For my next all-you-can-eat sushi adventure, I decided to try out Sushi-Mon on West Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. I like going to restaurants by myself with my laptop so I can eat at a leisurely pace while I get some work done. Upon arrival, because I was alone, I agreed to be seated at the bar so I wouldn’t take up a table that could be used by a group, and so I could watch the chefs prepare sushi.

All-you-can-eat menus usually have a set of premium items that are limited to one order per person. These are usually the better sashimi items that are more expensive with bigger portions of fish and less rice. I put in my first round of dishes by picking their tuna poke salad, spicy seafood salad, and scream­ing orgasm. All of these were great—the cuts of fish were nice and thick, so the texture was very satisfying to bite through.

Next up were two appetizers, soft shell crab and two fresh oysters. The soft shell crab was about average and what you’d expect from soft shell crab. I’d say the oysters were a little above average; they were nice and refreshing, and the garnishments weren’t overpowering so they complemented the flavor of the oysters well.

The third round consisted of three different types of carpaccio: yellowtail, salmon, and seared pepper tuna. The yellowtail carpaccio was my favorite—the fish quality was good, and it had a nice smooth zest to it from the yuzu.

With the premium sashimi dishes done, I went on to order some nigiri. Each order comes with two pieces; I ordered one each of yellowtail, salmon, sweet shrimp, scallop, and escolar. The ratio of rice to fish was a little on the high side, but still within reason. Again, like the sashimi, the fish quality was great. The scallop was particularly noticeably more tender than average.

The grand finale was sea urchin gunkan. Sea urchin is my favorite type of sushi, so if a restaurant has it, I will almost always order it. The sea urchin at Sushi-Mon was decent, but unfortunately, the seaweed that wrapped the sea urchin and rice was unusually pungent and detracted from the flavor of the sea urchin.

To close out my meal, I got two desserts—one mango mochi and one scoop of green tea ice cream. The mochi tasted the same as the mochi you get from pretty much every sushi restaurant, but the green tea ice cream was better (though “better” is subjective here—I think it might have just been extra sweet, so it blocked a lot of the subtle bitter undertones you usually get from tea-flavored ice cream).

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Compared to other all-you-can-eat spots I’ve been to in the Las Vegas Valley at this price point, I’d say Sushi-Mon is the winner so far.

The service was stellar. Both the server and the chef regularly checked in on me to ask if there was any­thing else I wanted to order. Many all-you-can-eat restaurants will intentionally delay checking in on you in hopes that you get full while waiting and order less, but Sushi-Mon did not do that. I usually only see this level of service at AYCE spots if it was almost empty, but Sushi-Mon maintained that level of ser­vice even though there were a bunch of other parties at the tables.

The fish quality was comparable to a more high-end sushi restaurant. The fish tasted fresher, the flavors were stronger, and the sauces and garnishments were made in a way that they let the fish speak for itself (as opposed to making it stronger as to cover up any flavor imperfections in the fish).

The environment was also pleasant. There were TVs playing in the background, the vibe was cozy, and all the staff members were friendly. I was doing some corporate law work while I was eating, and my waitress asked me about it, mentioning that she had previously studied law—a much more mean­ing­ful and interesting conversation than the usual small talk with other servers. Even the background music was to my preference—they were play­ing pop and pop-punk hits from a decade or two ago.

Usually I will recommend restaurants on an if-then basis, i.e., if you like a specific thing or don’t mind about a certain thing, then then restaurant is worth a visit. However, if you like sushi in general and want an all-you-can-eat sushi experience, Sushi-Mon is an unconditional recommendation for everyone from me.

To be clear, you can obviously get better sushi from a high-end omakase experience. However, for under $50, I think you’re going to have a very tough time finding something better.

While I had some extra free time because of the holidays, I met up with a lot of friends. One of our visits together was to Viva Mooo in Henderson of the Las Vegas Valley.

This spot was formerly known as one of the two locations of Kang’s Kitchen Korean BBQ (or 강식당), with the other one being at the Rio Hotel & Ca­si­no. I wasn’t able to confirm this for sure, but due to the abundance of Kang’s branding still in the restaurant, as well as the new owner out on the din­ing floor interacting with customers, I am guessing that the restaurant was recently sold to new management.

We ordered the premium all-you-can-eat dinner. While our raw meats were being brought out, we ordered some pre-cooked Korean fried chicken to keep our mouths occupied.

Usually, at all-you-can-eat spots, they’ll bring out the meats very slowly in hopes that you’ll get full during the wait time. Because of this, there is a cer­tain strategy you have to employ where you have to leave meats permanently in the queue and put in replacement orders prior to the previous round ful­ly being served. It gets annoying, but it is the reality of AYCE business practices.

Something I loved about Viva Mooo is that they were not at all like other AYCE restaurants. All our orders came out quickly, suddenly, and all at once. We ordered beef brisket, ribeye, seasoned rib, beef tongue, and seasoned short rib; not long after, our table was drowning in raw meat. It’s possible that this was because the restaurant didn’t look too busy while we were there, but it was definitely a refreshing experience.

The portion sizes at Viva Mooo were also very satisfying—the cuts were much larger and thicker than what you’d expect from an AYCE restaurant.

I completely understand why other AYCE restaurants do what they do—not everyone goes to restaurants like this often and not everyone knows what they’re doing, so there are probably a lot of wasted leftovers of diners accidentally ordering too much or ordering something they don’t like and not fin­ish­ing it. Regardless, it is still a much better ex­pe­ri­ence when you chew down on the meat and there is actually something there, rather than just fall­ing apart as stringy strips because the cut was way too thin.

Last was the “grand finale” and the signature dish of the restaurant—the “B3ST Burger.” The owner of the restaurant, who is named Victor if I remember correctly, came over to chat with us during our meal. He let us know that he was hoping to get a Michelin star on this burger, and he shared his story of his past restaurant experiences and how he got to this point with this particular burger dish.

The presentation, as you can clearly see from the photograph below, was an absolute disaster. I don’t know if it just suffered from a casual magnitude-7 earthquake while being carried from the kitchen to our table, but the burger skewer was inserted sideways for goodness’ sake. The lettuce was not shaped or rounded, and the vegetables inside the burger were all over the place. Half the top bun apparently couldn’t get through to the suicide hotline and is about to jump off the edge.

Flavor-wise, the first bite was orgasmic. It had a stronger explosion of flavor than almost any burger I had ever tasted. The sauce was also one-of-a-kind, and something I had never seen on a burger before. It almost tasted like a mixture of jam and sauce—sweeter and tangier than usual, but not fully to the level of pure jam.

The next few bites were very good. I think it could’ve used some more vegetables, and the bun wasn’t special whatsoever, but the meat shone through. I finished half the burger and it was amazing.

Then came the second half. The more I ate, the more my perception of the taste declined. The flavor went from “extremely savory” to “good but a little too rich” to “too heavy.” I went back to hoping that the burger had more vegetables, and I wondered how many weeks’ worth of saturated fat I was con­suming in this single burger. I noticed a thin layer of fattiness coating the entire inside of my mouth. I rotated my tongue around my mouth in hopes that it would scrape off some of that new lining of fat on my inner cheeks, but it didn’t help.

There is a reason extremely fatty cuts of meat are served in moderation—they are great at first, but eating too much at once makes many people’s stom­achs uncomfortable. Most burgers use ground meats ranging from 90-95% lean and 5-10% fat, often called ground sirloin, all the way to 70% lean and 30% fat, the highest ratio of fat content permissible under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 9, §319.15. I’ve heard many chefs call 80% lean and 20% fat to be the “magic ratio.”

Because the B3ST Burger is a custom-designed and -made dish at a restaurant that isn’t just pre-packaged ground beef for sale, the aforementioned law does not apply. However, I think restaurants should still use this as a guideline, otherwise the meat will probably be way too fatty, and I suspect that the fat content of this burger at Viva Mooo might have actually been greater than 30%.

Serving something like this will probably have good results for the first few bites as diners get shocked by the unexpected burst of flavor, but it’s not some­thing sustainable throughout an entire burger. People who have more acute taste buds will notice this as an “easy way out” method to make your dish seem better, and I can’t imagine that this burger is close to earning a Michelin star any time soon.

To be clear, I still liked the burger. But, if you go to this restaurant and want to try it out, I recommend only ordering one and sharing it with someone else, at least until the owner makes some adjustments to the formula.

There was also something called a K-Burger Steak on the menu; I ordered this just to try it out, and I think it was basically the same beef patty as the B3ST Burger, but without the sauce and bread. I managed to get through about half of it, simply for the sake of not wasting food, before I was about to feel sick from the fattiness and had to stop.

For dessert, we received a cup of rice punch, called 식혜 in Korean. I’d say this was pretty average taste-wise, but the ice wasn’t blended well, so the bev­er­age wasn’t as smooth and refreshing as it could have been.

In total, I paid $56.72 for my portion of the meal, with $44.88 being the dinner AYCE base price and the rest going towards tax and gratuity. It’s pricier than other AYCE Korean BBQ restaurants, but I think the cost premium is definitely worth it considering the quality of the meats and service.

As a Las Vegas local, it’s always exciting to see new things open up in town. December 5, 2023 was the grand opening of the Durango Casino & Resort, a new hotel, casino, and resort in the Rhodes Ranch community in Spring Valley of the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada. Although I wasn’t in town to attend the grand opening, I managed to find some time a few weeks afterwards around Christmastime to check it out.

After parking in the structure and making my way into the building, I started my journey at Yu-Or-Mi Sushi to grab some food before exploring.

For my entrée, I ordered a chirashi bowl. If you’re not familiar, chirashizushi means “scattered sushi,” which, in practice, translates to strips of sashimi over a bowl of rice. A poke bowl is similar, but the sashimi strips are cut up into smaller cubes. Although poke bowls are technically eligible to be called chirashi bowls by definition, no reasonable restaurant would ever serve a poke bowl and call it a chirashi bowl, because they are just going to disappoint sushi enthusiasts.

Yu-Or-Mi clearly failed here. Not only did they serve a poke bowl in lieu of a real chirashi bowl, but the amount of fish included was so little that it couldn’t have been more than a few strips’ worth (while real chirashi bowls usually contain ten or more decently-sized slices of assorted raw fish). They filled the rest of the volume with pineapple and avocado, and even then, that mixture was only enough to just barely cover, with a thin layer, an astronomical amount of rice.

I can confidently say that this was the absolute worst chirashi bowl I have ever had in my entire life.

My friend got vegetable gyoza with truffle soy sauce and chives.

I like eating meat, and I especially like eating fish. Sushi is my favorite food. I tried one piece of this, and I liked these vegan dumplings better than the chirashi bowl. That should be an indication of how bad the chirashi bowl was.

My friend’s mom got a vegetable tempura roll with asparagus tempura, sweet potato tempura, avocado, and crispy shallots.

At least the menu was fancy, I guess.

After finishing my underwhelming meal, I walked around the resort to explore what else it had to offer.

There was a nice flower arrangement and some Christmas decorations near the entrance (because, as a reminder, I stopped by around Christmastime just over a week ago).

Down the hall, there was a lounge and bar.

Through this lounge, there was access to the outdoor pool area. It was closed to the public at the time, but they said it would reopen soon.

Around the casino area, there was a huge sports viewing area.

There was also an outdoors area called the George Sportsmen’s Lounge.

The George had its own entrance separate from the main casino; I left through that exit and looped back around to the front entrance of the resort.

Here is the view from the parking garage of the western suburbs.

Overall, I thought the Durango was nice, but not particularly special or iconic. I walked through the casino area and noticed that it already has a very unsettling lingering odor of cigarette smoke, which I think heavily detracts from the perceived quality of the resort.

I think the thing that makes the Durango stand out is the fact that it’s out in the suburbs, so it’s much easier for locals to stop by without having to deal with the chaos of the Las Vegas Strip. It also has plenty of free parking—there is a huge lot by the front entrance, and there is a large structure that connects to the northwestern corner of the building.

I don’t actually remember what the name of the lounge near the pool is, and I can’t seem to find it on Google Maps. However, it was nice enough that I would consider stopping by there with my laptop on days when I want to get out of my condo to get some fresh air and have a change of scenery while getting some work done. I assume it would get busy on the weekends, but it seems like a spot that’s preferable over a coffee shop because of how much of a luxurious vibe it gives off.

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to spend living out in the suburbs, because I am considering the possibility of moving back into a residential high-rise on the Las Vegas Strip like where I used to live a few years ago, but because of its close proximity to the beltway, the Durango is quickly accessible and might still be worth it as a coffee shop substitute, even with the bit of an extra drive.

After a lot of back-to-back sushi restaurants, I finally went to something different—a steakhouse. Now that I’m back home in Las Vegas for a bit until my next leg of travels, I met up with a friend and our restaurant of choice was Echo & Rig in Henderson, a suburb of the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada.

While we were browsing the menu and deciding what to order, we got some complimentary bread. The photo makes it look a bit washed out and unappetizing for some reason, but in-person, it was great. The outside was a perfect balance of crispiness and softness, and the inside was extremely soft. The butter had a unique texture in that, even though it had the consistency of butter spread, it still had the flavor intensity of pure butter.

To start, my friend ordered pork belly burnt ends. I tried a few pieces and it tasted very intensely of pork. Pork is usually on the lower end of my tier of pref­er­ences of different kinds of meat, but I do have to acknowledge that the pork belly burnt ends were very well prepared. Although the flavor was ex­treme­ly intense, it was a clean intensity (as opposed to tasting gamey). They also managed to capture the burnt flavor while having a relatively mild lev­el of bit­ter­ness.

My first appetizer was steak tartare. It wasn’t the best beef I had ever tasted, but it still had a rich and tasty flavor. The bread had a perfectly light amount of butter and the sourness of the pickled Castelvetrano olives added a great tang to complementarily contrast with the meat.

My second appetizer was lobster cigars with chili mint sauce. I usually like lobster, but this was the worst dish out of everything I ordered. It basically tasted like cheap deep-fried vegetable eggrolls from a fast-serve Chinese chain restaurant with a hardly-detectible infusion of lobster essence. I tried it both with and without the sauce, and it did not help.

My friend’s main entrée was an F1 Wagyu filet mignon with a side of mac and cheese.

I tried a few pieces of the mac and cheese and it was a bit too creamy and cheesy for my liking. However, flavor-wise, I think it would be great for some­one who likes cheese. I’m not entirely sure how to articulate it, considering that I don’t consume much cheese so I’m not experienced enough to pin­point exactly what was different about it, but it tasted “more gourmet” than other mac and cheeses I’ve had before.

For my entrée, instead of getting a main meal, I decided to get three more small plate appetizers as a bit of a “build-your-own” kind of dinner. First was wood-fired octopus with celery leaves. The octopus was well-prepared and the celery leaves formed a very unique pair with the octopus. The sauce was also rich and flavorful without being too salty or sweet.

However, the beans posed an interesting conundrum. I’m almost never one to say something is too bland, but the beans … were too bland. Well, at least in the state that they were served. These were very large whole beans, so I would be enjoying some octopus with sauce and then bite into a bean, which would crumble and cause an explosion of blandness in my mouth. Until I managed to clear out the bean, it would be a bit too bland. To put it simply, this dish had a sinusoidal wave of flavor—it had high flavor when I wasn’t eating a bean, and low flavor when I was eating a bean, as opposed to having a con­sist­ent steady average throughout the consumption of the dish.

I think there are two potential solutions to making this better. The first would be to slightly reduce the saltiness of the sauce, then cook the beans in salt­ier water so they absorb more of the salt—this would transfer some of the flavors into the center of the beans while still maintaining an overall net-neutral level of sodium across the dish. The second would be to cook the beans a bit firmer and then slice them into smaller pieces so it’s easier to mix in with the rest of the dish and not cause a burst of blandness.

Next was crispy pig’s head terrine with violet cherry sauce. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of pork, this was the first time I had seen this on a res­tau­rant’s menu, so I wanted to try it. To me, it just tasted like shredded pork with stuffing. Unlike the pork belly from earlier, the pig’s head did have a very light gamey taste. However, the greens on the side were a perfect level of sourness that balanced everything out well.

My final dish was bone marrow carne asada topped with onions and with a side of orange slices.

I did my best to prepare this with the tools I was provided—which wasn’t much. I wasn’t given a spoon, so I scraped the marrow out onto the plate with a fork, chopped it up a bit with the side of the fork, added in the carne asada, squirted on the orange juice, and stirred. It would’ve been helpful to have a small bowl on the side as well, as it would’ve allowed me to mix the final result into a more even and spreadable consistency.

Flavor-wise, this was my favorite dish. It was everything you’d expect from bone marrow—savory, creamy, buttery, slightly nutty, and extremely fatty. The juice from the orange wedges had a very interesting effect—it made it so it the bone marrow and carne asada smelled fresh and citrusy on the way up to your mouth, but once you were actually eating it, it did not interfere at all with the umami.

For dessert, we shared a Grand Marnier chocolate soufflé with a side scoop of vanilla ice cream. Because the portion sizes on the appetizers were de­cent­ly satisfying, I was already very full by this point, so I don’t think I was able to enjoy the soufflé as much as I could have. The cream sauce they had was a little too sweet, but bites of just the soufflé and the ice cream together served as a refreshing conclusion to the meal.

Before paying for our meal and heading out, I snapped a photo of the bar area, which had some neat lighting and a nice arrangement of alcohol bottles.

Near the entrance of the restaurant, there was a shop that I didn’t notice when first com­ing in. We were there pretty late so the storefront was closed by the time we had finished our meal, but the area was still open, so I peeked inside to take a look.

There was a dry ager up against a wall that was in the process of preparing some meats; I’m always very intrigued by the entire concept of the dry ag­ing process, so I snapped a photo before I left.

We rotate covering our meals, and it was my turn this time around; the table to the right shows how much I paid.

Although it was a bit pricey, I think the ratio of val­ue to cost was pretty good. The only dish that was a huge miss was the lobster cigars.

Con­sid­er­ing how many different plates we or­dered, I’m sure they would’ve been hap­py to comp the lob­ster cigars if I had asked. However, I al­read­y have an issue of people no­ticing my cam­er­a, as­sum­ing I am a food re­view­er, and trying to give me special treat­ment, so I decided to stay qui­et and not draw attention to myself so that I could en­sure as neutral of an experience as pos­si­ble.

If a meal like this is within your price range, then this restaurant gets my recommendation. If you’re in the Las Vegas Valley but Henderson is a bit too far away from you, they have another location at Tivoli Village, and I would imagine they both have substantially similar offerings and quality.

After a decently successful all-you-can-eat sushi experience about a week ago, I decided to find another one in a reasonable price range to try out and landed on Hanabi Sushi & Rolls on the northwest corner of West Sahara Avenue and South Fort Apache Road.

For my appetizer, I got soft shell crab tempura. It didn’t have as much crab meat as I would’ve hoped, but I still thought it was decent because it wasn’t over-fried and the sauce had a nice flavor to it.

Next up was some oysters. These were probably the worst oysters I’ve ever had from a restaurant in my entire life.

They were completely drenched in an extremely strong mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, so much so that there was no oyster flavor left and it was just shrivelingly intense saltiness and piercingly intense sourness shooting into my sinuses as if I had just taken a pure shot of a repulsive concoction of liquid smelling salts. To compound the problem, the oysters were extremely gritty, so it tasted like I was just biting into sand while my nose was falling off.

My next plate consisted of three limited specialty nigiri options, two pieces each per person: bluefin tuna, sweet shrimp, and Hokkaido scallops. As you can see from the photograph, I was accidentally served salmon instead of scallop. Regardless of the error, all six pieces of nigiri had high-quality fish and tasted good.

Right afterwards, my baked green mussels arrived. This was also a bit heavy on the sauce, but nowhere near as much as the oysters—the mussels were actually edible, and I could tell that I was actually eating mussels.

Next to arrive was the rock and roll, a no-rice roll with assorted sashimi wrapped in cucumber.

The fish quality was good, and I appreciated that the sauce was served on the side for this one so I could control the portion. Rock and roll usually isn’t served with a special sauce, and I never really found out what exactly this particular sauce was, but I lightly dipped my roll pieces and it definitely en­hanced the overall flavor.

As you might expect, I like to order dishes with more fish than rice to get better value for my money, so I got three miniature bowls of poke salad—salmon and octopus, as pictured below, as well as one with yellowtail, which isn’t pictured. The poke salads had a nice zest to them without over­pow­er­ing the fish; the flying fish roe on top also added a nice touch.

Next were four pieces of yellowtail nigiri and four pieces of squid nigiri. Both of these were great.

The portion size of the yellowtail was large compared to the amount of rice in the nigiri, and the yellowtail had a very strong and fresh flavor.

The squid was probably some of the best I’ve had. It’s tricky to describe the texture of squid nigiri to someone who hasn’t had it. The exterior is a bit firm; once you bite into it, it retains just enough firmness that there is a small amount of resistance against your bite, but it is still soft and tender enough that it is easy to chew. When first putting it in your mouth, you almost feel like it’s about to pop, but when you bite down, it doesn’t fully surrender to your teeth and still maintains its form. That description is what I would consider being “squid-ey,” and the squid from this restaurant was very “squid-ey” in a great way.

My next plate had three more “one order per person” dishes: sea urchin, salmon roe, and sea trout. Again, as you can see from the photograph, there was another error in my order and I didn’t receive sea trout. I’m not actually even sure what I received, but it was extremely fishy and had a strong ocean taste. It wasn’t bad though, and it added a bit of flavor variety to my lunch because I usually don’t order dishes that are so aggressively ocean-ey.

Uni is my all-time favorite food, and this uni did not disappoint. The seaweed holding the uni and rice in the gunkan together was a bit stronger than u­su­al in flavor, though it wasn’t so strong that it affected the ability of the uni flavor to shine through.

For dessert, I got some pineapple sorbet. The size of the scoop was generous, and it was fairly unremarkable—which to me, was a good thing. It was ex­act­ly what you’d expect from straightforward and good-quality pineapple sorbet without any oddities.

Similarly to the other all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant I went to a week ago, I showed up at an unusual time between lunch and dinner when it’s not that busy except for some delivery drivers showing up for pickup. I was the only customer in the restaurant throughout my entire meal, and consequently, I got great service.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I went before regular dinner time started, but I still paid the dinner price for all-you-can-eat so I could order the premium items that aren’t available at the discounted lunch price.

I’m a fan of omakase and other “chef’s choice” experiences, and when I go to a sushi res­tau­rant, I’m not too picky about choices and all I care about is eating great fish, so I didn’t mind the mistakes with regards to the wrong fish coming out on two occasions. However, they are still technically mistakes that should not have been made.

Excluding the oysters, I liked everything else, and this restaurant is definitely on my “recommend” list if you’re focusing more on nigiri. I noticed from some reviews online that people were dissatisfied at the pricing of this restaurant relative to its quality, but I disagree with them—I think their all-you-can-eat price is reasonable considering the ratio of fish to rice, the quality of the fish, and the available selection of premium fish options.