Tag: oysters

What You’ll Be Having at SPARROW + WOLF

 Tomorrow it will have been open for two weeks. Every chef worth their Victorinox has already checked in, and industry types of all stripes are making a point of making a pilgrimage here to see what all the shoutin’s about.

We’ve been to SPARROW + WOLF twice, and plan a third visit before doing a formal review. But as a public service, we thought we’d post some tasty snaps of some of the more interesting dishes to give you, our loyal readers, an idea of what you’re in for when you check it out.

Two caveats: 1) when we say “the more interesting dishes” we basically mean most of the menu, which is nothing if not interesting, and 2) all judgments are reserved until said review, and nothing said herein should be seen as an endorsement of, or opprobrium for, any of the plates, food, drinks or service.

So, without further ado, here’s what you’ll be doing when you get there:

Cozy interior + Big window + Busy bartenders =

Wine refrigerator + Retail sales available + $20 corkage =

Wood + Wood smoke + Fragrant smell of burning wood (this is a good thing) =

Funny names +  Punny names + 5-ingredient cocktails =

Good stemware =

Good beers + Acceptable wines + Decent prices + New Mexican sparkler =

Fresh baked bread + Butter at the right temperature =

Oyster one way + Oyster another way + Oyster a third way =

Bento box + Charcuterie + Lamb tartare + Lump crab + Big shrimp =

Smoke + Burnt wood + Brown booze =

Beets! + The fact that chefs can’t stop serving me beets =

Oddly arranged artichokes + The fact that thistle lovers like alliteration =

Very Spring-y sweetbreads + Peas + Pea shoots + Bacon-wrapped cabbage + Seasonal eating =

Butcher wings + Burnt tomato + Ndjua vinaigrette =

Hamachi + Lychee + Rice cracker =

Maryland blue crab + Kimchee + Crabmeat + Egg =

Duck + Foie gras + Wood ear ‘shrooms + Salted cukes + Plum-duck broth =

Halibut + Alabama white bbq sauce + Citrus confit =

Dry-aged steak + Cephalopod =

Calamansi + Blueberry + Tart =

That’s enough to digest for one Tuesday morning. We’ll give chef Brian Howard and his crew another week or so to get their sea legs under them before we visit again.

In the meantime, just remember this equation: Sparrow + Wolf = unique gastropub.

SPARROW + WOLF

4480 Spring Mountain Road

Las Vegas, NV 89102

702.790.2147

http://sparrowandwolflv.com/

JAPANEIRO – Against All Odds

Kevin Chong’s Japañeiro is going on 3 years old now.

To be perfectly blunt, its survival has always been in doubt to us. Not because it isn’t exceptional, but because it is in an exceptionally difficult location — probably the worst in town for a place serving such fine food.

If you haven’t been, allow us to paint a picture for you. On a desolate corner in the southwest part of town there is a strip mall — one of those L-shaped jobs with spaces for maybe 10 tenants. Japañeiro occupies the corner space, while a few other renters hold on, as they weather the various stages of going into or out of business. There is a sad looking video poker bar on the corner pad, and a lot of depressing dust and emptiness on the other 3 corners of Warm Springs and Tenaya. If you were picking the worst place in town to create extraordinary meat and Asian seafood combinations — dishes that would make even the fussiest gourmand sit up and take notice — you couldn’t pick a more dire location.

But survive Chong has — against all odds. And how’s he’s done it is by bringing in everything from true Belon oysters, to live Japanese abalone to Kegani Hokkaido hairy crabs in season. He’s done it with technically precise combinations and point perfect cooking.

He’s done it by doing Asian fusion food as well or better than anyone on or off the Strip.

Chong previously worked at Nobu, and his facility with blending Japanese ideas with in-your-face seasonings shows his pedigree, and the influence of his sensei, Nobu Matsuhisa. You won’t find better kumamoto oysters with uni and foie gras anywhere — and that includes at Nobu. He toggles back and forth between Asia, France and the U.S.A. with equal aplomb — plating gorgeous escargot with the same flair he shows to giant Nigerian prawns doused with truffle butter, or the best beef gyoza in town:

Speaking of meat, there isn’t a better cut of beef in the ‘burbs than Chong’s 24 oz. dry-aged rib eye, sliced and cubed off the bone and served with an array of salts and dried garlic:

He also does top shelf sashimi:

….and a green tea tiramisu and fried bananas to beat the band:

Put it all together and you have one of our most unique, tastiest, chef-driven restaurants — the type of place foodies are always pining for, and that Las Vegas has precious few of.

With all this in mind, you might be asking yourself, “Why isn’t there a line out the door for this food?”

The answer, of course, has something to do with the location, and a little more to do with the price point. This is not the place to come for bargain basement fusion food. It is the place to come for some of the most unique creations in Las Vegas, made by a chef who’s passionate about what he does. Chong, like Dan Krohmer at Other Mama, is sourcing Strip quality ingredients and giving them an East-meets-West spin that always maintains a delicate balance between creativity and understatement. Cooking this fine is worth the tariff, even if a tab for two can get to $150 very quickly — $75 being price of his multi-course omakase dinner. Ordering a la carte will  keep things right around a hundy for a couple.

Those who blanch at that tariff will be happy to know there’s a happy hour (where everything’s under five bucks), and that the (huge) rib eye (at $65) is a flat out steal.

Location or not, anyone interested in interesting food ought to be eating here.

ELV’s dinner for two with a bottle of $50 wine came to $200 and we left a $40 tip.

JAPAÑEIRO

7315 West Warm Springs Road

Las Vegas, NV 89113

702.260.8668

https://www.facebook.com/Japaneiro/

Shucking RM SEAFOOD For Good

(These mollusks left us shell-shocked)

The best thing about the meal was the waitress.

She was tall, and none too young, and spoke with a middle European accent. But she was also fast and funny and not too friendly. When you needed something, it appeared quickly, and when you needed her, she always seemed to show up a moment before the thought occurred to you.

Would that the food had measured up to the service.

Why had we come? Why, for the oysters, of course! (See above)

Eighteen of them. A dozen mixed from the Pacific Northwest and half-dozen Bluepoints, just for comparison.

What showed up were eighteen blands that barely tasted of bivalve.

Seventy bucks of Crassostrea gigas bivalve to be exact. Tasting of nothing but old, over-chilled, mollusks.

See those fancy descriptions beside each of the varieties in the picture?  Taste-tempting indeed they were, with promises of deep, clean brininess and top notes of fondue, sweet cream and cucumber.

Know what showed up? None of the above. Just eighteen slimy balls of stale seafood that were indistinguishable from each other. We at ELV know not from where those taste descriptors came from, but dollars to doughnuts it wasn’t from anyone associated with the restaurant.

Here’s an idea: If you’re going to use florid language to describe your food, perhaps someone in the restaurant should taste something sometime to make sure the menu matches the merchandise.

Someone should also taste the faux butter here, it having the texture, taste and tensile strength of whipped air.

The biscuits and muffins are fresh baked and addictively good, but what good is that if you’re spreading them with something that really believes it is not butter?

Placing these disappointments behind us, we soldiered on through the rest of the meal, “soldiering on” being the appropriate verb for having to dig through a dry, stringy crab cake, and having to use a hand grenade to soften up the hard-as-a-rock lardons that accompanied a fortress-like, inedible endive salad:

On the plus side, the tomatoes tasted like exactly what you’d expect February tomatoes to taste like, which is too say, hard, mealy and nothing at all.

Here’s an idea #2: If you’re going to serve raw endive, at least learn to dress it properly, and bring a bayonet to the table for the guests to use against it.

The meal was redeemed somewhat by a beautiful cioppino:

…it being full of chunks of well-chosen seafood, and dense, delicious noodles, in a piquant, rich broth. As good as it was (and it was tremendous), we were so shell-shocked by our first four courses that the breach of confidence in this kitchen could not be repaired.

We don’t know what Rick Moonen is up to these days, but from the look of things, he’s not overseeing the cooking in the restaurant that bears his name.

From the taste of things, I doubt anybody is.

Which is a pity.

Almost as pitiful as those oysters, butter, crab cake and salad.

Our dinner for two, with a single glass of wine, $70 worth of oysters and a $41 tip, came to $220.53.

RM SEAFOOD

Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino

702.632.7200

https://www.mandalaybay.com/en/restaurants/rick-moonens-rm-seafood-fine-dining.

P.S. Some of you will no doubt notice that RM Seafood is included in our Top 50 of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants 2017. You might also notice that it was written about in the book by my co-authors, not me. Which was the reason for my visit last week — to see if it warrants such status in future editions. I think you can guess the answer.