Category: Reviews

FISH N BOWL Gets Its Closeup on Wake Up With the Wagners

As we’ve said before, fish in the ‘burbs keeps gettin’ better and better…and there’s no better example than Fish N Bowl.

However, as good as Howard Choi’s Nouveau-Japo-Hawasian food is….it is definitely NOT available for breakfast (as we state in the video).

ELV regrets the error, and can only attribute it to a surfeit of enthusiasm for this fusion of fun, fastidious, flavorful, frolicsome and funky foodstuffs.

FISH N BOWL

7225 South Durango Dr.

Las Vegas, NV 89113

702.739.3474

http://fishnbowl.blogspot.com/

 

‘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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Cruise Ship Italian Comes to Vegas


(ELV always enjoys looking at Tinkertoys when he dines)

Italian Food and Julian Serrano Deserve a Better Decor

Julian Serrano may not be a Las Vegas native, but after seventeen years here, we pretty much claim him as our own, since he is, by far, our best and most successful local chef. His Picasso continues to dazzle as much as it did on opening night in 1998, and his namesake restaurant – Julian Serrano in the Aria Hotel – brings forth the flavors of his homeland, and shows his range as a chef and restaurateur. It certainly qualifies as one of the best Spanish restaurants in America, and can go toe to toe with Jaleo down the street for the best traditional or modern tapas in town. Serrano – unlike many lesser chefs and most famous ones – is a constant presence in both restaurants, and he toggles between them every night they’re open, checking on the kitchen and guests without breaking a sweat.

With the opening of Lago by Julian Serrano, the crafty Spaniard has decided to leave Spanish and high-toned French-Mediterranean cooking behind to bring forth….wait for it…. Italian tapas! Not the cicchetti of Venice or the antipasti of a typical Italian meal, but rather, a best hits menu of new and old Italian, done family-style, in a modernist, cutting-edge setting, that tries simultaneously to please the purists and appeal to the party-as-a-verb crowd.

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