Category: EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants

Incredible Cantonese (if you can get it) at HK STAR

I’ve been to HK Star Cantonese Restaurant four times since it opened in the mid-part of the last decade. The first time, back when my law office was around the corner, I strolled in solo, noticed I was the only gweilo in the joint, and had to argue with my well-meaning  waitron about what I wanted to eat. (I think he said “you no like” at least ten times before he accepted my order. What arrived — egg drop soup, sweet and sour pork, tepid shrimp — was definitely not what I wanted to eat…or what I thought I ordered.)

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‘e’ by JOSE ANDRES

About two minutes after the photo below was snapped (at Omayel, in D.C. in late April), my conversation with José Andrés proceeded (with a bunch of bear hugs, back slaps and firm handshakes*) as follows:

JA – When you are going to ‘e’?

Me – José, José, José….you know how much I hate tweezer food….and molecular cuisine is soooo 2005, isn’t it?

JA – John, promise me this: Promise me you will go and promise me you go with a closed mind just like you have?

Me – What?

JA – Promise me, John, that you go in expecting to hate it. I want to to expect NOT to like it, so you can see what a wonderful job my team is doing. Will you promise me that?

Me – Huh? Uh…er…okay….I guess. Okay, I’ll go and I’ll keep my mind closed and I’ll expect to hate it and I let your people dazzle me, if they can.

JA – Okay…..then I want your honest opinion of what we are doing there.

Me – Deal.

Then, of course, like a good Greek and Spaniard, we drank on it:

Thus did I become, last week, the 13,326th diner to enter the hallowed door (now in its fifth year of operation) at the back of Jaleo, and take my seat to the 2 1/2 hour, 26 course experience of just about everything I expected to loathe in contemporary, modernist cuisine:

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TAPAS BY ALEX STRATTA

Five years ago, Alessandro Stratta saw his twelve year relationship with the Wynn hotels come to an unceremonious end — when his ALEX restaurant was abruptly closed. You can debate all day long what it meant for the Wynncore to replace the finest in fine dining with a bunch of no-talent dj’s and douchebags, but there’s no doubt that gastronomes from around the globe were crushed.

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