Category: Food

CHICA En Fuego

Something-for-everyone cooking has defeated more than one Las Vegas chef. Feeding tourists means trying to please everyone, and catering to everyone  means you’re aimed at no one. Restaurants that specialize in something-for-everyone cooking have usually thrown in the towel before the bell has rung, e.g. the now-defunct Daniel Boulud Brasserie. That’s because customers who demand all-over-the-map cooking couldn’t care less about on-the-plate excellence of what they’re eating.

Welcome to Las Vegas — the world’s capital of something-for-everyone restaurants. Reading a Las Vegas menu is like being stuck in an endless loop of pasta, pizzas, wings, Caesar salads, shrimp, steak, pork, chicken and salmon. If you’re lucky, you might find another fish, and if you’re really lucky, you might be treated to every pork bellied, bone marrow-ed cliche in the book. Every Vegas menu, at its core, is composed of the the same basic appetizers, vegetables and proteins. Only around the edges do things get interesting, and it’s up to the intrepid gourmand to hunt for the nuggets of deliciousness buried in the same old same old stew.

At the just-opened Chica, those nuggets are everywhere, and you don’t even have to look that hard to find them.

At first glance, you might be excused for thinking that Chica’s menu is a fount of cliches in its own right. Your glance quickly picks up the mandatory guacamole, tacos, calamari, quesadilla, Caesar and ceviche that you’ve seen hundreds of times before. Turn to page two and you find the mandatory chicken, shrimp, steak and fish. Your heart will at first sink, thinking it’s in another by-the-numbers Mexican tourist joint. But then you remember something. What you remember is that Mike Minor is the kitchen. With that, your spirits begin to soar, and to your delight, the flights of fancy will continue on the wings of (almost) every bite coming out of his pan-Latin kitchen.

To be clear, Chica is not a “Mike Minor” restaurant. Nor is it a Mexican restaurant. It is a “Lorena Garcia” restaurant, and Garcia (a Venezuelan by birth) is all about introducing you to the glories of empanadas, amarillo, choclo, and all sorts of interesting spices. Minor is simply the chef tasked with executing Garcia’s vision from far away Florida.

For those not in the know, Garcia is one of those Food Network stars who seemingly came out of nowhere to suddenly become a household name among those who can’t get enough of “Guy’s Grocery Games.” (JEALOUS? YOU BET!) Hers is not a Mexican sensibility; hers is a cuisine informed by her heritage. You’re going to get Latino cuisine here, and South American food, and food that reminds you of Mexican food but that is decidedly not Mexican food. And for that, all we can say is, “praise the lord and pass the arepas!”

Besides bringing this South American spin to Latino cuisine, the smartest thing Garcia did was to install Minor in the kitchen. As top toque at Border Grill for years, he knows a thing or two about executing a menu conceived by ground-breaking female chefs. He also knows how to excel at elotes:

Serenade you with ceviche:

And cajole you with churros:

Those churros are the handiwork of Sara Steele (another Strip veteran) and between the two of them, they are laying out a menu that is sock-blowing-off scrumptious.

That ceviche (big chunks of firm fish in a perfectly balanced tigre de leche) might be the best version we’ve had that was either 1) not in Mexico, or 2) not at Rick Bayless’s Topolobampo. Just as good, if not better, was the best cephalopod we’ve seen this century.

Spoon tender and spiced in all the right ways, it put even certain Greek versions in town to shame.

Everyone knows we hate brunch, but, truth be told, this Latin-infused take on everything from chicken and waffles to corn pancakes stopped us in our tracks. And by “stopped us in our tracks” I mean licking our plates and finishing every bite.

About the only dishes that didn’t deliver were the chewy chicken chicharrones (we were expecting crispy skin, we got dried out meat), and mushroom quesadillas that delivered a lot of ‘shrooms, but were lacking in the promised huitlacoche and bleu cheese flavors.

No biggie when you consider how strong the rest of the menu is. From the watercress Caesar:

….to the porchetta with crispy yucca hash:

….this is a menu full of eye-opening surprises.  Something-for-everyone South American food hasn’t been done before in the High Mojave Desert — at least not to this degree of distinction. It’s time to spread your Latino wings, and Garcia and Minor are just the right flight instructors.

One meal of ELV’s meals was comped; another (for two) came to $140 + a $30 tip, including a couple of stellar “mocktails.”

CHICA

Venetian Hotel and Casino

702.805. 8472

https://www.venetian.com/restaurants/chica.html

 

EATT GOURMET BISTRO Hits Its Stride

When Eatt Gourmet Bistro opened its doors a year ago, I was less than confident in its chances for success.

The location on west Sahara had been the graveyard of a number of places — ranging from health food to barbecue — and the name it began with (“Eatt Healthy Food”), did not inspire appetite or optimism.

What the place had in spades though, was the assurance of its owners. The three of them (chefs Yuri Szarzeweski and Vincent Pellerin, along with manager Nicolas Kalpokdjian) exuded the confidence of youngsters who didn’t know what they were getting into. To be frank, even after a couple of fabulous meals here, I was worried about them. What impressed me early on was their technical proficiency with some pretty high-flying recipes. What concerned me was a certain timidity about the seasonings, and the fact that they were perhaps too good for the ‘burbs — it being a well-known fact that most of our citizens who eat out are hunting for familiar food at bargain prices. And to be blunt about it: familiar this food is not.

There’s nothing ordinary about gorgeous cantaloupe “roses” accented with balsamic crisps:

…or octopi carpaccio of uncommon awesomeness:

And let’s face it: medallions of glazed pork in a pea puree, are a tough sell even a half mile off the Strip:

The suburbs of Las Vegas have never seen anything like a supple duck breast atop a silky corn puree, dotted with fresh blueberries, baby corn and popcorn (yes, popcorn) — a dish that sounds a bit odd, looks a bit strange, and tastes more than wonderful:

Seasonal eating is something to which most neighborhood joints only give lip service. At Eatt, you get not one seasonable soup but two:

…a cold asparagus, and a gazpacho, both so vibrant with veggies you’re tempted to order a second bowl and forget about the rest of your meal altogether. The seasonal vibe carries through the entire summer menu, from the martini glass of king crab through to the beautifully composed burrata with cubed tomatoes and pesto. Everything being more aggressively (dare we say confidently?) seasoned and presented than it was when they first opened.

One thing that hasn’t changed a bit are Pellerin’s desserts. It would be hard to improve upon perfection, and top to bottom, they’re just about perfect.

This is sophisticated food to be sure — the most refined cooking, by far, anywhere outside of a major hotel. In many ways it reminds me of a more casual, slightly less refined version of Twist by Pierre Gagnaire. Clean, precise, inventive French food, on west Sahara at Buffalo, that the crowds are now responding to. Who would’ve thunk it?

Cold

 

In Praise of EAT.

Is it the pancakes?

The hash?

The hash before and after you break the perfectly poached yolk?

The Stumptown cold brew?

Or is it something else? Something else that makes us fall in love with the food at EAT. every time we eat here?

Well, it’s all of those things and more.

It’s the unexpected kick of a kick-ass posole:

…and the freshness of the bread and the care of the cooks. It’s the lickety-split service staff and the Black Bean Veggie Chili and the truffled egg sandwich and the Huevos Montulenos — the latter bathed in some incendiary chili sauces that will light you up.

They also do a very respectable chilaquiles, and probably the best eggs Benedict you’ll find outside of a hotel.

Most of all, though, what we always fall for are the pancakes and the hash. Now that Glutton and Du-par’s have closed, there’s no where else to get good buttermilk flapjacks, and if you’re a fan of big, chunky, salty corned beef (and let’s face it who isn’t?), you’ll think you’ve died and gone to hash heaven.

There’s been a lot of stuff written about all the failures of the Downtown Project (and believe me, there have been a LOT of failures), but one of the few smart things it did was to form a partnership with Natalie Young and let her concoct the tastiest breakfast-lunch nook in all of Vegas.

Downtown or otherwise.

P.S. For those of you too timid to brave the wilds of DTLV, a new location is set to open this summer at 1910 Village Center Circle, smack dab in the middle of the  Land of the White Range Rover, aka Summerlin.

EAT.

707 Carson Street

Las Vegas, NV 89101

702.534.1515

http://eatdtlv.com/