Category: Miscellaneous

HATSUMI

There are three things you’ll notice about Hatsumi as you approach it: 1) the strange neighborhood it’s in; 2) the walled-off fortress (inside a refurbished motel, above) that encases it; and 3) its nondescript entrance (below). None of these are exactly welcoming. All of them may give you pause before you enter.

Regardless of how you feel about the design, take the plunge pilgrim, because excellent eats lie within, courtesy of the Downtown Project’s latest über-cool real estate venture.

Before we get to praising the food, let’s address the elephant in the room. Can we come right out and say it? The DTP (the organization created by Tony “Mr. Personality” Hsieh to revive downtown) has been a disaster, restaurant-wise. Its attempts to create a viable food and restaurant scene has been a slow, painful, uphill climb, with more do-overs than my love life. I’ve lost track of the failures, the buy-outs and the re-boots of various places, and Hsieh’s real estate maneuvers have stultified, rather than revitalized, much of the neighborhood.

After ten years of dumb ideas and over-hyped music festivals, downtown continues to struggle due to its primary problem: a lack of residents to support its non-casino businesses.

What Hsieh and his sycophants have done, however, is create a cult of insiders who treat downtown Las Vegas like a private club. There’s really not enough of them to support more than a few bars and restaurants, but the whole point of the Fergusons (the walled-off space housing Hatsumi) is that there may be enough of them to turn this renovated motel space into a foodie-centric hipster hangout…er….uh….excuse me…a “curated market cultivating local music, art, nature, food and creatives/makers.” (Think Container Park without the smell of desperation.)

To do this, the DTP has recruited Dan Krohmer — one of our most successful local chefs (cf. Other Mama) — to create a food and drink scene compelling enough to make these folks want to flock here. (Krohmer, apparently, is one of those “creatives” who doesn’t mind being called by an adjective.)

Approaching the courtyard, you’ll see some giant, upended truck sculpture that signals you’re in the land of Burning Man. Impressive it is, but nothing gives you a clue that a robatayaki/yakitori restaurant (one operated by a bunch of gaijin, no less) lies behind it.

This is intentional. The whiff of exclusivity is everywhere. You’re just supposed to know, you know? In other words, if you have to ask about Hatsumi, you’re probably not hip enough to be here.

When it comes to Krohmer’s food, however, there are plenty of reasons to raise your coolness quotient.

Once you enter, things start to make sense. The elongated, skinny room is situated sideways with the kitchen and bar right in front of you, just a couple of steps from the doorway. To the left and right are comfortable booths, and the left-to-right wide space is surprisingly comfy and welcoming.

Krohmer’s other restaurant, Other Mama, is all about seafood, and he’s received much local acclaim for his unique spin on sushi, crudo and all things swimming. With Hatsumi, he’s ditched the yanagi for a yaki in order to marinate, skewer and grill a host of bite-size Japanese delicacies —  the sort of quickly-consumed food you find underneath train tracks all over Tokyo.

What you’ll start with involves either a cocktail, beer or sake. The wine list is practically non-existent — just like in Japan. The selection of sakes is impressive, and priced for all budgets. (I make no claims of brewed rice beverage expertise, beyond knowing that, as with wine, you rapidly hit a point of diminishing returns as you go up in price.) Bottles are offered in both 300ml and 720ml sizes, making light imbibing a breeze if you’re a party of one or two. Nothing goes better with this food.

(My oh my okonomiyaki)

If you want to turn completely Japanese, you’ll head straight to the okonomiyaki — a savory cabbage pancake here spiked with shrimp and bacon. It may not be composed with the same tenderness as the ones as Tatsujin X or Raku, but it pushes all the right umami buttons. From there you should proceed to the breaded and deep-fried eggplant katsu, which will have even eggplant haters reflexively grabbing for second bites.

(Tantalizingly terrific tataki)

Both of these come under the “Plates” section of the menu and are meant to be shared, as are the gyoza (here with that crispy skirt thing that’s all the rage), beef tataki salad (swimming in ponzu), and Lomi Lomi (ocean trout, also swimming in chili-enhanced ponzu).  Less acidic, but equally satisfying, are the poached chicken salad, nicely dressed with a mild, miso vinaigrette and full of big chunks of cashews, and asparagus chawanmushi — a baked, grainy, white tofu custard that tastes better than it looks.

Having made three visits here, it appears this section of the menu is a work in progress. Krohmer made his name by creating a core menu and then playing off it, seasonally. I expect some of this menu is still in flux, depending upon how the neighborhood reacts to his warm mushroom salad (a bit dense for summertime), or a jumble of braised pork bellies (kakuni) on a plate — a recipe straight from the David Chang playbook.

If they’re available, get the crispy quail breast stuffed with ground pork flecked with veggies. Unless you’re a tofu lover skip the house-made stuff (thick slabs in a cool dashi broth that is the very definition of the bland leading the bland). You’re better off with the pickled vegetables — they’re a lot tastier and a treat unto themselves.

(Smoke some kushi, grab a kushi)

Then, there are the skewers. Lots of them, grilled carefully over binchotan charcoal, and glazed with sweet soy. The perfect bar food. Food you can contemplate, or absentmindedly nibble as you drink or concern yourself with more incorporeal matters.

Las Vegas doesn’t have a pure yakitori restaurant — one specializing solely in grilling chicken parts — but this is the closest we’ve come.  Yes, there are izakayas on Spring Mountain Road and points south, but Hatsumi is the first to raise the grilling of bird parts to a specialty of its own. Heart, liver, thigh, meatball, you name it, they’re grilling it…to a “T”. Juicy, succulent, meat from the whole bird comes to your table on point and perfect.

Like a lot of seemingly simple food, the beauty is in the details — in this case cutting each morsel to a similar size and watching them to the exact second of proper doneness. Nothing is worse than overcooked chicken, and nothing less appealing than the opposite. Here, you won’t have to worry about either and will drop your kushi in appreciation.

As for dessert, just remember what you’ve been told (by me) dozens of times: if you want a great dessert in an Asian restaurant, go to a French one.

Krohmer’s menu is striking in its foreignness, and rather stubborn insistence on hewing closely to the izakaya template. How he carefully articulates the flavors of Japan, without compromise, is something to be admired, but it begs the question(s): Is downtown Las Vegas ready for real Japanese food? Are there enough residents, true believers, and Downtown Project acolytes to provide it with enough customers? Could it (shudder) be good enough to actually draw people from the ‘burbs to these long-neglected blocks?

Well, it certainly drew these three gals down there one night, and each of them looked about as hip as a halter top…so there’s hope.

My first meal here was comped; my next two ran us around $100/two including a small bottle of sake and two cocktails. You can easily get out of here for half that if you want just a few skewers, a share plate and some sides. .

HATSUMI

Fergusons Downtown

1028 East Fremont Street

Las Vegas, NV 89101

702.268.8939

 

THE KITCHEN AT ATOMIC – The Struggle is Real

“Kitchen at Atomic Sticking With Elevated Cuisine” read a recent headline. The article asked, primarily, how can you have an upscale restaurant right next to a dive bar? The point of the piece, if there was a point, read like the author was throwing a publicity bone to a place he wishes would quit with the fancy stuff.

But the point of The Kitchen at Atomic is not to be fancy, it’s simply to be good. Not burger and fries good, but foodie good, interesting good — the kind of chef-driven good that packs them into gastropubs from Boston to San Diego Bay. The kind of excellence that still struggles to find an audience in Las Vegas.

And the struggle is real. Because people struggle with the idea of paying for good food here. Mass-produced franchise food and soulless shopping malls create a race to the bottom for pricing, which puts local restaurants on their back foot from the jump.  (I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said to me: “Why should I pay $20 for something I can get for 15 at ____?”) Even when intrepid gastronauts take a place to their bosom (Esther’s Kitchen, Sparrow+Wolf, EATT), there’s not enough of them to go around.

The City of Las Vegas estimates that to hit critical mass for a vibrant downtown, you need 50,000 gainfully-employed people living there. Right now the number is around 5,000. God bless ’em (both the City and the residents), because they’re doing what they can to create a vibrant social, cultural and gastronomic scene between Charleston and Fremont Street, but there’s only so much discretionary income those 5K folks can spread among the restaurants vying for their attention.

The real issue comes down to this: Do enough people want a real restaurant on East Fremont Street? Not finger food, not another cocktail lounge, and not, god forbid, another uncomfortable, loud-as-fuck hipster hangout — but a real down-to-earth bar/restaurant serving coursed out food with good drinks.  You know, the way grownups eat.

Let’s analyze the data to (try to) answer this question. And by “analyze the data” I mean share the opinions springing feverishly from my brain as I type these words.

The Kitchen at Atomic began two years ago as an adjunct to Atomic Liquors — an über-cool, laid back cocktail/beer bar (above) with a steady clientele of Millennials, and a smattering of Gen Xrs. Like most things Millennial, half the people at AL look like they’re there for a purpose (quality imbibing, hooking up), while the rest look like they showed up because the ‘gram told  them to. Most of the AL crowd looks like it’s more at home discussing session beers and saison ales than it does the fine points of hamachi crudo, or the piquancy of a yogurt-herb vinaigrette as it plays off the herbaceousness of fresh English peas.

Atomic Liquors was an old bar given new life six years ago by owner Lance Johns. It retains the feel of a place Charles Bukowski might’ve called home in the 60s, but its craft cocktails and PhD beer program make it more like a run-down jalopy with a shiny new turbocharged engine under the hood. It operates on many levels — old Vegas icon, new Vegas hangout — and has an avid following of both locals and tourists.

TKAA resides in the shiny renovated space adjacent to AL. In a previous life it used to be a gas station. In its present incarnation, it will strike you as as a sleek and somewhat cold industrial space — no more than 50 feet from its louche neighbor next door. The incongruity lies with these two co-joined siblings existing in two separate universes. At AL, you drink; at TKAA the food is the star. And quite a star it is, even if the drunks next door don’t know it.

The menu checks all the right boxes as a destination restaurant — marrow, long beans, cured fish, charcuterie platter, artisanal greens — with appetizers hinting at the kitchen’s creativity, and mains driving the point home.  The attention to detail given to those beans, or a cold cucumber/grape gazpacho, announce a new level of cooking for downtown, and offering a whole fish at market price is a bold move indeed for a neighborhood still pockmarked with vacant lots and tattoo parlors.

(Marrow me; beet me)

Glistening knobs of quivering marrow may be as foreign to East Fremont Street as a hooker with teeth, but you’ll forget where you are as you slather these jewels of adipose protein on the gorgeous, nutty toasted bread served with them.  Grilled halloumi cheese may not fit with the neighborhood either, but the squeaky fromage will fit just fine as an appetizer for four. Raw seafood is everywhere these days, but the crudo, or denser, cured, striped bass, are both light and punch-packing — either with chili lime, or sumac and sherry vinegar.

(How green was my salad? Pretty friggin’ green.)

“Spring has sprung” were the words dancing in my head as I wolfed down the tumble of crunchy greenery called the Spring pea salad (above), while “clams to beat the band” was my mantra for the colorful array of grilled, sweet shellfish frosted with breadcrumbs and tinged with Fresno chili (below). In my lexicon of least favorite eats, raw veggie salads rank somewhere between frosted cupcakes and gummy hummus, but I found myself grooving on every bite of those snappy greens. The clams are simply in a class by themselves. You won’t find a better version of baked bivalves, on or off the Strip.

(Beauteous bivalves)

In many a gastropub, the larger the format, the worse the food gets — big proteins lacking the sexiness of high-concept tweezer food to some chefs. Not so to newly -installed Executive Chef Jackson Stamper, who seems to lavish just as much attention on pan-seared cauliflower steak and grilled swordfish as he does on his starters. I liked the menu of his predecessor, but the food now feels more focused, and the platings are prettier.

The biggest of his big boys is the Creekstone Farms dry-aged rib eye (at the top of the page). It’s priced by the ounce, and around $80 will get you enough mineral-tinged properly stored steer to feed four hungry souls. It may not have the iron-y tang and Roquefort-like zing of super-aged beef, but you won’t find a better steak within three miles of this one.

(Peak pork perfection)

And then there’s the rum-brined chop (above) — a dulcet compaction of pork so luscious and savory you will re-think your prejudices against this usually boring entree. Broccoli rabe, rum jus and mustard seeds complete the picture, and you’ll be tempted to graze upon another one as soon as it’s gone.

Desserts are more elemental and less chef-y than the savories. The deconstructed apple pie is a nice twist on an old standard, and the Guinness chocolate cake (below, really more like a dense, lacquered brownie), will have you reflexively polishing it off in defiance of all common dietary sense.

They seemed to have dialed back the beer and wine list, but it’s still interesting and well-priced — probably not enough for a true oenophile, but certainly so for the clientele. I won’t bother praising the top shelf cocktails because a bad mixed drink is now harder to find in Las Vegas than a good mixed drink used to be.

(Just what the doctor didn’t order)

Two years on, The Kitchen seems to have hit its stride. The talent is there, and the cooking is there, but will it be enough? Here is a restaurant that is doing almost everything right — from the bar to the service to the decor and to the food. Will it find its audience? Is there enough audience to find? Publicus down the street (with the most unwelcoming location in town) is packed all the time. Hatsumi (a stone’s throw across the street) seems to have hit a home run. But neither of them is a traditional, three-course restaurant. Are Millennials (the only customers that count downtown) ready to embrace this place?

Who knows? I’ve been at this too long to make any predictions. What I do know is that Las Vegas is in a constant battle with itself. The chefs and owners and food lovers — folks who really care about what they put in their mouths — desperately want downtown to become another Seattle or Denver….but you look around some days and realize we’re barely beating Bakersfield.

We are in the middle of another boom to be sure, and East Fremont and the Arts District are now on everyone’s radar. Will there be enough customers to sustain not just TKAA but all of these businesses? Or will there be a regression to the mean?

Las Vegas doesn’t need any more average anything. (That’s what Henderson is for.) But mediocrity is still what sells. Only time will tell.

(Apps run $15-$20; mains from $25-$30; and sides $6-$8. Dinner for two with a couple of drinks should run around $125. The rib eye is at least 30% less than you would pay for a comparable cut on the Strip, and worth every penny.)

THE KITCHEN AT ATOMIC

927 East Fremont Street

Las Vegas, NV 89101

702.534.3223

 

OLD SOUL

And the winner for Best Food in the Most Obscure Location goes to…….Old Soul!

There’s no other way to say it: Old Soul is so hidden, so oddly-placed, and so not-where-you’d-expect-a-restaurant-to-be that you’ll feel like congratulating yourself once you find the front door. Once you find it, and eat there once, these issues will disappear. From then on, you’ll be too busy enjoying yourself to mind the locale.

That location is inside the World Market Center — a behemoth of a building complex near downtown Las Vegas containing three, intimidating buildings and no retail spaces, save for this single door stuck between darkened windows of one ground floor corner. Even as you valet your car (and you will have to valet it), you’ll glance around inside the Land of the Giants courtyard and wonder where you’ll be eating. The car park will point to the modest sign, and you’ll stroll in, wondering, like all first timers: who in the world in is eating here? (The answer is: fans of chef/owner Natalie Young, Smith Center devotees, and culinary culture vultures looking for her particular brand of gutsy, elevated American food.)

As soon as you enter, what awaits is a capacious, rather dark interior, with well-spaced tables, a civilized noise level, and some oversized art on the walls. The old silent movies they run on the back wall near the bar are a hoot. Between those and the antique furnishings (including the mismatched dishware), the vibe is one of cool comfort, designed to make you forget about what’s outside. Once you dive into the food, the whole place starts feeling, well, like an old, overstuffed sofa you’ve sunk into and don’t want to leave.

Image result for Old Soul Las Vegas

 

The space might be an acquired tasted, but Young’s food is not. She is a self-taught, long-time Strip veteran who found her mojo with the opening of Eat downtown 2012. Her talents have toggled over the years between high-toned French (Eiffel Tower Restaurant) to steaks (P.J. Clarke’s)  to superior flapjacks (Eat), but here she’s found her wheelhouse: boldly-flavored, elemental American dishes with a certainty of purpose that only comes from a confident chef.

Young describes herself as an old soul. Old souls, she’ll tell you, get right to the point. Old souls have seen it all and they know that honesty and simplicity are what counts. An old soul eschews the novel, the contrived, and the overwrought, for simple authenticity. (It’s the reason some old souls jump on planes to Europe whenever they can to taste a country’s food where it originated — not after it’s been deconstructed and reconfigured by Instagram-addicted culinary school graduates. But enough about me.)

An old soul like Young has the confidence to put liver and onions on a menu. She knows a lot of people like liver — especially liver tossed with caramelized onions, and given a piquant punch by grainy, stone ground mustard — and that an older crowd (the types that attend Smith Center concerts religiously), will appreciate a throwback item given just the right update.  Young or old will appreciate the same attention given a thick slab of meatloaf — this one not like your momma used to make, but adorned with cauliflower puree, meaty ‘shrooms, a splash of tomato concasse and a dribbling of red wine jus. It’s comfort food to be sure, but soothing has never had so much sparkle.

Chicken (half a Cornish game hen above) get some gussying up as well with the help of a wild rice pilaf speckled with bits of pickled veggies, and a tongue-slapping chimichurri sauce. Both were so good the Food Gal® and I couldn’t decide which was more worth fighting over: the bird or the starch.

Before you get to these mains (available at lunch and dinner for the same price), you’ll have to navigate the starters, and rather than steering clear, I’d advise you to bump into as many of them as your gustatory canoe can handle. The house-made chicken liver pâté could give a few torchons of foie gras a run for their money, and the smoked trout with house-made applesauce and chive corn cakes will have everyone at your table straining for superlatives.

Most spectacular of the bunch is a head of roasted cauliflower (above), studded with pickled raisins and peppers, sprinkled with more of that chimichurri, and festooned with herbs. All of it sits on a pool of sharp, acidic sauce that’s listed as “tahini dressing” but comes off more like “tangy/fruity vinaigrette.”

As nuts as you’ll be about all of these, it will be the fried oysters (below) with horseradish aioli that will have you making plans to return as soon as you leave. Crispy, meaty and devoid of oiliness, one bite took me straight back to a Connecticut clam shack.

(All that’s missing are the seagulls)

There are also sandwiches available at lunch — including Young’s definitive pan-seared chicken breast with pesto mayo and a veggie “burger” that didn’t make me gag — as well as simple and chopped salads for those who insist.

But if you come here looking to eat light, you’re sort of missing the point. This is soulful American food made by a chef who blends flavors like a maestro — seemingly without effort, but building to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The food here is as pretty as it is delicious, and that’s really saying something.

(Live a little! This pie is to die for.)

For dessert, get whatever cobbler they’ve made that day. And the cherry pie (above). Each of them a la mode. You’ve come too far to deny yourself such a sweet release, so give in to temptation. You can thank me later.

(Open for lunch and dinner. With starters in the $10-$15 range, and mains all under $25, the food here is a serious bargain, particularly at dinner. Full cocktail bar with plenty of whiskies and libations, but the wine choices – what few there are – are of interest only to an octogenarian alcoholic.)

OLD SOUL

World Market Center

495 S. Grand Central Parkway

Las Vegas, NV 89106

702.534.0999