Vegas report parts 1 & 2

Parts one and two of Vegas report are further down the page.

We'll be hitting that new Mario Batali on Wednesday night, and I have a rez at Mon Ami Gabi (to use up some weekday Lettuce gift certs, not married to this idea) for Thursday, when we're on the Strip.

On Monday and Tuesday night we'll be at the JWMarriott, which is NW of the Strip. Has anyone ever stayed and/or eaten there? Any restaurants noteworthy either AT the marriott or close by? I've read about both Rosemary's and Lotus of Siam on chowhound but don't know my vegas geography well enough to know if they're close.


Thanks!
Sue

sujormik wrote:We'll be hitting that new Mario Batali on Wednesday night, and I have a rez at Mon Ami Gabi.

Nothing against Mon Ami Gabi, but for an outstanding French Bistro meal, go to Bouchon in the Venetian. The best meal I have had in my half dozen or so trips to Vegas.

If you're staying at the JW Marriott in Summerlein, then your a bit away from the Vegas Strip. The good news is that you are close enough to the Red Rock Casino and The Salt Lick BBQto practically smell the smoke. Scroll up in that same thread for lots of other tips.

What kind of food are you looking for and what do you want to spend? There are a lot of excellent and inexpensive restaurants in Las Vegas.

stevez wrote:If you're staying at the JW Marriott in Summerlein, then your a bit away from the Vegas Strip. The good news is that you are close enough to the Red Rock Casino and The Salt Lick BBQto practically smell the smoke. Scroll up in that same thread for lots of other tips.

Thank you, we love some great bbq.

jlawrence01 wrote:What kind of food are you looking for and what do you want to spend? There are a lot of excellent and inexpensive restaurants in Las Vegas.

Honestly, we're wide open, it's our 4 days of the year without children so it's all about quality and not cost.

Main wish is to find something near that Marriott so we aren't wasting food/gambling money on cabs.

First off, it's HOT. I live here and I still think it's hot. Temperatures will top at least 105 during the day (and that's "at least," the past couple of days have been 109-110). And I'm a little desensitized, but you might be a bit more uncomfortable in heat that feels like someone is pointing a body-sized hair dryer at you. So you're going to want to take a cab everywhere if you don't have a car, because there's nothing really worth walking to from the JW Marriott.

JW Marriot is a fine hotel, lots of amenities and beautiful gardens, but their dining selection is... meh. Passable, certainly tasty, but nothing to really write home about.

Close in that area of Summerlin is Nora's Wine Bar and Osteria, for solid Italian fare and they serve wine via Enomatic (you put some money on a card, and insert card into the machine which has a good selection of wines and offers various sizes of pours, and the money is deducted from your card).

But in all reality, if you're staying that far off-Strip, your best bet would probably be to rent a car. You'd probably end up paying more for cabs over the whole trip than you would for the price of rental, and you're free to come and go as you please. Cab lines can be downright unbearable on busy nights. Valet is free everywhere. Just my $0.02.

Oh, and I also second the vote for Bouchon.

Nora's Wine Bar & Osteria
1031 S. Rampart Blvd.
Las Vegas, Nevada
702-940-6672.
noraswinebar.com

Here's directions to Lotus of Siam.

Rent that car and go for it!

wak wrote:Nothing against Mon Ami Gabi, but for an outstanding French Bistro meal, go to Bouchon in the Venetian. The best meal I have had in my half dozen or so trips to Vegas.

wak, would love to hear what you had there. We really wanted to like it, but our meal didn't live up to our expectations.

We just ordered a couple of bistro standards for brunch. I had the trout with haricot verts with roasted almonds in brown butter sauce. Beautiful presentation, perfetly cooked fish layered with crisp beans, and crunchy toasted almonds on top. If you look at the picture in the Bouchon cookbook, thats almost exactly how it looked for real. Mrs. Wak had the roasted chicken which was a revelation - the skin as tender as a pastry crust, once again perfectly cooked and juicy all the way through. The bread was delicious and not long out of the oven. Excellent wines by the glass. Service was a little stand-offish at the beginning but improved considerably as the meal went on. And the whole meal came in at a reasonable price, especially for Vegas.

I have to agree with you about the trout - every review I read said to order trout and we did and really liked it. It both looked and tasted great.

Our French onion soup and pate were just ok. Veal (with mushrooms), the other entree, was tough. I thought the veal was matched well with mushrooms. The meat didn't match well with the entree's sauce and it did not match with the tapenade that came with the dish.

For dessert we split a chocolate mousse, which was good.

The experience was very uneven.

I'll have to try it again next time I'm in town.

In the meantime, I have had my best Chicago Bistro experiences at La Sardine - especially the $25 Tuesday night special. Also had some good recent experiences at Brasserie Jo.

wak, thank you for recommending La Sardine, the menu looks great. We will have to check it out.

How does it compare to Le Bouchon? And are the restaurants under the same ownership? La Sardine web site links to Le Bouchon and vice versa.

Thanks for the tip gmonkey...I found an amazing car rental deal, $19/day which is much cheaper than cabbing from McCarren to JW and then from JW back to Bellagio!

So we have a car!!! Now I've gotta get my act together, maps, etc.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.
Sue

sujormik wrote:I found an amazing car rental deal, $19/day

You'll be glad you have a car...especially staying that far out in the boonies! Since you now have wheels, I'm going to suggest you take the scenic drive at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, which is not too far from your hotel. It's a good thing to do coupled with a trip to The Salt Lick (Hint: Do the Scenic Drive first to work up an appetite).

Thanks for the suggestion Steve, we have indeed visited the Red Rock nature area in the past.

We are NOT likely to visit there in 100+ temperatures. However, I'm pretty sure my hubby will be willing to try the Salt Lick, especially if there's a casino there.

He does want to do Mon Ami, really tough to use all those lettuce certificates at home since we usually go out on weekends and with our daughter's bat mitzvah we earned TONS of certificates.

I now have a lunch reservation for Rosemary's for Wednesday, B&B for Wed. night (late) and a map for Lotus of Siam (though the hubby is NOT an adventurous eater, he likes pad thai with peanut sauce ), I'm pretty psyched to try it. Any suggestions for same menu selections for him would be welcome.

And seriously, thanks so much for all the help and support for a newbie. Will definitely report back when we return.

Sue

Will try to hit the Peppermill as well.

i'm not a huge steak fan, but i had one of the best meals i've EVER eaten at craftsteak in the mgm grand.

five of us had the kobe tasting menu @$110/ea and we were just completely blown away. five different cuts of amazing kobe prepared and sliced perfectly, five great appetizers, wonderful veg sides, and a whole boatload of desserts.

We had dinner at craft steak last night, also, and it was, indeed, absolutely fantastic.

Heirloom tomato and artichoke starters, kobe skirt and short rib, and then the sorbets and gelati for dessert.

The short rib was especially remarkable (which is not to knock the skirt steak, which was sublime, but the short rib was so rich and beefy and tender..). I think a solo diner could have the tomatoes, short rib, and dessert at the bar and have a relatively inexpensive ($80 or so before alcohol) and awesome meal.

The only problem is that the tasting menus don't appear to be available for groups of less than four.

--

Re: Salt Lick. We showed up late on friday (10pm, they close at 11), so we were getting the last barbecue of the day, but it was still quite good, especially the sausage and the fattier pieces of brisket. I'd take H1's spareribs any day, though. We liked the smoked mac&cheese quite a bit, too.

Thanks again to all the LTHers who helped me come up with a plan for this trip...we had some excellent food and the car, wow what a pleasure having it. I think that was gmonkey or stevez (forgive me for not recalling this second) but THANK YOU.

Lotus of Siam Our flight was delayed out of ORD by about an hour, then we hit traffic and drove to the JWMarriott in Summerlin. They upgraded us to a fabulous suite with 3 bathrooms! but we still had to face traffic back to Lotus. We should have made reservations but obviously if we had, we'd have missed them owing to that delay thing.

Anyway, our wait was incredibly long, close to an hour even though there were tons of open tables. I'll give the guy this: they certainly honor their reservations. Anyway, that did start the night with a sour taste in our mouths. And the service really went from bad to worse, no announcing let alone explanation of specials, they didn't even include the northern menu when we finally got seated. We certainly saw servers all over chatting up the customers so maybe it was just us?

Anyway, the food was good. We liked the northern crispy rice with sausage, the sausage really just flavored the dish, not so much chunks or anything. We asked for a little spicy and it was perfect for us...can't imagine those who eat at high! We also tried the northern larb, which I believe was ground beef and lamb with maybe mint and cilantro, onions....i think I tasted some anise too, but am not certain. I didn't love the texture but thought the flavor was good. IMO this dish calls out for some lettuce wraps or something...not just spoonfuls of meat on the plate. Whatever.

Entrees were the crispy duck curry which was very good, great heat level again, and the duck was tender and good. My husband ate the shrimp pad thai, what can I say, but he did enjoy it. It was spicier..."redder" in his words" and a little crispier than we're used to out in the burbs. It wasn't quite as spicy/crunchy as it used to be at PSBangkok on Lincoln many moons ago, but it was good.

And that sticky rice with coconut and mango was yes, all that. We loved it, could've eaten much more of that.

So overall on Lotus of Siam, I must confess we were underwhelmed. We may have had our expectations raised to unreasonable levels but we didn't think it was the finest thai food we've ever had. I'd go back and try a few other things mind you, nothing was bad, but alas, we are probably not among the accolytes.

Salt Lick BBQ: I read on another thread about someone who loved the fatty brisket and laughed. I did not like the fatty brisket. The pinked outer edges were tasty but honestly the meat just was not tender IMO. MUCH better were the baby back ribs. My husband thankfully ordered a full rack and gave a few to me...I was hungry. We thought the sides were adequate, an interesting potato salad, an acceptable smoked mac & cheese, a celery-seedy coleslaw. We did like the sauce a lot, saying something because we tend to like smoky/sweet like Bones and Carson's style.

On a side note, we really liked that Red Rock casino. Nice design, high ceilings, really pretty impressed with it especially compared to the Rampart casino at the marriott.

Rosemary's: We did the $22 lunch special. In the case of Rosemary's, we did not have high enough expectations. It was great, from the moment we walked in. Impeccable service. Outstanding menu...my husband ordered for appetizers the Hugo shrimp, their signature dish, and he was licking the plate. Incredibly delicious. I was tempted to go for an heirloom tomato and goat cheese soup but decided on the heirloom tomato stacked salad with smoked salmon. OY VEY. This was outstanding. I commented on one of the maters and the waiter came back to tell me they were "heirloom." Which I knew, but on my request he asked the chef which breed...he didn't realize there were multiple types. Anyway, for the record, they were green zebra and my mouth is watering just thinking about them.

For entrees, we shared, I had filet skewers which was supposed to be served with a fingerling and portobello hash but I'm not a fungus girl so they substituted the cheese grits. ETHEREAL. Best grits I ever had. And the meat was incredible. As was the gravy...this time I was licking the plate. My husband ordered the grilled salmon and he loved it, but did make me share half the beef. The salmon was unbelievably fresh, cooked perfectly, served over an apple and cabbage slaw that he loved. I just wanted more grits.

Dessert was tough to decide, I ended up choosing the day's homemade icecream trio, banana, almond and chocolate chip. The flavors were fantastic. The texture a little grainy/icy but no complaints. Hubby had the flourless chocolate cake with h/m vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream. It was to die for. Seriously, it's miraculous that he let me even taste it, it was sublime.

My fingers are tired so I'll give the B&B report next time. Sorry there's no pics, I just can't get him to agree to photographing food at resto's.

More soon.
Sue

PART 2

B&B I'll start by saying we weren't terribly impressed. We arrived before our rez and the extremely snotty gal at the front desk was positively snippy. We were early, told we'd have to wait til our allotted time and when we came back she did that california thing of making a statement with the raised voice at the end but wasn't a question..."I'm gonna have to ask you to wait in the lounge for a bit?" We were seated 20 minutes past our rez time.

It's extremely loud in there. Literally had to repeat ourselves to the waiter numerous times, he had to repeat things, etc. He was definitely distracted by a large table. I noticed tables getting nice descriptions of specials and menu items that we just didn't receive. We were drinking by the glass rather than the bottle (my husband is on medication) and even though the sommelier looked at us a number of times, he never even casually swung by or acknowledged us. It was sort of weird, we even thought the manager was pretty unobservant as well.

Anyway, I'll also add that we are not tripe/sweetbread/tongue eaters so some of the menu items were not attractive to us right outta the box. The amuse was a bruschetta of chickpeas in lieu of tomatoes. It was quite good. For antipasti I had a prosciutto specially aged, with an unusual melon and some grilled bread, it was just lovely. Really excellent prosciutto, melt in your mouth. My husband had a calamari/seppie (cuttlefish) fritte which was not what he expected, it was almost like a tempura fried with some veggies and a spicy topping/gravy that we could not place. There were some broccoli and cauliflower in it, served in a bowl. Tasty, not a very large portion, and I can't vouch for either fish but he seemed to enjoy them.

For our primi we had the sweet potato lune with a browned butter and shaved amaretti. This is a fantastic dish. The filling was not overly sweet, the pasta was cooked perfectly...really really nice dish. For entree my husband ordered lamb chops, they had a garlic/cumin dry rub, outstanding flavor. He loved them. I had already eaten fish and duck in the preceding days, honestly nothing among the secondi excited me (I was thinking of trying the rabbit but didn't like what it came with I think). Anyway, I had a pasta with lobster and a sweet garlic/spicy chive red sauce. This was an excellent dish, the pasta perfect as you can imagine. They ran out of bread so I couldn't really sop up the remaining sauce but it was spicy and delicious.

Having trouble getting the waiter's attention we opted not to have coffee and dessert, but for ou r anniversary they did bring us a little plate of sweets, like dessert amuses. They were ok, a raspberry gel, a chocolate soft cookie with a drop of fudge in it (maybe thumbprint size) and a third which wasn't memorable enough for me t report on it. (I've forgotten already ).

Would not ru sh back there. Even though the food was very good, I guess we're just not cut out for the NYC celeb chef mode. Too much money for what we got. The overall service attitude didn't help.

Thursday night we did Mon Ami at Paris. I know, it's a local place, why go there when in Vegas...well after the cost and experience of B&B on Wed, I have to say it felt mighty nice to have a little old fashioned LEYE reliability. We have a ton of LEYE certifs and since we rarely get out on weeknights at home, the hubby wanted to use some of them.

A killer french onion soup for the hubby, and a steamed artichoke for me, apps were nirvana. He had a filet with frites and LOVED it. He's a filet man and said it was one of the best he's had in a long time. I didn't get a bite. I had a halibut with roasted tomatoes and asparagus with a "charon" sauce, half tomato/half bernaise. Quite tasty, the halibut was a healthy portion and grilled nicely. Nothing exciting. Desssert was a profiterole gratis for the anniversary ( hey, I mention it all month) and then the chocolate mousse for which my husband pines. He said it was perfect. I started to not feel so great so he got most of the desserts, sometimes champagne hurts my stomach and I think that triggered it. Anyway, it was a fine meal. And even though we used certifs, the lovely waiter gave us points on the card for the whole bill....not sure if he didn't konw what he was doing or it was a "gift" but it was a treat and a little icing on the cake. SO to speak. We didn't actually have cake.

Finally, the chocolate croissants at Bellagio's patisserie. Worth every calorie. Really, didn't even cross to Paris to try theirs, just no reason.

Wanted to try Stripburger but didn't want to deal with the heat to get to Fashion Show and didn't want to spend as much on cabfare as the burgers would cost. Also, didn't eat gelato this trip, wanted to but the timing never worked right. Next time for both.

So thanks to all who offered opinions and advice. We'll most likely be back same time next year, looking for what's new.

Sue