LIBERTINE SOCIAL

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It takes a lot to impress me these days. And most of what is going on inside our big hotels isn’t doing it. While individual stars stand out (Bazaar Meat at SLS, Carbone and Bardot Brasserie at Aria, Mr. Chow at Caesars), most hotels have settled down to tried and true lineups (e.g. Bellagio, Wynncore, Venetian/Palazzo), or given up entirely (the Mirage springs to mind).

But, as I’ve noted, Mandalay Bay is bucking this trend, upgrading some old warhorses (Charlie Palmer STEAK, Aureole, RM Seafood) and bringing something new to the table.

And the newest thing these days is Libertine Social — a place that somehow manages to capture the small plates/craft cocktail zeitgeist of the past half-decade without feeling soulless or derivative. It is a big casino concept  restaurant to be sure, but it’s one that feels like a hangout — with personality to spare and intimacy beyond what you’d expect in a huge “concept” eatery.

The concept at hand was dreamed up by Shawn McClain (he of Sage and Chicago fame), and über-mixmeister Tony Abou-Ganim. McClain designed the food, TAG the booze, and between them they’ve hit a number of nails of the head.

Small plates being sooo 2010, this joint could’ve ended up featuring one cliché after the other, but here, McClain and Executive Chef Richard Camarota manage to make them sing…without lapsing into the same old same old, shared meal doldrums. There’s plenty to pass around here, to be sure, but be assured, boredom is not on the menu.

Olives get wrapped in sausage:

….churros get a savory, parmesan spin, and gazpacho is served as strawberry shots with crab meat:

It’s a typical, all-over-the-map, Millennial-friendly menu, but it never feels like it was borrowed from a Kerry Simon restaurant. Nor does it skimp on modernist complexity, such as in these “modern fried eggs” — an ovoid of eternally eggy pleasures, none of them fried, but all of them fascinating:

They might be my “Dish of the Year” if I ever got around to handing out any major awards for 2016 (which I probably won’t), but either way, you won’t find a more intriguing use of egg on egg on egg corn custard anywhere in America. Equally compelling are the flatbreads — one made with real guanciale and garlic oil, another displaying strips of real country ham set off by smoked blue cheese, pineapple and barbecue sauce. It may sound like an overwrought mess, but it all works:

That salty ham also helps whet the appetite for plenty of well-crafted cocktails (more on this in a minute).

Against all odds, I even found myself loving the sausage board (merguez, hot link and bratwurst) served with house-made hot pickles and a good, tangy sauerkraut, and the barbecued carrots — sitting atop a smooth kohlrabi puree. The double-cheeseburger is a dream (oozing with melted “Kraft-ed” cheese sauce, and the faked-named “American Kobe” flat-iron makes up for in beefy succulence what it lacks in honesty. (Memo to chefs, craven wholesalers and meretricious food execs: You’re not fooling anyone with your “American Kobe” false advertising. On second thought, as with fake “truffle oil,” maybe you are. Still, you should be ashamed of yourselves.)

Another thing the chefs should be ashamed of here in the agnolotti; it being as thick as the soles of my shoes and almost as tough. Face it: If you want pasta, go to an Italian restaurant.  If this agnolotti were the only yardstick, one would have to conclude that Shawn McClain (whose food, generally, j’adore) is to pasta what Mario Batali is to sushi.

All sins are atoned for, however, when the booze starts flowing. Abou-Ganim is one of maybe half a dozen Americans who can truly be called cocktail icons. Like his buddy Dale DeGroff, he was in on the ground floor of our mixology Renaissance, and putting him in charge of the bar(s) here was a wise move indeed.

Whether you want a lesson in properly mixed booze, or just to get sloshed, you will be in for a treat.

Drinks come in a dizzying array of variety and packaging. Old school (Hello Harvey Wallbanger!), flavored shots, barrel-aged, and even bottled. (Yes, they take their time to actually bottle TAG’s creations like a Bardstown Sling (bourbon, crème de pêche, peach puree), Luce Del Sol (grapefruit vodka and aperol) and a few others.) There’s fifteen well-chosen beers on tap (even a Trumer Pils from Austria*), and cocktails on draft as well. For our money, though, the things to get are the fizzes and the swizzlers. Like the name implies, the fizzes showcase four or five ingredients given just the right of spritz to make them slide down your gullet like a stripper on a pole.

Abou-Ganim loves giving some of them a slight bitter edge (he’s a negroni fiend), but lovers of girlie drinks (of which yours truly is definitely a fan) will find plenty to love in the perfectly-balanced Bird of Paradise (gin, blackberry liqueur and lemon juice). The crowd pleasers are the Social Swizzlers — pitchers of easy to swill concotions mashed up at the table with a groovy wooden plunger (pictured above).

The wine list won’t dazzle any snobs, but the bottles are interesting (Bonny Doon syrah, Raptor Ridge pinot gris), and priced to sell (most around $50), rather than to make you run for the K-Y jelly.

But like we always say: Never order wine in a cocktail bar, because when you’re in one of the premier, large-scale mixology dominions in America, it would be a shame not to let Professor TAG further your libation education.

Yep, that’s what we’re always sayin’.

Of ELV’s two meals here, one was comped and the other came to $142 for four with a $30 tip.

LIBERTINE SOCIAL

In the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino

3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89119

702.632.7800

https://www.mandalaybay.com/en/restaurants/libertine-social.html

* So sayeth the menu; one of our loyal readers says it’s made in Berkeley.

Go Fish

SEAFOOD DREAMS IN THE DESERT

Face it: we all eat too much meat. No one loves a great rib eye or cheeseburger more than yours truly, but consuming them isn’t good for our arteries, the planet or the cows. That’s where seafood comes in. People usually don’t associate great seafood with Las Vegas, and if you asked your average tourist, they’d claim buffets and steak houses as Sin City’s most iconic eats. But thanks to the wonders of modern transportation, and exotic, flown-in fare from around the world, seafood-centric chefs are plating a number of dishes that compete with anything you can find on the coasts. Las Vegas may be 286 miles from the closest ocean, but each of these taste like it just jumped from the water and onto your plate.

EMERIL’S CRAB CAKE

Resembling more of a tower than a patty, Emeril Lagasse’s jumbo lump beauty is an architectural marvel – big, buttery chunks of Maryland Blue suspended by the merest wisp of filler, capped with crunchy bread crumbs, and served with either a classic, coat-your-arteries remoulade, or a lighter, piquant relish in the warmer months. The fun comes in toppling that structure to reveal an almost disconcerting amount of plump crustacean within.

MILOS CARABINEROS ROSE SHRIMP

How red can seafood get? How delicious can shrimp be? These are but two of the questions that will be answered by your first bite of these Portuguese beauties. The third will be: How do I properly suck the head of a decapod? Why, with a dollop of sherry poured into the decapitated space, of course! The staff will happily guide you, and the impromptu shot of bisque you create will be a revelation in shrimp intensity

MR. CHOW DOVER SOLE

Urbane, theatrical, and expensive, Mr. Chow may be the perfect embodiment of the Strip’s culinary resurgence since the great recession. Its rice wine-steamed Dover sole might be Chinese fish at its most understated and elegant. The English and French may do wonderful things with this dense, cold water swimmer, but steaming it brings out a delicate, velvety smoothness that the Chinese prize above all else. All it takes is a little soy sauce and some bits of green garnish to complete a fish dish fit for the gods.

YUI EDOMAE SUSHI

Genichi Mizoguchi, or Gen-san to his regulars, has singlehandedly turned Spring Mountain Road into a mecca for serious sushi hounds. First at Kabuto and now at Yui – his own restaurant – he features only the best fish from Japan or the west coast, each variety sliced and formed into the most ethereal combination of fish on rice that was ever popped into one’s mouth. This is minimalist, purist sushi, but whatever he’s slicing (and every night there are over a dozen featured species) it will be the best you can get this far east of the Far East. P.S. Yui Edomae Sushi celebrates its one year anniversary this week.

ANDIRON LOBSTER ROLL

Oh, Andiron lobster roll, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Is it your soft, squishy, split-buttered bun? The rosy red-white chunks of shellfish? Barely held together by mayo? The crunch of celery? The wisp of dill? Truth be told, it is all of these things and more. The lobster roll at Andiron is the perfect evocation of sitting on a picnic table by the Connecticut (or Rhode Island or Massachusetts) shore, with the brisk salinity of an Atlantic breeze in your hair, eating the most iconic and American of foodstuffs. There should be nothing skimpy about the meat, and nothing too overpowering about the seasonings or binder. It should be all about the lobster, tucked and overflowing out of that beautiful bun. And here it is.

Whatever Happened to Good Service?

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Once in a while, I’m able to eat out anonymously and see how the other 99.99% live. It doesn’t happen often – I get spotted everywhere these days, even sometimes in Chinatown – but when I can sneak in and experience restaurant service the way most people do, I am, to put it mildly, appalled.

Exhibit A: A brand new Indian restaurant in downtown Las Vegas. Two visits; two head-scratching experiences. Visit number one found me as the only diner in the place. I ordered two beers off the list; they were out of both of them.

I ordered a gin and tonic. “We have that!” and everyone sighed in relief.

I placed my order…and it took for…ev…er for the food to appear.

In an Indian restaurant.

Where I was the only person in the joint.

Getting the check was as challenging as getting the food, with my waitron apparently preoccupied with all of those other people who weren’t eating there. Visit number two was even worse. The food came faster, but the waitron disappeared multiple times, again taking care of who-knows-who. (The two other people seated were as lonely as I was.)  When it came time to pay, I  got her attention (if memory serves) by waving my underwear and singing the Star Spangled Banner.

When I finally get the bill, it has an item on it that was ordered and never delivered. To make matters worse, after I got home I found that they double-charged my account (for the price of the entire meal – $104) after someone disappeared for another 20 minutes to supposedly “fix things.”

Exhibit B: A brand new pub-restaurant on east Charleston serving English meat pies. Two different waitresses ask me three times if I want water. Water never shows. Ten minutes go by. Finally it does and I order. The soup comes reasonably fast, but a single meat pie takes for….ev…er. (Did I mention there were only six other people in the restaurant? And three of them were already eating?)

Three different sauces were offered with my meat pie, but I got the mustard cream whether I wanted it or not.

My dirty soup plate sat in front of me throughout the meal. Only when I was ready to pay did someone ask if I’d like a water re-fill. And for all I know, those dirty dishes are still sitting there.

A menu, some water, a little attention, the check — IT’S NOT THAT HARD, PEOPLE! If you don’t know what you’re doing, hire someone who does. Or don’t open your doors until you do.