Category: Chefs

Go Fish

SEAFOOD DREAMS IN THE DESERT

Face it: we all eat too much meat. No one loves a great rib eye or cheeseburger more than yours truly, but consuming them isn’t good for our arteries, the planet or the cows. That’s where seafood comes in. People usually don’t associate great seafood with Las Vegas, and if you asked your average tourist, they’d claim buffets and steak houses as Sin City’s most iconic eats. But thanks to the wonders of modern transportation, and exotic, flown-in fare from around the world, seafood-centric chefs are plating a number of dishes that compete with anything you can find on the coasts. Las Vegas may be 286 miles from the closest ocean, but each of these taste like it just jumped from the water and onto your plate.

EMERIL’S CRAB CAKE

Resembling more of a tower than a patty, Emeril Lagasse’s jumbo lump beauty is an architectural marvel – big, buttery chunks of Maryland Blue suspended by the merest wisp of filler, capped with crunchy bread crumbs, and served with either a classic, coat-your-arteries remoulade, or a lighter, piquant relish in the warmer months. The fun comes in toppling that structure to reveal an almost disconcerting amount of plump crustacean within.

MILOS CARABINEROS ROSE SHRIMP

How red can seafood get? How delicious can shrimp be? These are but two of the questions that will be answered by your first bite of these Portuguese beauties. The third will be: How do I properly suck the head of a decapod? Why, with a dollop of sherry poured into the decapitated space, of course! The staff will happily guide you, and the impromptu shot of bisque you create will be a revelation in shrimp intensity

MR. CHOW DOVER SOLE

Urbane, theatrical, and expensive, Mr. Chow may be the perfect embodiment of the Strip’s culinary resurgence since the great recession. Its rice wine-steamed Dover sole might be Chinese fish at its most understated and elegant. The English and French may do wonderful things with this dense, cold water swimmer, but steaming it brings out a delicate, velvety smoothness that the Chinese prize above all else. All it takes is a little soy sauce and some bits of green garnish to complete a fish dish fit for the gods.

YUI EDOMAE SUSHI

Genichi Mizoguchi, or Gen-san to his regulars, has singlehandedly turned Spring Mountain Road into a mecca for serious sushi hounds. First at Kabuto and now at Yui – his own restaurant – he features only the best fish from Japan or the west coast, each variety sliced and formed into the most ethereal combination of fish on rice that was ever popped into one’s mouth. This is minimalist, purist sushi, but whatever he’s slicing (and every night there are over a dozen featured species) it will be the best you can get this far east of the Far East. P.S. Yui Edomae Sushi celebrates its one year anniversary this week.

ANDIRON LOBSTER ROLL

Oh, Andiron lobster roll, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Is it your soft, squishy, split-buttered bun? The rosy red-white chunks of shellfish? Barely held together by mayo? The crunch of celery? The wisp of dill? Truth be told, it is all of these things and more. The lobster roll at Andiron is the perfect evocation of sitting on a picnic table by the Connecticut (or Rhode Island or Massachusetts) shore, with the brisk salinity of an Atlantic breeze in your hair, eating the most iconic and American of foodstuffs. There should be nothing skimpy about the meat, and nothing too overpowering about the seasonings or binder. It should be all about the lobster, tucked and overflowing out of that beautiful bun. And here it is.

YUZU Kaiseki Excellence

 

It took me two years to make it to Yuzu Japanese Kitchen.

Two years.

Sounds incredible even to me, since I pride myself in seeking out the best Japanese food in town, as soon as it arrives in town.

But I have an excuse. (It’s a lame one, but I’m stickin’ with it.)

And that excuse is: Yuzu is located on Silverado Ranch Boulevard. Yeah, that Silverado Ranch Blvd. — the one located way southeast of the Strip; the one littered with poker bars and fast food franchises. The street that considers the South Coast Hotel and Casino a fun time anchor tenant. A restaurant wasteland so vast it makes Henderson seem like Napa Valley.

You normally couldn’t get me on Silverado Ranch with a shotgun in my mouth and promise of free foie gras, but my buddy Martin Koleff told me I had to try Chef Kaoru Azeuchi’s cuisine, so off we were — twice in two weeks — to see for ourselves.

Martin and Rie Koleff, you may recall, are something of a Japanese restaurant power couple in Las Vegas. They both are long time veterans of our hotel F&B scene, and Martin was instrumental in first putting Raku on the national map. These days they are both involved in bringing the Joy of Sake event to Las Vegas, and if there’s such a thing as a Japanese restaurant mafia in town, the Koleffs are the capo di tutti capi to numerous chefs and restaurateurs, many of whom are not as fluent in English as they are.

When Martin or Rie tells us we have to try someone’s food, we listen. Usually. Unless it’s on friggin’ Silverado Ranch Boulevard, where, truth be told, we thought Azeuchi-san’s chances of survival were slim. But survive he has, prospered even, in his almost-hidden haunt behind a car parts store.

He’s done it by doing what so many non-Japanese chefs are afraid or unwilling to do: food his way, writ small, night after night, until he his audience slowly finds him. (Chefs are always telling me how they just want to open a little place and serve their favorite dishes. Yeah right, I always think to myself. With a few exceptions, the only people with the guts to go small and be patient are Asians in general and Japanese cooks in particular.)

Yuzu may be small, but what it’s doing is a very big deal, indeed. It’s not strictly a sushi bar (although there is a small one), and it’s not an izakaya in the Raku or Izakaya Go mold. What it is is our most Japanese of restaurants. A place that could be right at home in a Shinjuku alleyway; a place serving food so true to the rhythms and tastes of Japan that it’s almost shocking when a gaijin walks through the door.

There are many reasons to go here, the passion of the chef and quality of the ingredients being first and foremost among them. The Food Gal® tells us the noodle and teriyaki bowls at lunch are first class, but if you really want to see Kaoru-san strut his stuff, you need to reserve in advance for one of his kaiseki meals.

For the uninitiated, kaiseki refers to a very specific form of Japanese dining. It is the haute cuisine of Japanese cooking — seasonal eating taken to the nth degree — a multi-course meal that combines the artistry of the chef with a myriad of ingredients, presentations and techniques. Everything (and we mean everything) from the garnishes to the plating is thought through and presented in a way to enhance every sense — visual, aromatic, taste, tactile — that goes into your enjoyment of the meal. Many of the elaborate garnishes are symbolic, and all of the recipes try to achieve a zen-like state of communion between the diner and the food.

In other words, it doesn’t get much more complicated or serene than a kaiseki meal, but in the right hands, it is a transporting experience — creating an almost blissful connection between chef, raw material and consumer. There is nothing like it in Western dining, although the elaborate tasting menus of Keller, Achatz, Humm and others pay homage to kaiseki, none of them achieve the transcendence of  the Japanese chefs, who have been at it centuries longer. (Americans are too busy doing cartwheels in the kitchen and padding your bill.) Azeuchi trained for 16 years as a kaiseki chef in Japan, even getting the honor of serving the Emperor, so, needless to say, you’re in good hands.

What you will get will always depend upon the season and the chef’s inspiration, but whatever path is chosen by the chef, it will no doubt be the most delicious Japanese food you’ve ever had.

Our dinner started with the appetizer platter above, containing everything from an ethereal poached egg with caviar to grilled barracuda to uni rice topped with red snapper. From there, we proceeded to a sashimi platter of lobster, striped jack and halfbeak that was the equal of anything you’ll find at Kabuto and Yui:

 

Then came the queen of all mushroom soups: a dobin-mushi matsutake broth containing pike conger, cabbage and shrimp:

It was a soup so startling in its deceptive, smoky simplicity that everyone at our table was shaking their heads in appreciation.

From there we progressed through six more courses, ranging from grilled ribbons of A-5 Miyazaki wagyu (wrapped around more ‘shrooms and wasabi), to a steamed dish (steamed scallop cake draped with a latticework of wheat gluten), to eel tempura, to a “vinegar dish” of seared mackerel that was a bracing combination of tart and smooth:

Each dish was a model of precision, and each left you hungry for more. A big deal is made of the rice dish, for good reason. Rie Koleff (who acted as our personal sake sommelier throughout the meal*) explained that rice always signifies the ending of the meal Japan. This dish was, like much Japanese food, subtle to the point of invisibility:

….but like much Japanese food, once you stop looking for in-your-face flavor, and start appreciating the nuances, you quickly find that you can’t stop eating it. I don’t think a simple bowl of rice and fish can taste any finer, or be found anywhere in Las Vegas.

Those nuances are the key to Japanese eating. I call it deceptive simplicity because you are always getting much more than meets the eye. Especially in a kaiseki meal. Here, you are treated to an education in the centuries-old traditions in the Land of the Rising Sun: the reverence for seafood, the harmony of vegetables and the keen awareness of the seasons. In a nutshell, everything that Las Vegas is not. This is eating as a form of secular religion, and if you’re open to the experience, you will be transported in a way that no other Western meal can match.

The kaiseki at Yuzu is not a formal affair. (You are on the outskirts of Hendertucky after all.)  Because Kaoru-san flies in many ingredients from Japan, it is necessary to book at least three days in advance. The price you want to spend determines how elaborate it’s going to get. The ten-course, sixteen dish affair we had runs about $175/pp, but for $50/pp you can get a fine introduction into one of the greatest dinners in all of Las Vegas. ELV’s meal was comped.

YUZU JAPANESE KITCHEN

1310 East Silverado Ranch Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89183

702.778.8889

http://www.yuzujapanesekitchen.com/

 

* There is a nice selection of sakes on hand but you will probably not get your own sake sommelier. Sometimes, it’s good to be king. ;-)

Mandalay Bay is Back, Baby!

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You remember Mandalay Bay, don’t you? It was once a mega-hotel on par with the Wynn, Bellagio, and Caesars Palace when it came to top-shelf, drop dead delicious food. When it opened in 1999, it boasted a murders row of chefs and restaurants that went toe to toe with the likes of Le Cirque, Picasso, Michael Mina and anything Wolfgang Puck, Emeril, or Bobby Flay could throw at you. Piero Selvaggio had a pasta shop in the mall that was second to none, Hubert Keller killed it nightly in a gorgeous room,  and Rick Moonen could sling the freshest of fish with the best of them. When Alain Ducasse crowned the top of THE Hotel with his miX Restaurant and Bar in 2004, it capped one of the most impressive lineups of chefs (absentee or otherwise) of any hotel in the country.

Then, something happened. Call it complacency, call it competition, but when Joël Robuchon, Guy Savoy and Pierre Gagnaire planted their flags here between 2005-2009, you could almost feel the wind go out of the MB sails. And when the recession of 2008 hit, something really happened. The high end customer base shrank considerably (there’s only so many aspirational gourmets out there ready to pay big bucks for fancy food), and pretty soon the entire hotel seemed to go into a downsizing funk. Charlie Palmer’s Four Season steakhouse was eclipsed by a dozen others, miX and Moonen’s high-end seafood lost their audience, and Aureole got stale. Before you could say “credit default swaps,” Fleur de Lys threw tacky “art” on the walls and started serving tacos, and the entire hotel looked like it was headed to the middle-brow mediocrity of Luxor-land.

Well, praise the lord and pass the mashed potatoes, because things have changed.  Moonen re-booted himself with his rX Boiler Room (and by bringing in the talented Sean Collins to run both it and his seafood cafe), Charlie Palmer STEAK has gotten a facelift and a menu lift (from chef Tom Griese), and the new Libertine Social blends the dynamic cooking duo of Shawn McClain and Richard Camarota with über-mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim into a zeitgeist cocktail of haute casual eating and drinking. Add to this the continuing excellence of joints that have never wavered — Border Grill and Strip Steak — and you have a hotel that has recaptured its mojo. Even that old warhorse Aureole is getting into the act, re-doing the decor and bringing in local legend Johnny Church to rejuvenate the kitchen.

I still haven’t forgiven the F&B bigwigs for what they forced Fleur de Lys to do (go from fabulous French to so-so small plates), and what Ducasse did with miX is inexcusable (it’s now an overpriced Italian restaurant that looks like a coffee shop, albeit one with the greatest view in town), but with the veteran Emmanuel Cornet now in charge of food and beverage, I’m starting to think Mandalay Bay might once again become my go-to food and booze hangout, just like it was a decade ago.