortunately, because of how dim it was, all of them ended up somewhat blurry, so this is the best shot I have.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

High-end, multi-course dinners usually have portion sizes designed for the average person. I eat a lot, and this was actually my first meal of the day, so I was pretty hungry. Even then, after getting through all seven courses, I was pretty full up to the point where I probably wouldn’t have been able to finish the salmon collar if it wasn’t so delicious.

The tiger roll was pretty big and packed, there was a lot of tempura, and the filet attached to the salmon collar was large enough that someone with a small stomach might be able to eat just the salmon col­lar with a side of rice and call it a meal. Someone who only eats a normal and reasonable amount of food per meal will almost certainly take some of this to-go.

The service I received was very good. When I finished each course and pushed the empty dish to the edge of the table, it was always removed within a few minutes. When I set my empty water glass by the edge of the table, it was refilled within a few minutes or less. Occasionally throughout the meal, I had various different people checking in on me and making sure I didn’t want to order anything else or put in any special requests.

If you plan on going to this restaurant and trying out the seven-course dinner, I highly recommend letting your server know first so you can be seated at the bar to better emulate an omakase experience. I was fine seated alone at a booth because I had my laptop and I was getting some work done while eating, but this could absolutely act as an entry-level omakase for beginners or for budget-conscious diners who don’t want to spend over $120 for a single dinner.