SUSHI JUMPS THE SHARK (Part Deux)
Sushi Samba in The Palazzo is practically the poster restaurant for how bastardized sushi and sashimi menus have become. Is it a Japanese restaurant? A Brazilian churrascaria? A Peruvian-fusion ceviche joint? Who knows? You certainly won’t after a meal there, and ELV couldn’t figure it out after three.
Absinthe was the drink of choice among artists and writers in the mid to late 19th century. It inspired poets and appeared in works by Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh. It was drunk by the scandalous playwright Oscar Wilde (who once said: “Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality”), the eccentric Toulouse-Lautrec (who had alcohol issues far beyond absinthe), the poets Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe (ditto), and the famous 20th century author Ernest Hemingway (double ditto), just to mention a few. In keeping with the esteemed literary company with whom he is often compared (as a drunkard not a writer), ELV can often be found sipping this elixir of the Gods at Fleur de Lys – where General Manager Tobias Peach (peachy name for a restaurant guy heh?) gives a mini-seminar with every pour.
DJT
Trump International Hotel
2000 Fashion Show Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89109
702.476.7358
DJT in the Trump International, is the most important restaurant to open in town since Guy Savoy flew across the pond in 2006. Unlike Savoy and Joel Robuchon-two culinary masters revered for their art and lifetimes of craftsmanship-DJT has burst upon the scene like a child prodigy at a fancy new piano who rips through Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto without missing a beat. Yes, it is that good.
Credit goes to Executive Chef Joe Isidori and Chef de Cuisine David Varley for aiming for the stars and hitting their target. No food network celebrity, no jet-setting “consultant” chef, no micro-managed tourist-friendly menu; just two young guys cooking finely-tuned food with the best ingredients money can buy. And unlike too many young chefs (and incorrigible piano prodigies), never do they stray into the land of the overwrought or the over-thought.
My two minutes of local media fame is hardly enough to do justice the exquisitely rendered food, but click below to view our Restaurant of the Week on KLAS TV Channel 8 (CBS), featuring DJT.