Category: Openings

Can CLEAVER Cut It?

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I like everything about Cleaver except the food.

This is a good omen.

Because über-bartender/award-winning cocktail maven Nectaly Mendoza owns it.

And the last Mendoza restaurant whose food I hated (Herbs & Rye), turned out to be a big hit.

I’m not going to go on and on about its menu miscues (in one of my 1000+ word articles with a bunch of pictures), but I will point out a few things. So here goes:

Cleaver has an ambitious name and a very ambitious location (directly across the street from a Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse), and it has a cool, comfortable decor with a long, capacious bar and comfortable booths bathed in a soft, flattering light that makes everyone look good and a noise level conducive to enjoying good drinks and conversation, not to mention tucking into steaks and sides straight from an old school steakhouse’s playbook, which seems like a really good idea until you realize this place has been death to several other steakhouses that all thought they could make a go of it with the same template and each failed miserably within a year, even though they didn’t have this joint’s pedigree or ambition, which might be enough to bring a big industry crowd in, but  which won’t be enough to keep this place afloat because it needs to chip off a bunch of conventioneers to make a go of it and to do that you need to have food and wine and drinks that compete with our top (and even 2nd tier) steakhouses (like Del Frisco’s), and from what I’ve tasted in two dinners here the steaks are worthy but the side dishes — from almost uncooked Brussels sprouts to grainy-bland cheese sauce to dusty-tasting calamari to an atrocious steak tartare — won’t do anything to turn anyone’s head from a more well-known venue, none of which bodes well for Cleaver’s chances if they can’t find a way to turn out at least B- side dishes to compliment their B+ to A- beef.

They also don’t know how to make a Bearnaise sauce to save their life, which is pretty much a cardinal sin in the steakhouse world. And the carpaccio won’t have anyone forgetting Harry’s Bar, either.

None of this comes cheap. The sort of neighborhood budget-steakhouse vibe that packs them in at Herbs & Rye won’t cut it a half a mile from the Strip — not in the $60 steak arena, and not with the stiff competition Cleaver is facing.

But like I said, the design is super-groovy (dominated by faux-military framed paintings of Chris Farley, Martha Stewart, Eddie Murphy and their ilk), and the service is great and the bartenders are skillful. I even love that they do a Kansas City strip here — a bone-in cut I thought had gone the way of tournedos Rossini — and they know how to season and sear it.

But if they don’t get their act together with the rest of the menu, this place is going to go the way of Mr. Farley.

There, I said it.

CLEAVER BUTCHERED MEATS, SEAFOOD & COCKTAILS

3900 Paradise Road Suite d-1

Las Vegas, NV 89169

702.538.9888

http://www.cleaverlasvegas.com/

 

 

Alimentary, My Dear Asian

Do you remember that scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego takes one bite of Remy’s ratatouille and is transported back to the tastes of his childhood?

That’s what it felt like to me after my first bite of the steamed dumplings at Fu Man Dumpling House — although in this case, the memories weren’t of my Taiwanese childhood (HEY! IT COULD’VE HAPPENED!),  but of a trip I took to Hong Kong a dozen years ago just to eat dumplings.

You heard me right: I once flew 15 hours across the Pacific Ocean just to gorge on Chinese dumplings in the place that made them famous.

One bite of these beauties and I was back there: in a little cafe off of Hollywood Road that specialized in the tasty little pillows filled with all sorts of meat and vegetable combinations. The Food Gal® and I timed our visit to be there when it opened (not hard to do when you’re waking up at 3 am every morning), and as I recall they came 12 to a platter and we polished off two of them (platters not dumplings). (She also loves to remind me about watching some of the raw dumplings falling on the floor before they could be dropped into their bubbling bath and the cook casually picking them up and tossing them in. Oh, those Chinese.)

The soft packets of pleasure awaiting you at Fu Man are larger than what you find in China (stuffed that way for us big-eatin’ ‘Muricans I’d guess), but they are no less tasty. They are made to order and filled with gently poached ground pork and green onions that beg for bite after bite. The dumpling wrappers are necessarily thick (to stand up to the filling and the boiling) but somehow neither starchy nor filling. Polishing off ten of them is a lot easier than you think. Especially when dipped in the hauntingly sweet, and pungent garlic sauce they make here…the spikiness of raw garlic being muted by whatever they do in cooking it, but still sweetly floating through your senses for hours afterwards:
Honest to Christ, I could take a bath in the stuff; it’s that good.

Don’t miss the hot and sour soup, either — it being exactly what this old standby soup is supposed to be: plenty sour, and intensely hot from a shower of white pepper. It’s the best version I’ve had in Las Vegas.

About the only thing not to like about Fu Man is the location: in a forlorn little shopping center on Smoke Ranch Road. I don’t know why they located something so authentically Chinese ten miles from Chinatown, but people in the northwest part of Vegas should be thanking their lucky stars.

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Another unlikely place to find authentic Asian eats is in a teeny tiny, 14-seat storefront tucked away in the Arts District downtown. Open just 6 months, D E Thai Kitchen took over from an in-authentically awful pasta place and has made the space sing with a small-but-mighty menu of blow-your-socks-off Thai dishes.

On both visits, even an old Thailand hand like yours truly was taken aback by the intensity of the cooking in dishes like larb, Khao soi, and even the simple grilled pork. But what really rang our chimes were two dishes you don’t see a lot of in Thai restaurants: the Kua Gling, an incendiary, dry curry:

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….and soft shell crab with garlic pepper sauce:

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That crab is a fairly tame beast (by Thai standards), but the stir-fried minced pork in the Kua Gling will light you up — the heat seeming almost mellow at first, then coming in waves of fire that roll through your palate and crash around your tongue and the inside of your lips. Best to have a mango slushie or Thai iced tea close by to quell the flames….although the heat will linger for many many minutes. Lovers of chicken wings will love these — they’re carefully spiced, fried and sticky, and even the Thai curry puffs (filled with potato) are made with an extra level of attention that this starchy standard usually doesn’t get.

There is a lot of competition among Thai restaurants these days, and lovers of Siamese sweet/hot/savory/pungent flavors have plenty of options (even downtown where there are now four Thai restaurants within a couple of miles of each other). But D E Thai (named after chef/owner Jompon Chotikamars’ two children) is a worthy newcomer that can stand pepper to pepper with the best of them.

Our plethora of pan-Pacific table pleasures is one of the greatest things about living in Las Vegas. The Food Gal® and I often discuss leaving Las Vegas to conquer another city in America, but we both agree that walking away from all of the great Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese food we have here would be difficult.

It’s obvious, after all, that our Asian allies in alimentation ever afford us awesome,amazing eats — and that would be tough to walk away from, alimentary-wise.

 A dumpling meal for two with a small soup at Fu Man will run you $12….for two. Great food doesn’t get any cheaper. A big lunch or dinner (for two) with 3-4 dishes at D E should be around $30-$40. Like I said: great food doesn’t come any less expensive.

FU MAN DUMPLING HOUSE

6679 Smoke Ranch Road

Las Vegas, NV 89108

702.646.2969

https://twitter.com/fumandumplinglv?lang=en

D E THAI KITCHEN

1108 South 3rd Street

Las Vegas, NV 89104

702.979.9121

https://www.dethaikitchen.com/

PARTAGE

(The Three Musketeers)

A Francophile’s dream come true. The chefs are French, the decor is French, the bartenders are French and the food is as French as Bastille Day. And the whole enchilada is in Chinatown. Go figure.

When Vincent Pellerin, Nicolas Kalpokdjian, and Yuri Szarzewski (above) came to the United States in 2015, they had a dream — they wanted to bring healthy French food to Las Vegas. Anyone with a brain would’ve told them the idea had as much chance for success as a Mormon nightclub, but arrive and succeed they did, first with their casual EATT Gourmet Bistro on West Sahara, and now with a more upscale (but still very laid back) place in a shopping center more at home with massage parlors and noodle shops than croque monsieurs and Pays Nantes.

Because it’s in Chinatown (in the old Chada Street space) the curb appeal is practically nil….and so is the parking. (At busy times you may have to inch your way around the lot once or twice to find a space. If ever there was an off-Strip property begging you to take a LYFT to it, this is it.)

The signage is as simple as the storefront and gives not a clue as to the wonders behind the long glass facade. But as soon as you step through the doors, you can sense that magic is about to happen. Seating are plush but not too so. Cozy booths line one side of the room and a long L-shaped bar dominates the other. The lighting is dim (but not too dim) and flattering, and even at peak occupancy, you can still hear yourself think and talk.

Towards the back you’ll see a large window behind which the chefs operate, and a glass wine room holding the all-French, all-nicely-priced selections. While the list isn’t long, it’s broken down by region (Alsace, Burgundy, Bordeaux, etc.) and the bottles are marked up 100% over retail, rather than 2-300% gouges you’ll find a mile to the east. Another thing I love are the easy to read prices ($65 for a Gigondas; $120 for Dom Ruinart, etc.) with none of that $59 v. $63 nonsense you see at the big hotels. (I’d love for some wine director to edify me sometime on why one Cali cab is priced at $118, while another fetches $121. Is it because there’s a 2.8% difference in quality between the two bottles? Ridiculous.)

Partage means “to share” and the menu encourages you to do just that. 20 small plate options are offered, each amounting to no more than 2-3 bites of headliners like halibut ceviche (disguised to look like dragon fruit):

….or a single lobster ravioli in a small cup of bisque, or perfect, meaty scallop swimming in a dashi broth with seaweed chutney and steamed leeks. Everyone seems to feature trilogies of oysters these days (whassup with that?), but the version here is top drawer, with the yuzu hollandaise being the one you’ll remember. As good as they are, the real stars of the show are the salmon croquettes (almost Japanese in their deep-fired, ultra-light crispiness):

 

…and the squid “risotto” — the risotto in this case being finely diced pieces of squid bound together by a barely-there pesto, filled with flavor but not filling you up.

If you’re looking for richness, Szarzewski has you covered. His sweetbreads are a godsend for lovers of all things thymus — accented by lotus root and a smooth tonka bean cream — the tight little sauteed gland giving not a hint of how dense and filling this offal can be. For pure decadence though, nothing beats his oxtail croque monsieur — long simmered meat, slicked with bone marrow,  served between three batons of the world’s most luxurious toast:

If hunger still lingers after these (doubtful), tuck into a quail leg garnished with umeboshi and foie gras, or a few nibbles of good Spanish pata negra served with a small puck of olive oil cake and fennel sorbet:

Jamon platters are everywhere, but this little one may be the cutest of the bunch.

The anti-ham crowd will enjoy digging into things like ratatouille-stuff squash blossoms, burrata Caprese salad, a melange of root veggies, and the best damn pea soup you’ve ever slurped — this one given a kick by lemon-basil sorbet and finger limes.

About the only dish I can’t recommend is the king crab coated with black garlic. It tastes of pure, sweet crustacean slicked with the tamarind-like essence of aged allium, but it looks like something the cat left behind. If there’s an award for the best tasting, least attractive dish in town, this would litter-ally win by a landslide:

(Honey! The cat’s been at it again!)

Large groups will want to go large format with big cuts of 18 ounce rib eye, or a 32 ounce tomahawk steak — smoked with either hickory, applewood or hay (your choice!). Two pound lobsters and whole duckling breasts served on the bone, and sea bass baked in salt crust is also offered for the whole table to swoon over. In keeping with the “healthy French” thing, sauces are kept to a minimum. Not to my taste, exactly — the duck, pork and bass suffer from the lack of liquids — but the presentations are in keeping with how modern French food is done these days.

 

Desserts are a dream, and Pellerin’s rolling cart (above) is not to be missed. Whether he’s doing a baba au rhum (injected at table with some high proof spirit), a caramel candy bar, or a flaming baked Alaska (below), you can be assured no one, in any neighborhood in Vegas, is eating a dessert as good as the one you’re getting. Pastry chefs are an endangered species these days, and having one as accomplished as Pellerin working in the ‘burbs is quite a statement for a local joint.  His macarons (when available) should be ordered by the dozen.
(Like this baked Alaska, Chinatown is en fuego!)

Las Vegas came of age as a restaurant town in 2018, and exhibits 1-4 are Sparrow & Wolf, Mordeo Wine Bar, EDO Tapas, and Partage. By recognizing the true foodie potential of Chinatown, these venues have broadened its horizons and done the same for serious gourmands — local and tourist alike. Partage may not be for everyone (the food might be a little too precious for the meat and potatoes crowd) but it’s given a boost to our dining scene in all the right ways. Vive la France!

PARTAGE

3839 Spring Mountain Road

Las Vegas, NV 89102

702.582.5852

https://partage.vegas/