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The renovations took two months longer than expected, and the wine bar won’t be fully operational for another two weeks, but here is your first look at the new, improved and expanded Lotus of Siam.

It will be, by far, the classiest digs in all of Commercial Center, but Saipin Chutima assures us not a darn thing’s gonna change on the menu…and America’s best German wine list promises to just keep getting better and better.

Expect the wine bar to be packed with industry and non-industry oenophiles from the day it opens.

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Is it just us, or does there seem to be a slow but steady Korean invasion taking place in Chinatown. If you’re going by numbers, Korea and Vietnam have twice as many restaurants as all the other Asian countries combined (we know, we counted).

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MOzen sits on the third floor of the Mandarin Oriental and serves as a three meal a day restaurant for the hotel’s well-heeled patrons.

Chef Shawn Armstrong oversees an operation that’s as adept at turning out superior sushi as it is an authentic lamb curry or first rate braised short ribs and pork bellies.

He and his staff have to be the culinary equivalent of a utility infielder because they never know what Arab potentate, Chinese high roller or Japanese mogul might stroll through the doors at any minute.

After two meals here (breakfast and lunch), we’ve yet to find a flaw in any of the food (except for sous vide-ing the meat – something we can excuse in a busy hotel restaurant)….and the elegant/intimate setting and the view and the service might put it at the top of all the three-meal-a-day hotel restaurants in town.

Once we have dinner here, we’ll let you know.

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The Tuscany Kitchen isn’t a restaurant per se. What it is is a conference room at the very ends of the earth within the Bellagio, that management has outfitted with an exhibition kitchen and enough tables and frippery to make a reasonable facsimile of one.

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Mundo seems to be happening at lunch. Dinner looked reasonably busy too, and we’re guessing management is pleased with its first month of operation (they need to fix the wobbly tables, however).

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First came the KNPR interview (to be broadcast next week), then came the photo op, and finally, Slapsie Maxie figured chowing down on a dozen plates from the Greenland Korean Market’s new food court would be just what America’s most acclaimed chef would be in the mood for.

And so he was.

And thus were a multitude of plates were rendered, and laid before him.

And lo did he express thanks, and consume them with relish.

And verily did he proclaim the pepper chicken too laden with starch, and the kal-bi and cake of mung bean to be of the highest quality.

Words of praise were given and prayers answered and thus did it come to pass that hunger was abated.

And it was good.

So sayeth Thomas The Great.

The Fat Greek has been getting a lot of love recently, and it deserves it.

Here is our TV take on its food featured yesterday morning on Channel 8’s Dishing and Dining:

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Eating Las Vegas first encountered Josko Gravner’s “Breg” white wine in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome (Italy, not Georgia) some six years ago. It was at Sabatini, a notable seafood ristorante on a charming square not far from where Hugh Alexander Curtas (The Official Number Two Son Of ELV) was attending a semester abroad.

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It’s hard to find, engulfed by the massive, impersonal, forbidding, monolithic and almost-always-empty buildings that surround it, and probably a tad expensive for the (hoped for) clientele. But there’s no doubt that the retro-hip, old-world-meets-new Mundo is a breath of fresh air to the moribund downtown dining scene.

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Brasserie Puck might be the most attractive WP location in town. It certainly has the most stunning bar — with cocktails to match (see: Newscasters Gone Wild! below). The menu is typically all over the map — spaghetti with braised veal cheeks sits cheek by jowl with scallops Provencal — but in keeping with Team Wolfgang’s hyper-tuned quality control, there’s nary a clinker in the bunch.

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