^^^i know what you're talking about... it kind of reminds me of a vampire club in one of the blade movies... the wine rack in the middle is something to check out if for a minute

Bster,

While I whole heartedly agree that FDL is an incredible dining experience, I've never had anything other than impecible, thoughtfull and seemless service in the number of times I've dined at Aureole. That being said, I've always been seated in the dining room. I know those high tables at which you sat and can say that I wouldn't enjoy a fine dining experience at a bar height table either. I always thought those tables to be odd in such a room and couldnt imagine them serving dinner there.

As to food quality I can say that the depth of flavor created by quality ingredients and obvious skilled technique of the kitchen combined with the skilled wait staff, which I encountered, made dining here a good expereince numerous times.

I can understand how you feel though, Had I been hustled through an expensive meal and been treated poorly to food that was lacking in the quality which you were led to believe you'd receive, I'd be dissapointed and even upset as well.

Off night, bad time of the evening, short on staff? None excuseable by any means, but any can explain a bad experience like yours.

Honestly, had I experience what you did I'm certain I'd react the same.

Having not had an experience even approaching yours I still make the reccomendation.

I had one of my most memorable meals of my life about a 3 minute walk away across the casino floor in the same hotel at Fleur-de-Lis - just fabulous. It may cost you a few more bucks than a comparable meal at Aureole but it's well worth it. You'll remember your meal there forever. I've been fortunate enough to have several wonderful meals in my life and the one I had at FDL is way up near the top - definitely Top 10, probably Top 5 or higher. And, to be fair. FDL has an ultra-modern-Gothic type feel as well but the service and food were wonderful and I actually enjoyed the vibe/atmopshere even though the decor was not my favorite.

ditto. in a somewhat funny story, the mom of one in our party (of 3 girls for our 30th bdays) tried sending us to this french restaurant at mandalay bay. she kept saying something about a great view, etc etc -- but didn't have the name at the time. my friend ended up calling mandalay directly & inquiring about their french restaurant. we end up booking dinner at fleur de lys, and thoroughly enjoying it, esp. the complimentary dessert with beautiful "happy birthday" script in chocolate sauce......

however, as we had just sat down & placed our individual 3 course orders, friend's mom (via cell, we were about to strangle our friend for using phone in there) informs us that "no, we are in the wrong place and that we should stand up and abandon our meal" and tells us they just looked it up from home & we should've gone to MIX on the top of THE HOTEL at mandalay bay. HAHA! she wasn't quite understanding the type of resto we were now seated at, and we had a great meal nonetheless. after my own research, Mix does look nice, very interesting glass chandeliers & great view of the strip, with classic french/american fare.

back to FDL: i had an heirloom tomato starter, wish some "tomato sushi" and a requisite mousse, along with other various preparations. then the filet (w/o truffle) with great hearty sides: an au gratin of sorts, oxtail ravioli & some veg, w/ great sauce. i am a filet fan, so a place like this will rarely disappoint. my last was at the Terrance at the Phoenician in Scottsdale AZ (thanks exp acct!), so i was looking forward to a new preparation after that one blew me away......

then i opted to upgrade my dessert to the cheese plate (only a $5 charge), and was really happy. other people in the party chose the choco souffle and the 'chocolate feast', which were both tasty, but with our additional comped dessert (pretty white choco cheesecake w/berries), we could not do the dessert course justice.

lastly, our other two dinners were very pleasing ----

(1) started off with late dinner at Social House (sushi) at TI; for us 3 girls, this was a great way to start the trip; sat outside on the patio, and wished they had been running the TI show, but they were having insane winds the 1st few days. one of our girls works at Kaze & this reminded us of that restaurant. neat preparations, interesting ingredients. she actually went in & got recs directly from, what we then found out, was the exec chef, so we were in good hands. about $100 each, with a $40ish bottle of sake. no desserts, i'm fairly certain, but vegas can get hazy.

(2) last night of the weekend, we headed to olives on sunday night, and can't really find anything wrong with that meal. great sommerlier that got us a bottle exactly at our price point w/o having to ask or mention (around $40), a nice white i can't really recall, but i am not picky with vino. two perfect starters, one veggie (aspargus salad-ish spread), the other seafood (beautiful squid/octo/garbanzo plate). two of us had pasta dishes (butternut squash tortelli & spring pea ravioli) and the other tried the white fish/cassolet special. last big meal of the trip, too stuffed for dessert!

and, great tip: in the MGM grand shops, a boutique called Xclusiv, also sells alcohol, including an $11 bottle of MGM brand champagne, done by frexident (sp?). we stocked up at that place. much better than the $40+ bottles from the Signature room service.

also did the requisite bellagio champagne brunch on sunday ($29) and a few quickie lunches at sandwich shops, including 'wichcraft at MGM shops and the Signature deli.

very impressed by our 1-bed suite at Signature. don't want to stay anywhere else from here on out

miss ellen

ps: we were just there over the last weekend of sept, and primarily chose our weekend trip to coincide with "Art Expo Las Vegas", the 1st time the NY Art Expo has chosen to put on a west coast show. incredible! wished we had alloted more time, and are seriously considering making this an annual trip, along with our usual chicago art-y events (ala SOFA, one of a kind show, etc). i came home with a few little prints, as they had a price point for everyone, unlike SOFA where we just go to gawk at chihuly pieces.

I just got back from my weekend in Vegas. I had some very good meals, but nothing spectacular. I also had the most disappointing meal I've ever had.

Friday for lunch my fiance and I went to the Border Grill at Mandalay Bay. I thought it was very good, but limes were used just a bit too liberally. The chicken chiliquilles were very good, and my fiance's slow roasted pork (I don't recall the name of the dish) was very tasty. The margarita's were very, very good, the bartender was not skimpy with the tequila. It was probably a little expensive for what we got, but I'd go back if I was in the vicinity of Mandalay Bay.

For dinner we went to Hugo's Cellar downtown. This was a really great, old school Vegas, type of place. All of the ladies there get a rose, and all of the waiters wear tuxes. The restaurant was packed, but we were seated right on time. I had the rack of lamb, while she had the flambed duck. The portions were very generous and both dishes were excellent. The meals also come with a salad prepared table side, potatoes or rice, and chocolate dipped fruits for desert. The prices were very reasonable for Vegas. I'll definitely return as it was the best meal of my trip and one of the best meals I've had in Vegas.

Saturday I went to Mesa Grill at Caesar's for brunch. Not spectacular either, but very good. I had an exellent margarita and habanero chicken and sweet potato hash with over easy eggs. My buddy had a mediocre fish dish dish, and his fiance had the burger, which was very, very good. We also had the excellent, spicy tuna tartar nachos. We were very happy there and all agreed it would be worth a return trip.

Mon Ami at Paris for lunch on Sunday was about what you'd expect. Very good food at a reasonable price with nice, consistent service. This is becoming one of my go to places in Vegas. It's ironic since I've never been to the one in Lincoln Park. Probably because they're not open for lunch.

The hugely disappointing meal was at Mario Batali's B & B Ristorante. I posted earlier in this thread about my perfect plan to see Love at the Mirage and then go to B&B afterwards. Step 1 worked perfectly. Love was really a spectacular show that didn't disappoint. Cirque Soleil really does some amazing things. Step 2, the dinner, was just plain bad. We were seated right on time. The wine was good and reasonably priced, and the first couple courses were pretty good, but not excellent. After that things really went down hill.

My group of 4 people had a a couple of orders of antipasti, 5 pasta dishes, and one entre. The pasta dishes included the beef cheek ravioli, which had been divine at Babbo, the wild boar ragu with spaghetti that was fairly bland and uninteresting, and a couple other dishes that were perfectly cooked al dente, but otherwise were nothing great. The wild boar at TAC and Hot Doug's is far superior to the wild boar ragu here. At least it didn't taste bad, though. It just wasn't very good. The spaghettini with lobster and the pork chop were inedible. The cook decided for some reason to dump a box of salt into the preparations of both dishes. We told the waitress about the problem and she genuinely seemed concerned. After checking with the kitchen though, she told us that the pork chop had been brined, and that we should have told her that we didn't like salty food ahead of time. I wanted to tell her that Mario needs to talk to Alton Brown about the proper way to brine pork, or to tell the chef that the pork chop didn't need more salt added after going through the brining process.

The good news is we weren't charged for the lobster dish. The server's attitude about it ticked me off. She had been very good prior to this, taking the care to have the kitchen serve all the courses on two plates instead of one so that everybody could taste everything. The portions were fairly generous too, but there is no way will I go back to this place, and I really wanted to love it. I had one of the 2 or 3 best meals I've ever had at Babbo this summer, and my expectations were pretty high. The ironic thing is that this is only the second or third time in my life I've ever complained to a server about the quality of a dish. Usually I just accept mediocrity and decide to go elsewhere the next time. Also, 4 of my 5 meals on this trip were very good or better and enjoyable. The bad news is that the one I was looking forward to the most wasn't better than the olive garden. At least I've never had anything that was completely inedible there.

I spent 2 days in Las Vegas, and had some really good food. The highlights included:

1. Lunch at Rosemary's. The entire experience was perfect. Service was impeccable. Our group was 4 women, all of whom had on black pants. They took away our white linen napkins to replace them with black so that we wouldn't have white lint on our pants when we left. We had the 3 course fixed price lunch (with a coupon off the website), which was $23. I had the carpaccio, which had a nice balance of beef and blue cheese. Entree was an eggplant dish, which was a stack of roasted peppers, roasted eggplant, and mozzarella served with a smoked tomato butter sauce. What a great dish. The smokiness of the eggplant was enhanced by the roasted peppers. The butter sauce added another richness, but the slow roasted tomatoes provided a nice balance. Dessert was lovely creme brulee. The others had squash soup and a special heirloom tomato soup; both were good, but the tomato really stood out. Everyone liked their entrees: duck with lentils, and beef skewers with mushrooms. One person had the flourless chocolate cake, which was crusty on the outside, but dense and moist on the inside. Perfect accompaniment to red wine.

http://www.rosemarysrestaurant.com/

2. Late night nosh at In N Out Burger (we had a rental car).

3. Brunch on Saturday at Bouchon. We had a basket of pastries: pain au chocolate, chocolate-almond croissant, sticky bun, and cream-filled beignets. Yummy. I had a silky smooth light spinach quiche with some greens. Two of the others had a special of crab hash with eggs that was good, and lighter than it sounds. The 4th had the french toast, which was sort of a stacked bread pudding. So rich, so tasty.

http://www.frenchlaundry.com/bouchonLV/bomenu.htm

After that, we didn't want much for dinner, so we had a quick dinner at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba.

To add to my two experiences upthread, here are some other Vegas dining reviews:

Eiffel Tower Restaurant
I know some may mock this faux-rendition of the original in Paris, but I gotta tell you, I had one of the most memorable meals of my life here last year. The GF was donning her new dress, I in my suit, on the first night of our trip overlooking the Bellagio and its magnificient fountains. There are very few restaurants I've ever been to that made me feel extremely happy before even tasting any food or at least imbibing one beverage. This was one.

I'm not certain that ETR offered the best service I've ever had in a restaurant but it's been a year since my visit and I still cannot come up with a previous or subsequent instance matching the impeccable service that night at the ETR. It's been awhile but counting everyone involved in the service, I'd say no less than 10, maybe 15, different people served us in some way that night.

The food was outstanding, the wine was remarkable - oh if I could've remembered the vintage and varietal. I simply told the sommelier "Big Red, under $100". He selected a tremendous multi-layered Italian boomer of flavor for around $70.

The dessert was some chocolate souffle and just ridiculously pleasing.

Let me put it this way, I can count the number of meals I've had on one hand that were better than most romantic encounters I've experienced - and that night at ETR was one of them.

Along with my upthread mention of FDL at Mandalay Bay, two of the best five or so meals of my life were in the last couple of years in Vegas at ETR and FDL.

Mon Ami Gabi is excellent for steak and drinks overlooking the Strip.

Pink Taco at Hard Rock is our traditional last stop before departing for the airport for one last meal of outstanding chicken or al pastor tacos and margaritas.

Carnegie Deli is awesome in Mirage.

There is also a great Burger Bar in the mall between Mandalay and Luxor with great gourmet and regular burgers and shakes.

Bster[/b]

My husband and I go to Vegas a couple times a year and we always go to Lotus of Siam (953 E. Sahara; http://www.saipinchutima.com/) and Rosemary's Restaurant (8125 W. Sahara; http://rosemarysrestaurant.com/). At Lotus of Siam we go for the lunch buffet. Rosemary's has a great $23 prix fixe lunch monday - friday from 11:30a to 2:30p if you go on their website and print off a coupon. Last time we went we had them pair beer with our courses which was a lot of fun. Both places rival the best food we eat in Chicago. Much better food for value then the places on the strip.

Bradley Ogden at Caesar's was lame. Mesa Grill at Caesar's was great. Valentino's at Venetian was so-so.

Da Beef wrote:Carnegie Deli (The Mirage)-- The New York original has come to Vegas and me being more a lover of the roadfood type places out there, this was one of my highlights. I ate here on a few occasions and enjoyed the corned beef hash, potato pancakes and the big winner (and I mean BIG) was the Woody Allen, a massive sandwich stuffed with corned beef and pastrami, at $20.00 it wasn't cheap but I ate this during the span of a day and it was a damn fine sandwich each time.

The "Woody Allen"--I ate half of the meat before taking this picture...thats how big these things are.

RiverWester wrote:Bradley Ogden at Caesar's was lame.

I could not agree more. Bradley Ogden wins the award for most money I have ever spent on a meal where I had to eat again immediately after leaving the restaurant. The meal was completely forgetable beyond the outrageous price tag.