Paul Bartolotta goes there. Rick Moonen goes there. Joe Isidori and David Varley just went, and uber-wine guys Jaime Smith and Ken Fredrickson can’t stay away. In fact every chef and foodie in town is making a pilgrimage these days to an obscure corner of a run-down strip mall that houses this tiny, 30-seat sanctuary of serious robata cooking.

Raku has only been open two months, but it is probably the single most exciting off-Strip restaurant to open in the past two years. And in terms of finely-tuned food, nothing off the Strip can match it.

Chef/owner Mitsuo Endo hails from Megu in New York (the restaurant where we first experienced edamame beans served with the pod still attached to its tree), along with other Japanese delicacies that added up to one of the most expensive meals of our lifetime - around $600 for two if memory serves).

Here you’ll find the tariff much more reasonable. The menu is simplicity itself, and your meal as small or large as you want to make it. We didn’t try the meat guts or Bonito guts pickled in salt, but the Tsukune (grilled ground chicken on a skewer), butter sauteed scallop, bite-size foie gras bowl, pork ear, corn stuffed with potato, whole (headless) Hokke fish (a Japanese mackeral), skewered tomatoes, and meltingly tender kobe beef skewers were so good that most of us were speechless. These are only about half of the plates we tried - but from the portabella (with ground chicken) to the pork cheek - every dish was flawless.

Equally compelling are soy sauces and tofu made in-house, and a wine/sake/sochu list that’s small, well-priced, and perfectly matched to the menu. Some say the Japanese put a finer point on their cuisine than anyone (even the French), and a tour around this menu, with its small plates perfection, will give you an idea what they’re talking about.

RAKU

5030 W. Spring Mountain Rd. #2

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.367.3511 (although this number seems to be on FAX mode until late afternoon)

Open for dinner only, 6pm-3am, every night except Sunday

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Having come of age in the 60’s and 70’s, yours truly has a healthy distrust of anything the government tells him.* And when it comes to food and diet, the Feds get so many things wrong,** it’s best just to ignore them altogether.

Witness the recent mass hysteria brought on by the government warnings about salmonella in tomatoes. Turns out, blaming tomatoes was a bad idea. In fact, most of the stuff you heard a few weeks ago was not supported by any hard evidence - just conjecture and supposition - which didn’t stop the destruction of millions of dollars of tomatoes, because a few people (maybe/supposedly) ate some (actual/really) crappy food at some (possibly) bad restaurants (mostly in Texas.)

The point is, because 922 people got sick from something (nobody knows exactly what), that may or may not be related to salsa, tens of millions of people, thousands of businesses and hundreds of farmers have to suffer…..

Read the tale of government and journalistic panic-button-pushing here in the Wall Street Journal.

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* e.g. Watergate, Vietnam War, Cambodia, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, The Chicago 7, Oliver North, CIA, Henry Kissinger, Three Mile Island, Weapons of Mass Destruction, et al…

** See: IN DEFENSE of FOOD, Michael Pollan, (Penguin Press 2008)

Don’t worry, we’re not going all Birkenstock on you with these last two posts. Every once in a while though, we lift our nose out of a grand cru Burgundy, after having polished off some Caspian Sea beluga, followed by Chilean sea bass and a Komodo Dragon steak, to actually pay attention to the world at large. And because of it, Eating Las Vegas is starting to strongly suspect there just might be something to this whole carbon-footprint thing.

Click here for some dire news for banana fans.

We Las Vegans don’t usually concern ourselves with the mundane and temporal; not when there are spiritual quests surrounding us like The World Series of Poker and NASCAR. And who has time for annoyances like global warming and geopolitics when the Rio Hotel just formed a partnership with Club Sapphire to bring naked mega-babes to the hotel pool?

Talk of locavores and going green might play to the crowds in San Francisco and L.A., but around here these topics get as much traction as as ban on blackjack. And just when we thought we could enjoy Rick Moonen’s sustainable fish at RM or the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market produce at Craftsteak without guilt…along comes Salon.com like some dookie in the punch bowl, ruining our gastronomic fun.

According to Roberta Kwok’s article, even San Franciscans can’t rest on their green laurels; not when the vaunted Ferry Building Farmers’ Market has been found to create as much carbon dioxide as your local Albertson’s. It’s enough to make me wanna go out and buy a Hummer.

Click here to read the complete article at Salon.com

ESPRESSAMENTE ILLY

In the Palazzo Hotel Shoppes (When they add the “-pes” to the word “shop;” you know they saw you comin’)

3325 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702.869.2233

Illy is one of two major coffee chains in Italy; Lavazza is the other. It makes espresso so good it will make you weep. Illy has 150 coffee bars like this one throughout Europe but this one (in the Palazzo) is the first in the United States. Others are planned for Miami and both coasts, but as with fine French food and a myriad of other happenings in the restaurant world these days….Vegas got the first one. Lucky us. No mixes, no blenders, no powders and no C/D’s for sale. ‘Nuff said.

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Authentic, fiery, funky and fresh Chinese appeals to the average American palate about as much as a plate of lutefisk. But right next door to each other on Schiff Dr. (just south of Valley View and Spring Mountain Rd.) are two such places that are packed nightly with fellow Asian travelers who know and appreciate the real Magillicuddy in these things.

Dong Ting Spring features the cured pork and dried chili specialties of Hunan Province, along with more than a few chili-covered fresh fish dishes and hotpots that seem to pop up on every table.

Yun Nan Garden is from the region bordering Myanmar, Tibet, Vietnam and Laos, and is known for its polyglot of ethnic minorities and a cuisine that reflects influences from all of them. The food at both is not for the timid, and together they pack a one-two punch of hot and spicy goodness that took me straight back to Hong Kong.

Both are squeaky clean and modern (at least by the standards of most Chinatown places), and have young bilingual staffs that are unfailingly polite. Be prepared to feel like a fish out of water, and also be firm when they try to steer you to the round-eye friendly portion of the menu. Aficianodos of Kung Pao chicken and sweet and sour pork need not apply.

Each restaurant has English translations of dishes that for decades were only printed in Chinese characters on the walls of places in cities with large, established Chinatowns. Thus were some of the true tastes of the world’s greatest cuisine inaccessible to the adverturesome haolie….until now!

DONG TING SPRING

3950 Schiff Dr.

Las Vegas, NV 89103

702.437.7888

YUN NAN GARDEN

3934 Schiff Dr.

Las Vegas, NV 89103

702.869.8885

This week on KNPR-Nevada Public Radio (www.knpr.org), we continue our editorial on what should happen when unappetizing things (e.g. a piece of twisted metal) get found in your food. Instead of my usual witty and insightful bon mots, I allowed Steven “The Fat Guy” Shaw, John “Noodles” Mariani, and Alan “The Hitman” Richman to weigh in on this weighty subject, and the commentary consists of my mellifluous voice quoting and paraphrasing their opinions on the subject. In other words, Tom Sawyer-like, I convinced them to do my script writing for me. Pretty nifty, eh?

Click here to hear my weekly commentary on News 88.9 FM-Nevada Public Radio

David Varley is the immensely talented Chef de Cuisine at DJT, the amazing new restaurant at the Trump International Hotel (also brand spanking new). Here, without further ado, and with some semi-instructional photos on his theory and practice on how to cook a steak. Hint: it helps to have a $3,200 Cvap steam oven in your kitchen.

Regardless, much of his advice is easily translated to the home, and easily explains why his steak tastes so good at DJT. Here are his verbatim instructions with some helpful snaps of the man in action:

DV: There are so many variables and factors with meat but my formula depends only on a few simple steps and assumptions. Firstly I procure the finest product available, I look for well marbled, properly aged or dry aged in the case of beef.

I remove as much surface fat and connective tissue as possible, ex the chain and silver skin of beef tenderloin. The meat should be tempered, removed from the refrigerator for an hour or so to bring it from 35 deg to about 70 degree. That is actually the first cooking step, cooking is raising the temp and any way is fair game as long as it is gentle. It is much faster to heat a steak from 70 to 135 than from 35 to 135, it also requires less protein damaging energy to do the same job.

I then blot the protein with a towel to remove surface moisture. Surface moisture can be removed on the heat or off the heat. If you put a wet steak in a pan or on the grill it will stream and cause catastrophic protein damage before the water evaporates and the steak sears. Remember that we want to sear as quickly as possible to minimize damage.

The steak is then seasoned aggressively, re blotted to remove water the salt draws out and seared in a hot pan, oven, or grill with a small amount of grapeseed or canola oil to bridge the air gap between the cooking surface and the protein. While it is being seared it is constantly lifted and moved to allow steam to escape and hot oil to accumulate beneath giving it the fastest most even sear possible.

When a golden brown color is achieved we remove the steak to a 135 degree Cvap oven, a low temp combitherm oven or seal in cryovac and sous vide at 133. At this point the meat can stay at 133 for several hours without any disadvantage because the low temp insulates and eliminates the possibility of overcooking and gives one a greater margin of security.

A 15 oz strip steak cooks in 30 minutes at 135 if it has been properly seared and tempered. On the pickup the steak is basted in hot foamy brown butter for a brief period to heat the surface and glaze it with more maillard (this coming from the brown butter solids) Most guests will send back a Perfectly cooked steak that is only 135 degrees on the surface because it seems cold compared to the damaged meat they are used to eating. I combat that with a simple quick baste which also adds a ton of surface flavor multiplying the maillard effect where it matters most and damaging the minimal amount of protein in the process.

This steak does not need to rest, can be sliced and served right out of the pan with no loss of juices or grey margin associated with high temp cookery. This in a nutshell was the formula as taught by Shelton during my years at Ryland, I have made some changes to update it as new pieces of technology have appeared but the premise remains the same. The method can also be reversed, meat cooked to 133 and seared and basted to finish, I am playing with that technique currently in an effort to streamline the method even more. This process can be re created on a grill and the meat basted with a flavored butter which browns as the steak surface temp is raised.

One can roast in a superhot oven for 10 min, lower them temp to 150 for a few hours and then crank it for the last 10 min to achieve the same thing for very large roasts as well. I cooked a 12# ribeye in my cvap in 7 hours at 133 then finished it in a 500 degree oven basting with butter for 5 min to maximize maillard, the result was the meanest naughtiest prime rib I have ever seen with the best flavor and texture possible-David Varley

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No salad in the history of civilization is more bastardized than the the mighty Caesar-whose true name is a Caesar’s Salad. For a serious taste of this salad’s history, and to taste some serious salad, click on this link to my recent article in Desert Companion about what made (and makes) the original recipe so great.

Read Article Here (pdf)

Bouchon has come in for more than a little criticism from yours truly over the years. It’s a copy of a copy and has exactly the soul of one. But there’s no denying that it consistently has the best oysters in Las Vegas (RM and Morel’s are a close second and third), and the moules frites are just as memorable. The menu as a whole doesn’t push any envelopes, and the wine list is booooring-(whassup with that Thomas?)-but there’s no denying the beauty of those Kumamotos, Dabobs or Fanny Bays.