I’m about to go on a lengthy chain of back-to-back travel, so before I leave, I decided to meet up with a friend and get some food at Boom Bang Fine Foods & Cocktails in Henderson of the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada.

For my appetizer, I ordered the waitress’ recommendation of mushroom tart. Instead, I received wild Rhode Island squid and capers with a side of house­made tartar sauce and chipotle marinara. I like calamari so I didn’t mind the mix-up; when I let our waitress know, she said that the buttons for the ca­la­ma­ri and mushroom tart were right next to each other, so the wrong dish was put into the order. She offered to give me a complimentary mushroom tart for the error.

The calamari was decent. I liked the squid a lot, but the breading was a bit intense in some areas, and it was somewhat over-fried. My dinner companion is not much of a fish and seafood person, so I ended up finishing the entire plate on my own.

For his appetizer, my friend ordered corn dogs made from artisan frankfurter and Boom Bang’s “best batter ever,” with a side of ketchup and Boom Bang mustard sauce.

Shortly afterwards, my second appetizer came out—the complimentary mushroom tart that was previously promised. It came with wild and cultivated mushrooms, goat cheese mousse, and verjus. The mushrooms were great and the tart was nice and flakey, but the goat cheese smelled like vomit and made the whole dish pretty unpleasant. … I still finished the entire thing anyway, though I scraped off most of the cheese.

My friend ordered the daily special for his main entrée—14 oz. Cedar River ribeye with bordelaise sauce, truffled French fries, and roasted tomato.

For my entrée, I decided to do something a bit unusual—I decided to order the “small action” seafood plateau, which is usually ordered by a table as a shared platter of appetizers, but I instead chose to have it as my dinner. It came in a hilariously large plate, and everything was kept chilled atop a bed of ice.

First was some tuna tartare, seasoned with whiskey barrel-aged soy sauce, sesame, and avocado, and a side of baguette croutons. I found it funny that they called it tartare, as that is usually a term used for non-fish dishes. The tuna was exactly what I expected from good-quality tuna, but there was also noth­ing particularly stellar about it—it basically tasted like I was just eating a premium tuna poke bowl.

The plateau also came with Oiishi shrimp and a side of Mexican cocktail sauce. The shrimp was incredibly satisfying—it had lots of rich flavor, each one was very large, and its texture had just the right balance of tender and firm.

Third was hamachi aguachile seasoned and served with avocado, serrano, pickled red onion, and cilantro. Notably missing from my serving was the av­o­ca­do, which was instead substituted with cucumber. The yellowtail also did not actually resemble the flavor of yellowtail, though whatever fish it was, it tasted good. The dish as a whole was a bit too sour for my preference, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as other aguachile or ceviche dishes I’ve had.

And finally, a seafood platter would not be complete without oysters. I received half a dozen oysters, three of which were East Coast oysters. They tasted like normal, good oysters.

I also received three West Coast oysters, which were some of the best oysters I’ve ever had. The West Coast oysters had a mysteriously high intensity of deep, delicious oyster flavor, so much so that it was almost as if additional oyster flavoring had been injected into them. Each bite extracted more and more juices, repeatedly covering my tongue and replenishing the flavor until there was nothing left of the oysters but bolus. To be clear, I have had plenty of West Coast oysters before, and they weren’t all like this, so there were definitely something special about the ones from this restaurant.

Considering that I was getting a lot of seafood, I also ordered a side of truffle French fries to balance things out. I prefer my French fries to be a bit on the underfried and thicker side, but I still enjoyed these.

At this point, I had finished a full portion of two appetizers plus a large seafood platter and some fries, so I was pretty much at my limit for food. How­ever, my friend still had room for dessert, so he ordered pavlova with crisp meringue, Bavarian cream, and fresh berries. I tried one bite, and it was clean and refreshing; if I wasn’t so full, I would’ve definitely liked a serving of this.

One funny thing about this restaurant was that there was a DJ by the entrance playing very loud music the entire time we were there. It is absolutely not what I was expecting from a restaurant that advertises themselves as being fine dining… though maybe that is what the “boom bang” is sup­posed to represent? I was there to catch up with my friend, so after a lot of yelling over the music, I concluded my dinner with a sore throat.

I think the consistency and quality of the food was a bit scattered. There was nothing that was bad, but everything wasn’t excellent either. Some of the dishes were fairly average, and I sometimes don’t notice right away because of my desensitization to prices, but if I go back and think about it, there were a few things that made me think “I could get this exact same thing of the exact same quality at a different restaurant for less than half the price.”

If you’re someone who likes a more “youthful” and upbeat environment, I think you’d enjoy Boom Bang. However, if you’re looking for traditional fine dining, this restaurant might not have the type of experience that you’re looking for. I also think it could be worth it for the restaurant to do a quick review on pricing and ease a bit on the intensity of the fried foods.

As a disclaimer, note that I do not drink alcohol and did not try any of the cocktails—which I im­agine must be good, considering that they literally put “cocktails” in their restaurant name. If you like cocktails, wine, spirits, and champagne, they have a large drink menu, so you are probably closer to the target audience for Boom Bang and you may end up having a much more fulfilling experience than I did.

I go to a lot of high-end restaurants, and a lot of people seem to enjoy seeing what food is like at tasting menu, chef’s choice, and omakase restaurants, but I’ve also received a few requests to show some spots that are within a more reasonable price range. To fulfill that request, I made a quick lunch trip last week to Jjanga Steak & Sushi in the southwest suburbs of the Las Vegas Valley for some all-you-can-eat sushi.

They have two variants of their all-you-can-eat offering, a cheaper option for lunch and a slightly pricier option for an all day menu. The all day menu had a much broader selection that included many of my preferred sushi and seafood dishes, so I opted for the all day menu.

My first dish was amaebi topped with flying fish roe. It was a nice, thick, broad piece with a well-balanced amount of seasoning. It had the same juicy and satisfying tex­ture as you’d expect from high-quality sweet shrimp.

Each day of the week, they have a rotating special menu. I tried a bunch of items from their special menu, and the first item that came out was bulgogi inari. It was very average, and I liked it—it was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from bulgogi and rice with a bit of crispy onion at the top for tex­ture.

I also ordered a different beef dish, but I don’t remember what this was, as I can’t seem to find it on either the special nor the regular AYCE menu. It was almost as if it was a beef dumpling, but the fried crust was thicker and it was much creamier on the inside. This item was definitely leaning heavily towards the “steak” side of the “steak and sushi” coverage of the restaurant. I think this would’ve been a better entrée to eat as a closer to counteract a long chain of raw fish.

Next up was was salmon belly sashimi. As you can probably see from the photo, they put way too much screaming orgasm sauce (which is usually made with some mayonnaise, vinegar, fish sauce, and other sauces used in Japanese cuisine). I scraped a majority of it off—as much as possible without removing too much of the flying fish roe. Salmon belly is one of my favorite cuts of sushi, and I think this would’ve been much, much better if served without so much sauce.

Next up was an oyster. It was mysteriously disconnected from the shell, so I’m not sure if this is one of those situations where restaurants only use the shell for show and actually just put the oyster into an empty shell manually. Regardless, the oyster was very large and very flavorful.

After finishing my round of daily special menu items, I ordered a sashimi salad. The photo didn’t focus properly and didn’t come out too well, but I decided to post it anyway because I enjoyed the theme that this restaurant had of broad, thick pieces of shrimp.

I also got a screaming orgasm—the actual entrée, not just the sauce. It was strips of tuna sashimi topped with some flying fish roe (which, I discovered, they really enjoy using on many different dishes as a topping).

I was curious and wanted to try out a few more items from the grill side again, so I ordered a mini chicken katsu. The portion size was much, much larger than I expected, and I definitely regret ordering this because of how much sushi I could’ve had in its stead. The chicken quality was mediocre, it was slightly overcooked, and the breading was a bit excessive.

I also tried an octopus skewer. I thought it would come out raw, but it was deep fried instead. Again, it was larger than I expected, and again, it was fairly mediocre.

After eating all that fried food, I went back to some sushi. I had a lot more nigiri than is pictured here, but one of my favorite selections from this res­tau­rant was the escolar, commonly known as white tuna.

For dessert, I finished with a small piece of mango mochi.

Here is a breakdown of what I paid:

Overall, I’d say that I had a decently satisfying experience. If you also decide to pay a visit to Jjanga for all-you-can-eat and you like sushi, I highly rec­om­mend avoiding their grill menu and just sticking with their specials and sushi menu items to get maximum value for your money.

While my friend Dani was in town this past weekend, she had a list of places she wanted to visit, one of which included a nice restaurant in Chinatown. Unfortunately, it was an extremely popular spot with walk-ins only and the wait time was about two hours, so instead, we drove a mile west and went to Chanko Shabu and Izakaya.

Overall, my experience was pretty “meh,” with the good dishes being counteracted by the bad dishes.

Dani ordered shabu-shabu with spicy pork broth, Mugifuji pork, assorted vegetables, garlic chili, and house special sauce. I tried some of her meat and vegetables, and it was my second favorite dish of the meal.

I usually don’t like all-you-can-eat “cook your own food” restaurants because the service is (sometimes, intentionally) slow so they limit the amount of food you end up being able to eat. However, because this was an à la carte experience unlike many other shabu-shabu restaurants, that downside wasn’t relevant. The upside, however, was relevant, because restaurant food often comes out too salty, so by being able to cook the meat ourselves, we were able to limit the saltiness and allow the rich flavor of the meat to stand out.

Something we ordered that is not pictured here was Japanese fried oysters with tartar sauce, from the agemono menu. They were fairly traditional and straightforward, and were exactly what you’d expect from fried oysters.

Similarly, I also ordered some baked green mussels from their hot appetizer menu, which were also exactly what you’d expect from baked green mussels.

My next dish was tako wasabi, i.e., raw octopus. This tasted great and the texture of the octopus was very satisfying, but I think they overdid it a bit with the wasabi sauce, because my nose was stinging every time I took a bite. I took some of Dani’s rice to mitigate some of it, which made it taste a lot better, but the intensity was still pretty strong.

Next up was a quarter dozen of Pacific oyster with ponzu, scallion, wasabi, and ikura. It wasn’t anything particularly revolutionary or orgasmic, but the portion size of each piece was pleasantly large and they tasted straightforward and refreshing, which made it my favorite dish of the meal.

I also ordered two plates of kushiyaki. I wanted to get an A5 wagyu skewer, but they said they did not have any left, so I decided to try yakitori instead, which is a mixture of chicken and vegetables. I received two skewers, one of which was saliva-suckingly dry, and for the other, it tasted like they some­how managed to put more chicken fat than actual chicken on the skewers.

I also got an Angus beef skewer. I originally didn’t get the dish when I first ordered it, so I asked about the missing plate, and the waitress brought it out near the end of our meal. I only got one skewer instead of two like I did with the chicken, but I didn’t bother asking about it, because it was horrible.

The meat was cooked beyond well-done so it was unchewably tough, it had a very gamey smell to it, and the only way to make it remotely palatable was to dunk it into Dani’s shabu-shabu broth to attempt to tenderize it a bit.

I wouldn’t necessarily say the restaurant was high-end, but the pricing wasn’t exactly on the cheap end either. The shabu-shabu was nice, and the raw dishes weren’t bad, but because of the hard misses with the quality of the skewers, I can’t really recommend this restaurant.