I usually don’t go to restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip because of the relatively higher prices as a result of the “tourist mark-up,” but I decided to make an exception to check out Stubborn Seed at Resorts World Las Vegas on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

I opted to get the chef’s tasting menu at US$135.00 per person. I went this past Saturday, and it seems like they hadn’t swapped over to the spring rotation yet, as my menu was labeled as still being a winter menu. Each menu was custom-printed and wax sealed, and the inside had a special note welcoming my party by name.

I opted for the elevated experience for an additional US$40.00, which came with three additional appetizers.

The first was a Kaluga caviar macaron with champagne citrus crema and dill, topped with edible gold leaf.

The macaron was delicious, but I think combining it with the caviar was a bit of a waste of caviar. The macaron had a strong and sweet flavor that you’d expect from a high-quality macaron, but that flavor completely overwhelmed any semblance of caviar. I think I personally would’ve probably appreciated this more if this was separated into a standalone caviar bump to start, and a standalone macaron for dessert.

Next was a wagyu beef tartare canneloni with papaya kimchi and cured egg yolk.

This was a flavor combination that I’ve never had before. The portion size was very small, so it was sort of just gone before I had enough time to chew for a while and really take in and process the full flavor profile, but from what I did get of it, I liked it.

The third and final elevated experience appetizer was a Hudson Valley foie gras tart with fuji apple gelee, pine nut, and feuillentine.

The pailleté feuilletine was unexpectedly bitter. On paper, I think it’s reasonable to add feuilletine to foie gras for the textural variety, as well as to prepare it on the more bitter side to balance out the smooth fattiness of foie gras. But, in practice, I think the way that this particular tart was executed wasn’t the best. As a disclaimer, I’m not really the biggest foie gras enthusiast, so it might just be a matter of inexperience on my end, but I’d say this was one of my least-preferred dishes from the dinner.

With the additional appetizers from the elevated experience over, we received the first regular appetizer from the base tasting menu, Kalamata olive ciabatta with whipped feta, Kalamata dust, and pickled baby radish.

The pieces of bread were comically small, and we each only got one piece, but the little amount of bread I was able to eat was good. I’m not the biggest fan of cheese, but I didn’t sense as strong of a moldy flavor from this whipped feta like I usually do from most cheeses.

Next was uni panna cotta with yuzu gelee and orange kombu granita.

The flavor of the sea urchin was pretty mild here, and the citrus flavor basically fully masked the sea urchin. Sushi is my favorite food, and sea urchin is my favorite kind of sushi, so it’s probably unsurprising that I love it when the sea urchin flavor is intense. With that context in mind, my personal preference may have affected how I perceived the flavor profile balance of this dish; for someone who doesn’t obsess as much over sea urchin as I do, this uni panna cotta might actually be a good balance with the uni being just an accent.

After taking away our bowls, the waiter and his assistant brought out this flower and said that the next dish would be a multi-sensory experience. He poured what I assume is liquid nitrogen into the vase, saying that it would catalyze the emission of a scent. I took a good sniff, and even with my highly sensitive sense of smell, I didn’t notice any special aromas.

The dish that accompanied the scent was sake- and citrus-cured Japanese yellowtail with chili ferment, crispy tapioca, compressed Asian pear, and passion fruit buttermilk emulsion.

This was a bit too tangy and tart for my preference. I like high-fat cuts of fish, and I think all the citrus in the sauce and layered in between the yellowtail pierced too sharply through the desirable umami of the fish.

Our next dish was winter truffle ricotta gnudi with maitake mushroom, pine nuts, buttery greens, and winter black truffle.

As you can see from the photograph, this was completely buried in a thick layer of foam, so I couldn’t actually see what I was eating. I started working on whatever I could catch with my fork, and it ended up just being really bitter vegetables. Eventually, after making it over half way through the dish, I accidentally stabbed through my first piece of gnudi, all of which had apparently been arranged alongside the edge of the dish, but I couldn’t tell because of the foam.

After mixing the vegetables with the gnudi, it was far more palatable, and I would even go as far as to say that it was a good dish. But, with this comically horrific presentation, you may also end up eating only bitter vegetables for a while, then get confused during the middle of your meal as to whether you suddenly turned into a cow eating slop out of its trough.

After that miniature adventure, we reached the intermezzo of the tasting menu and received sour apple sorbet with fennel granita and rosemary gel.

This was a sweet, refreshing, delicious dessert. In the middle of our meal.

I guess the gnudi was technically our first entrée, but because of how wrong that dish went, my brain interpreted this next dish as the real first entrée: pan-roasted barramundi with baby leeks, fennel, and shiitake sofrito galangal green curry.

The fish skin was a bit tough and difficult to cut up and chew, but otherwise, the rest of the dish was amazing. The flesh of the fish was extremely tender and had a “melt in your mouth” texture. The curry had an intricate and storied taste that had a lot of deep and complex elements to its flavor profile, yet it was not overwhelming. This was my favorite dish of the dinner.

Our final entrée was Westholme Australian wagyu striploin with brown butter soubise, desert moon mushrooms, Marcona almond fermented soybean, crispy miso cabbage, and natural chicken jus.

Although this was a perfectly acceptable piece of steak, it was comparatively underwhelming considering the level of quality I was expecting from a restaurant like this. This striploin also demonstrated how meaningless the “wagyu” label has become at this point without a rating indicated after it; this had little to no marbling, and it didn’t taste any different than an average steak you’d get from an average butcher.

I think what made the steak taste even cheaper was the large amount of sauce served alongside it that closely resembled steak sauce. I often say that the only purpose steak sauce serves on steak is to cover up an underwhelming steak, because a great steak will shine on its own. The bed of sauce reminded me of what a more sophisticated version of steak sauce from the grocery store would probably be like.

To conclude our tasting menu experience, we received our real dessert, winter citrus pavlova with olive oil cake, yuzu pastry cream, and caramelized pistachios.

There was a lot going on at once here, with a bunch of different textures and multiple variants of flavors, but overall, I liked it. It wasn’t too overwhelmingly sweet, which allowed me to recognize and appreciate the contributions of the individual components of the dish.

And finally, along with our check, we each received a piece of mandarin pate de fruit.

So you may be wondering, why in the world do I have a photograph of this cheeseburger?

I usually only ever go to chef’s tasting menu or omakase experience restaurants with foodie friends who like to eat pretty much anything and everything. That’s the magic of leaving it up to the chef—you never know what you’re going to get. That’s the fun of it, and you get to listen to the chef’s story as told with the food.

Well, just like how I made an exception to my “avoid restaurants on the Las Vegas Strip” rule, I also made an exception to my “don’t go to tasting menu restaurants with picky eaters” rule. I regret doing that, because the friend who I went with… doesn’t eat fish or seafood. I ended up eating his portion of any dish that had fish or seafood in it, i.e., the Kaluga caviar macaron, uni panna cotta, cured Japanese yellowtail, and pan-roasted barramundi.

That’s quite a large portion of the meal, so to make up for it, he ordered JJ’s Guilty Pleasure Burger, a double wagyu onion smash burger with smoked beef bacon, American cheese, crispy onions, and beefy crave sauce with a side of herb bravas. I sampled a small portion of it, but I found it to be a fairly unremarkable burger, so I didn’t have more than a fraction of a bite as to not tarnish the flavor flow of the tasting menu.

Here are some photographs I took around the interior of the restaurant.

So, the final verdict? At US$175.00 per person before taxes and gratuity for the full elevated and enhanced tasting menu (without a wine pairing), I think it was underwhelming overall, but probably still fine compared to other Strip restaurants.

My perception of it might be biased because I ate so much extra food from my friend’s portion, but if it hadn’t been for that, the total amount of food given throughout the dinner felt a bit small. I personally thought the dishes were sort of a hit-or-miss, and if I were ever to go back, I would just order à la carte, start with a round of oysters, get a full portion of the barramundi, and close with a dessert to build my own meal at a much lower pricepoint.