The Best Restaurant in Town

Kaiseki_Chef_SabinOrr_016_For_Web.jpg

Quality is always inversely proportional to quantity. – Lionel Pôilane

There are passion restaurants and there are money restaurants.

Passion restaurants are imbued with a feeling — a personal connection between staff and client — which is palpable. The people behind them are to the kitchen born, and can’t imagine themselves doing anything else.

Restaurants in it solely for the shekels betray themselves with a vibe (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so) which says, “you’re just a number to us.”

Ferraro’s is a passion restaurant; Raku is a passion restaurant; Tao is a money restaurant. Esther’s Kitchen began as a passion project but is now about to morph into the Denver Mint.

To be “The Best Restaurant in Las Vegas” you have to treat cooking as a religion, not a job. To be the best at anything, you have to be driven by something other than profit. When you think about things that way, the field gets very narrow, very quickly.

Before you jump down my throat faster than slippery bivalve, no one has to remind me that all taste is subjective and “the best” of anything is a concept more nebulous than a Donald Trump stump speech.

Dont Go There Girlfriend Girlfriend GIF - Dont Go There Girlfriend Dont Go There Girlfriend GIFs

My idea of what makes a restaurant “the best” are probably far different from yours. By “the best”, I mean an eatery of quintessential excellence, which brings a spiritual intensity and machine-like consistency to the table. Decor means little or nothing to me; service is important, but not primary; and the dazzle factor must all be on the plate.

Your idea of the best in town might be a plush, no expense spared beef emporium, dripping with umami and testosterone. Or it could be an elegant Italian, smooth as Gucci leather, where they always know your name and the pasta is nonpareil. Perhaps you put a greater emphasis on intensive care service, or cartwheels in the kitchen. Some of us seek adventure in eating; others crave familiarity. But there are standards, and we at ELV are here to uphold them.

So, for purposes of this discussion, these are the essentials…

Things it must be:

Singular, i.e., not part of a chain, a group or empire

Chef-driven

Food-focused

Made-from-scratch-centric

Quiet

Comfortable

Seasonal

Small

Serious (but not too)

Things it must not be:

Too big

Too popular

Too corporate

Too commercial

Too many recipes

Too many clowns – as customers or in the kitchen

Filled with men showing off or women whooping it up – but I repeat myself

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

KAISEKI YUZU_BestChefSouthWest 001_edited.jpg
Twenty-four-seat Japanese restaurants (with seven-seat sushi bars) are as far from a money restaurant as the Fountainebleau is from VRBO.

Which brings us to a sliver of a space, impossible to see from the street, tucked into an obscure corner of Chinatown. It sits behind a tire shop and to the left of an obscure Persian restaurant. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you can be standing right in front of it and not know you’re mere feet away from a gastronomic trip to Japan –without the language barrier or a 13 hour plane flight.

Beyond the noren, the front door at Kaiseki Yuzu leads you into a dark, narrow hallway, decorated in spare, Japanese style, leading to the 30 seat kaiseki restaurant at its end. To your left (inches from the threshold) is a curtain leading to those six seats (above) and the most personally-crafted meal you can have in Las Vegas.

What chef-owner Kaoru Azeuchi (pictured at top of page) and his wife Mayumi have done since moving into this shoebox four years ago is remarkable. Not only have they garnered a James Beard Finalist nomination, but they have raised the bar for Japanese food in Las Vegas in a manner not seen since Mitsuo Endo opened Raku back in 2008.

Group_SabinOrr_014_For_Web.jpg(Soy good you’ll be wasabi yourself)

The kaiseki menu (above) — hyper-seasonal and glorious in its own right — is the main point of the restaurant. For the uninitiated, kaiseki is a very particular form of Japanese prix fixe dining (originally for the nobility), centered on precious ingredients, sourced at the peak of flavor, and fashioned into minimalist, edible art. Kazeuchi is a master of the craft, using the food chain (from the humblest of vegetables to the most exotic beef) to provide him a palette from which he creates masterpieces both visual and edible. If more beautiful food exists in Las Vegas, we haven’t found it.

The sushi bar at Kaiseki Yuzu wows you in a different way. The menu is the same price ($165/pp) as the $165 Chiku kaiseki, with fewer proteins than or the more luxurious Shou ($210) set. The emphasis at the bar is on Osaka-style sushi and pristine fish — an omakase experience where you sit back and enjoy the ride, because each of the ten or so dishes placed before you will concentrate your senses on the sublime expression of each ingredient.

Image(Yuzu need to come here)

 

Image(Osaka to me, John)

Chef John Mau (above) — a Michael Mina veteran — has commanded the sushi space since it opened last August. With a helpful assistant at his side (shout-out to Olivia!) he slices, dices, and explains everything from the five Zensai bites which start your meal to that impeccably chosen sushi to the Kanburi (yellowtail)  in a hypnotic shabu-shabu broth, whose crystalline appearance belies its potency.

Image(Souper douper)

Deceptively simple is a phrase often used to describe Japanese cuisine — where much more is always going on than meets the eye. So it is here with everything from the translucent rice to the immaculate fish. Even something as prosaic as a spicy tuna handroll is given new definition by being chopped before you, and barely folded into napkins of nori — echoing the sea in all its vegetal, sweet and saline glory.

Having a chef  in such close proximity, in the presence of such unsullied seafood, makes this a personal experience unlike any other in town.  The windowless room (very Japanese that) wraps you like a warm hug, and the gestalt of all three combines to make you do one thing: think about sushi like you’ve never considered it before. Every nuance is heightened; every bite attains a higher purpose — a commiseration between the animals which sustain us and the humans who enhance their taste. All done while making food delicious enough to send a happy shudder up my spine.

Image(Ricely done)

There is an intimacy born of a great Japanese dining experience which the West rarely approaches. It is born out of trust and respect between chef and customer. You are placing yourself in their hands (literally), and both sides recognize a bond created by what the chef will hand-craft to please, enlighten, and nourish you. The rawness of the cuisine, and its insistence upon absolute freshness, coupled with the hand-molding of almost every course demands this level of faith.

Japanese chefs make food taste most like itself, all while making it appetizing and beautiful. There is a distillation to the essence of things which informs their cuisine. There is no place to hide in a Japanese meal. If you give yourself over to it, you start appreciating why French chefs in the latter part of the last century flocked to Japan. It wasn’t only because the Japanese were micro-plating food decades before any Frenchman had heard of tweezering micro-greens. It was because this is high amplitude restaurant food in its purest expression. Kaiseki Yuzu is the closest thing we have to a trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, and it is right on our doorstep. There is no more unique, delightful, or passionate restaurant anywhere in Las Vegas.

Kaiseki_Exterior_SabinOrr_024_For_Web.jpg

Late-Stage Las Vegas + The List

Image(Changing the game at 1228 Main)

Writers take their muses wherever they find them. The inspiration for this post came from James Reza — longtime Las Vegan, once my editor; now a thoughtful observer of all things Vegas — in a tweet about the possibility of the Oakland Athletics moving to town:

Which got me to thinking about “late-stage” culinary Las Vegas.

Just where are we now? And what do we have to look forward to?

The Strip — long the economic and creative engine of all things gastronomic in town — has faded into a hangout for Martha Stewart fans and Voltaggio Brothers cash grabs. (For what is a “one-year year culinary residency” but a way to monetize an  unusable space (the two-story vacated Aureole cavern) with the unimaginative (“Retro”) from the unimpressive (who?). We couldn’t be less interested if they were serving spaghetti Os and fake Parmesan, which, of course, they will be.

These places will make money of course, but they won’t leave a mark. Swapping an Old Navy for a Gap in a tired old mall is not the same as bringing Neiman-Marcus and Nordstrom’s to town in the first place.

“I am so done with the Strip,” exclaimed another muse for this article. The speaker of those words wasn’t some local jamoke who hates being charged for parking. He has been a fixture on Las Vegas Boulevard South for decades — opening multiple restaurants in hotels going back to the Nineties. Now he envisions a future for his company opening smaller venues for locals who appreciate them — something unthinkable a decade ago.

Strip-quality food coming to neighborhoods is nothing new: You can trace its roots from Other Mama’s premium seafood to our upscale sushi parlors and to the prime cuts now available at 138 Degrees (Henderson) and Harlo (Summerlin). With this quality comes Strip-level pricing, but from where we’re sitting, no one in the carriage trade seems to be balking at $100/pp check minimums.

Chinatown (where a 75 seat restaurant is considered huge) continues to explode, while the southwest seems to be attracting chefs and concepts like eggs to Bearnaise.

All of which bodes well for locals, and marginalizes whatever is happening on the Strip, at least for those of us who used to be in awe of the restaurant revolution that took place there for twenty years.

Will we trundle up to Caesars to see the new Peter Luger when it opens? Sure, if only to compare it to the New York original. (If things run true to form, the menu will be laughably short, the wine list absurdly brief, and the staff comically rude.)

But Luger and the Voltaggios and even Martha Stewart — the octogenarian queen of brand-whoring — pretty much signal that the celebrity chef restaurant has run its course. And if they weren’t enough to convince me, then septuagenarian Martin Yan’s bad joke of a licensing deal should do the trick…and demonstrates how deeply we are scraping the bottom of the celebrity chef barrel.

Image(Note to self: Yan can’t cook)

You probably have to be over fifty to remember Yan from his  “Yan Can Cook” PBS days. Perhaps once he could, but no longer. Now he’s prostituting his brand like a pint-sized Martha Stewart, keeping accountants happy and his rice bowl full at our expense. I doubt any of the low-rollers in this charm-free dining space even know who Yan was, except in a “this guy used to be famous” kind of way. Regardless, he’s been reduced to going through the motions to cash in on a faded name and the cynicism behind the whole enterprise is palpable.

Here is my Instagram rant on the matter and we’ll leave it at that.

As an official old-timer, it is easy to get depressed about the direction in which Vegas is heading. F1! NFL! Super Bowls and Baseball! Late-stage Vegas has morphed before our eyes from a town of gambling, food, and music into the mega-event capital of America. Las Vegas used to be about wicked fun and excess….then it was food and shopping. Its future will be all about advertising.

The idea of a big hotel opening with a lounge and a showroom and six good restaurants now seems as quaint as a flip phone.  Old time casino table games don’t count anymore, anymore than washed up brands still trying to cash in.

Perhaps the Fountainebleau will kick start a new dawn in Vegas dining. Hope springs eternal. And there are still many, many legacy restaurants occupying a special place in our hearts (Milos, Jaleo, Robuchon, Delmonico, Savoy, Bazaar Meat…) plus a few new ones which rate a return (Balla, Viva!, Brezza….)…but lord help me if I ever step foot in The Horseshoe again. (True fact: You can put lipstick on a pig and it will always be Bally’s.)

Soooo….long story short, after the Yan disaster, I needed a series of superb experiences to inspire me to post yet another promiscuous purview of my palate pursuits….so here it is, for the umpteenth time in a row, THE LIST: the places in Las Vegas you should be eating in and why. Put another way: the places I’ve been eating and why they give me hope for the future of Las Vegas.

As usual, all venues come highly recommended unless otherwise noted:

1228 Main

Image

Image(One banana-mint blueberry martini comin’ up!)

How can we be so jazzed about a restaurant before it opens? Easy peasy when it has the pedigree of this one. The folks who brought you Spago, CUT, Lupo, et al are about to change the downtown game in ways unimaginable a half-decade ago: three meals a day; an on premise bakery; world-class desserts; Cal-Ital-French menu (like the one that made Wolfgang Puck famous); remarkable coffee; casual lunches and serious dinners — this will be like nothing Main Street has ever seen.

To be clear: This is not a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, but he is an investor, and his major league kitchen talent is behind the project. We expect this rising tide to raise all boats, and finally turn Main Street into the dining destination it was destined to become. (East Fremont must be watching and weeping.)

Opening at the end of the month. Now if we could only remember the address…

Further good news arrived in the form of Bradley Ogden’s ongoing overhaul of Marché Bacchus‘s kitchen, and a single bite of his steakburger gave me hope for the future:

Image(Obligatory #BeingJohnCurtas burger pic)

Bouchon is still the place to go for vichyssoise, boudin blanc and Le Cirque-worthy crème brûlée:

Image

…not to mention sweetbreads. Bouchon is also the only place we know of in Vegas, with the cojones to serve them. You know these glands gotta be good if we head there directly after spending two weeks in France. In business almost twenty years now, Bouchon has endured because its food is….wait for it…thymus:

Image(Sweet puns are what I was bred for)

Caveat: As much as we love the Big B, its ‘ersters were unimpressive, in size and selection. We’ve always called them best in town, but that crown has been usurped by another slurper — Water Grill — where even late in the season, the bivalves were clearly bigger, better, and fresher:

Image(Aw shucks…)

Since we’re in a seafood mood, when the hankerin’ for fish and chips arises, the malt-battered ones at 7th & Carson are coronation-worthy:

Image

And don’t sleep on the incroyable desserts at Osteria Fiorella:

Image

As long as we’re remembering superior succulence over the past three monts, this “Secreto Pork” at Edo Gastro Tapas & Wine stands out:

Image

…as do the life-affirming/health-giving properties of Khoury’s Mediterranean practically perfect puffy pita:

Image

Naxos Taverna restored my faith in off-Strip casino eating …by bringing Milos-quality seafood to the ‘burbs. Gorgeous swimmers, pretty room, beautiful apps, and finally, a restaurant with a chef (Mark Andelbradt) who knows how to cook a f**king artichoke:

Image

Image

Image

The restorative powers of Szechuan cuisine are well known, but be advised: at Chengdu Taste , they must be sampled with a fire hose in tow:

Image(Spicy is an understatement)

When it comes to breakfast, The Daily Bread stands apart. It’s fresh-baked goods are shockingly good, and this banana cream croissant was the definition of scrumptious:

Image

Did someone say “Conchinita Pibil?”After three weeks in France, the one thing we craved was the spark of good Mexican, and Leticia’s Cocina & Cantina always fills the bill.

Image

Image

Speaking of sparks, the contrast of rich and sharp is the elemental appeal of good Thai, and Lamoon had us over the moon with its comfy build-out (in an old Dairy Queen!) and a luscious duck khao soi:

Image

Everything we tried was a head-turner, both in presentation and taste. Just the palate resuscitator we needed after weeks of organ meats and stinky cheeses. Nice wine list, too, as befits the Bank and Bon Atcharawan brand.

In a more traditional vein, we returned to Cipriani for the pasta, but stayed for the gelato:

Image

One of the ways we keep our girlish figure is by walking to Cipriani for lunch on Fridays. This is not an option at  Hola Mexican Cocina+Cantina  which serves these fabulous blue corn grilled fish tacos at the far reaches of the southwest valley:

Image

Truth be truth, Hola is so far from the palatial Curtas abode:

(Landscaping is my passion)

…that it took a Sherpa guide, Two Conestoga wagons, and a degree in dead reckoning to find it. But the payoff was in those tortillas and even the spicy fideo — which got our attention more than any Mexican side dish in recent memory.

Closer to home is Patrick Munster’s brilliant steak tartare at Main Street Provisions:

Image

Anything and everything at Anima by Edo:

Image

Yes, that’s two mentions of Oscar Amador Edo’s food…which, as our hottest local chef running two of our hottest restaurants, he deserves.

Now, for the home stretch, some old reliables and newcomers which rang our chimes over the past few months:

Yukon Pizza is simply fabulous no matter how you slice it:

Image(Pizza be with you)

Sea Salt Live Sashimi …is delicious, but not as pristine as Japanese, and definitely not for the squeamish. Pro tip: bring your favorite Korean to help you navigate the menu which is not exactly limited:

Image

Any pie at Good Pie always floats our boat:

Image

Nobody fries chicken like the Koreans, and no Korean in Vegas fries it like Ssoju Korean Pub:

Image

Soulbelly BBQ’s beef brisket taco are life-affirming…for everyone but the steer:

Image

And let us not forsake the bread and dips at Esther’s Kitchen:

Image

All of these meals restored my faith in humanity….at least as it relates to my taste buds. They also got me to thinking…

What will late-stage Vegas be? I expect the Strip to get dumber and locals to get smarter. Chef-driven restaurants are so 2010. “Name” chefs are gradually being replaced with corporate restaurant concepts like the ones that brought Tao, RPM, and Mott 32 to our shores(?). Next up will be the LPM Restaurants bringing “music, art, people and bonhomie [and] outrageous harmony in the room” — when it takes over the old Milos space in The Cosmo. More and more, new joints will prioritize a party vibe over the food, and the sports-loving crowds will eat it up. The restaurant-cum-nightclub is here to stay, and will make me long for the days when I thought the music at B&B Ristorante was a little too loud.

The Strip hotels once aimed high and hit their target, and brought world renown to our restaurant scene in the process. But the visionaries who changed that game are long gone, replaced by executives who view Vegas as one gigantic advertising platform masquerading as a sports bar, shoveling $100 steaks into the gaping maws of fanboys and show-offs.

With this change went any hope that the Strip’s restaurant scene will ever again be taken seriously, at least in my lifetime. It’s no coincidence that we have three finalists for James Beard Award this year and each of them — Oscar Amador Edo, Kaoru Azuechi, and Garagiste Wine Bar — plies their trade miles from Las Vegas Boulevard.

And miles from LVBlvd is where, with a few exceptions, you’ll find me these days. Because if there’s one thing I don’t want with my meals, it’s “music, art and outrageous harmony.”

YUZU Kaiseki Excellence

 

It took me two years to make it to Yuzu Japanese Kitchen.

Two years.

Sounds incredible even to me, since I pride myself in seeking out the best Japanese food in town, as soon as it arrives in town.

But I have an excuse. (It’s a lame one, but I’m stickin’ with it.)

And that excuse is: Yuzu is located on Silverado Ranch Boulevard. Yeah, that Silverado Ranch Blvd. — the one located way southeast of the Strip; the one littered with poker bars and fast food franchises. The street that considers the South Coast Hotel and Casino a fun time anchor tenant. A restaurant wasteland so vast it makes Henderson seem like Napa Valley.

You normally couldn’t get me on Silverado Ranch with a shotgun in my mouth and promise of free foie gras, but my buddy Martin Koleff told me I had to try Chef Kaoru Azeuchi’s cuisine, so off we were — twice in two weeks — to see for ourselves.

Martin and Rie Koleff, you may recall, are something of a Japanese restaurant power couple in Las Vegas. They both are long time veterans of our hotel F&B scene, and Martin was instrumental in first putting Raku on the national map. These days they are both involved in bringing the Joy of Sake event to Las Vegas, and if there’s such a thing as a Japanese restaurant mafia in town, the Koleffs are the capo di tutti capi to numerous chefs and restaurateurs, many of whom are not as fluent in English as they are.

When Martin or Rie tells us we have to try someone’s food, we listen. Usually. Unless it’s on friggin’ Silverado Ranch Boulevard, where, truth be told, we thought Azeuchi-san’s chances of survival were slim. But survive he has, prospered even, in his almost-hidden haunt behind a car parts store.

He’s done it by doing what so many non-Japanese chefs are afraid or unwilling to do: food his way, writ small, night after night, until he his audience slowly finds him. (Chefs are always telling me how they just want to open a little place and serve their favorite dishes. Yeah right, I always think to myself. With a few exceptions, the only people with the guts to go small and be patient are Asians in general and Japanese cooks in particular.)

Yuzu may be small, but what it’s doing is a very big deal, indeed. It’s not strictly a sushi bar (although there is a small one), and it’s not an izakaya in the Raku or Izakaya Go mold. What it is is our most Japanese of restaurants. A place that could be right at home in a Shinjuku alleyway; a place serving food so true to the rhythms and tastes of Japan that it’s almost shocking when a gaijin walks through the door.

There are many reasons to go here, the passion of the chef and quality of the ingredients being first and foremost among them. The Food Gal® tells us the noodle and teriyaki bowls at lunch are first class, but if you really want to see Kaoru-san strut his stuff, you need to reserve in advance for one of his kaiseki meals.

For the uninitiated, kaiseki refers to a very specific form of Japanese dining. It is the haute cuisine of Japanese cooking — seasonal eating taken to the nth degree — a multi-course meal that combines the artistry of the chef with a myriad of ingredients, presentations and techniques. Everything (and we mean everything) from the garnishes to the plating is thought through and presented in a way to enhance every sense — visual, aromatic, taste, tactile — that goes into your enjoyment of the meal. Many of the elaborate garnishes are symbolic, and all of the recipes try to achieve a zen-like state of communion between the diner and the food.

In other words, it doesn’t get much more complicated or serene than a kaiseki meal, but in the right hands, it is a transporting experience — creating an almost blissful connection between chef, raw material and consumer. There is nothing like it in Western dining, although the elaborate tasting menus of Keller, Achatz, Humm and others pay homage to kaiseki, none of them achieve the transcendence of  the Japanese chefs, who have been at it centuries longer. (Americans are too busy doing cartwheels in the kitchen and padding your bill.) Azeuchi trained for 16 years as a kaiseki chef in Japan, even getting the honor of serving the Emperor, so, needless to say, you’re in good hands.

What you will get will always depend upon the season and the chef’s inspiration, but whatever path is chosen by the chef, it will no doubt be the most delicious Japanese food you’ve ever had.

Our dinner started with the appetizer platter above, containing everything from an ethereal poached egg with caviar to grilled barracuda to uni rice topped with red snapper. From there, we proceeded to a sashimi platter of lobster, striped jack and halfbeak that was the equal of anything you’ll find at Kabuto and Yui:

 

Then came the queen of all mushroom soups: a dobin-mushi matsutake broth containing pike conger, cabbage and shrimp:

It was a soup so startling in its deceptive, smoky simplicity that everyone at our table was shaking their heads in appreciation.

From there we progressed through six more courses, ranging from grilled ribbons of A-5 Miyazaki wagyu (wrapped around more ‘shrooms and wasabi), to a steamed dish (steamed scallop cake draped with a latticework of wheat gluten), to eel tempura, to a “vinegar dish” of seared mackerel that was a bracing combination of tart and smooth:

Each dish was a model of precision, and each left you hungry for more. A big deal is made of the rice dish, for good reason. Rie Koleff (who acted as our personal sake sommelier throughout the meal*) explained that rice always signifies the ending of the meal Japan. This dish was, like much Japanese food, subtle to the point of invisibility:

….but like much Japanese food, once you stop looking for in-your-face flavor, and start appreciating the nuances, you quickly find that you can’t stop eating it. I don’t think a simple bowl of rice and fish can taste any finer, or be found anywhere in Las Vegas.

Those nuances are the key to Japanese eating. I call it deceptive simplicity because you are always getting much more than meets the eye. Especially in a kaiseki meal. Here, you are treated to an education in the centuries-old traditions in the Land of the Rising Sun: the reverence for seafood, the harmony of vegetables and the keen awareness of the seasons. In a nutshell, everything that Las Vegas is not. This is eating as a form of secular religion, and if you’re open to the experience, you will be transported in a way that no other Western meal can match.

The kaiseki at Yuzu is not a formal affair. (You are on the outskirts of Hendertucky after all.)  Because Kaoru-san flies in many ingredients from Japan, it is necessary to book at least three days in advance. The price you want to spend determines how elaborate it’s going to get. The ten-course, sixteen dish affair we had runs about $175/pp, but for $50/pp you can get a fine introduction into one of the greatest dinners in all of Las Vegas. ELV’s meal was comped.

YUZU JAPANESE KITCHEN

1310 East Silverado Ranch Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89183

702.778.8889

http://www.yuzujapanesekitchen.com/

 

* There is a nice selection of sakes on hand but you will probably not get your own sake sommelier. Sometimes, it’s good to be king. ;-)