Tag: steaks

JEAN GEORGES STEAKHOUSE

(A man and his meat: Sean Griffin is smokin’!)

They had me at “wagyu brisket.” More on that in a minute. Actually, Jean-Georges Vongerichten has had me in his thrall since August 30, 1988, when I first tasted his then-groundbreaking Alsace-meets-Asia  take on French cuisine in New York City (at a birthday dinner for my then-spouse).

Back then, he was a wunderkind of French chefs, mixing and matching French technique with the mysterious scents and accents of Thailand. Today he has dozens of restaurants all over the world, and two of Vegas’s best steakhouses. The oldest one — Prime in the Bellagio — will always hold a special place in our heart. For nineteen years it has been Las Vegas’s prettiest steakhouse, and the food still sparkles as much as the room.

It’s seven year old sibling — the Jean Georges Steakhouse  —  has always had a more casual vibe.  The classic feel of Prime extends to its menu (which changes about as often as I go to a monster truck rally), while JGS is where Vongerichten lets his chefs play with their food. The lucky chef in this case is Sean Griffin, a baby-faced veteran who knows his way around steaks like his boss knows a khao niao from a kai yang.

Truth be told, we’ve eaten here several times in the past and always felt like menu was derivative, dumbed-down, and a pale imitation of what big brother was doing. With the new re-boot, JGV has finally found its sea legs (?), and Griffin’s cooking feels more confident and focused.

The operation hits all of the stations on the steakhouse cross (dry-aged, Japanese-raised, grass-grazed), along with the requisite Flintstonean tomahawk chop (42 oz.) and the  ungodly-priced A5 Kobe — for those who like to feel their arteries hardening while they eat. But what really distinguishes this place are the little touches Griffin brings to things like a Summer Fruits salad:

Image may contain: food

….phenomenal eggs-on-egg oscetra caviar toast — a construction so simple and perfect (rich, just-cooked yolk sandwiched between two thin pieces of toast, topped with fish eggs) that I couldn’t believe I’ve never encountered it before:

Image may contain: food

If those don’t inspire a tip of the fedora to the kitchen, then try this pepper-crusted foie gras (with strawberry-rhubarb compote) on for size:

…and a crunchy breast of chicken in a shallow pool of uncommonly good hot sauce. By-the-numbers cooking this is not —  whether you’re diving into a big lumpy crab cake, or a citrusy-glazed sea bass. The steaks are grilled over apricot wood (and finished with rendered beef fat) and take a back seat to no one’s, but it’s those apps and sides that will get your attention. Summer corn is brought to life by Manchego cheese, chili and lime, and if there’s a better potato dish in town than Griffin’s smashed Yukons with jalapenos, I haven’t found it.

It’s the aggressive-yet-balanced use of strong, tangy accents (peppers, citrus, soy, etc.) that distinguish this menu from so many others, including its big brother. These flavors announce JGS as a steakhouse with real kick, and one that will keep your palate awake throughout the meal.

Back to that brisket, it was black as coal and smoky as a Texas wildfire. It tiptoed between fork tender and slightly chewy and was all the beef-eaten a rootin’ tootin’ carnivore could ask for. It needed a little sauce, but the four they make in house — chili glaze, JG steak sauce, soy miso and Bearnaise — are all equal to the task. The desserts are superb, and par for the course for a chef who’s had my gastronomic attention for half of my life.

JEAN GEORGES STEAKHOUSE

Aria Resort and Casino

3730 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702.590.8660

https://www.jean-georges.com/restaurants/united-states/las-vegas/jean-georges-steakhouse/

P.S. My sister and her grandnephews are probably still talking about the Brontosaurus (marrow) bone we were served:

Image may contain: 1 person, sitting, eating, table and food

Like everything else coming out of this kitchen right now, it was overwhelming (in a good way) and just about flawless.

SW STEAKHOUSE Blues

Image may contain: food

Nothing puts me in a bad mood more than a mediocre meathouse meal. Especially at Wynn/Encore prices. Especially in a town crawling with great steakhouses. But that’s what I got recently at the much ballyhooed SW Steakhouse – a place that packs them in and rolls them out with the efficiency of a stockyard leading its victims to slaughter.

And slaughtered is what you’ll feel like after a meal here.

The vaunted chili rubbed rib-eye (our reason for coming here) was heat free, and the way it’s served — hacked up and thrown into a pan with an oversized, under-cooked onion — was about as artful as corned beef hash. That humongous onion serves a purpose, though, it covers a lot of territory in that pan, distracting you from how little meat you’re getting for your $125. The crab cake was even worse: deep-fried, stringy and dry, like something you’d get at a third string steakhouse, not the flagship of a major hotel. The chefs sent out a complimentary slab of salt containing strips of A-5 wagyu (top left in photo) — a nice gesture if any of them had known how to cook it. It was overcooked to chewy, thereby becoming the world’s priciest beef jerky. (A steakhouse that can’t cook wagyu is like a concert pianist who can’t find middle C.)

Our beet dish was as bland and basic as any out there — cooked beets, undisguised, and unseasoned with anything but good intentions, then formed into a block with a little cheese on top. Other chefs try to hide or play off the dirty (tasting) essence of the root. Here, they expect you to be dazzled by the presentation and pay your $12 without complaint.

A shallow dish of prettified foie gras custard (top right) was nice, but it’s really saying something when the bread basket is the highlight of a meal.

Dessert was a melting chocolate ball, dissolved by a rich, bittersweet sauce, revealing a ball of ice cream in the middle. I’m sure it elicits ohs and ahs from the conventioneers and others paying with someone else’s money.

Service was top notch, as it always is in Wynn restaurants. They also upgraded the dining room a while back so it no longer looks like a bus station, so there’s that.

The wine list is a cruel joke, and best viewed with your accountant, a mortgage banker, and a defibrillator on hand.

Our meal for two, including two bottles of wine (both around $100 and two of the cheapest on the list) came to $560. That’s a buck eighty a person for food (including tip) for those of you bad at math.

You have been warned.

SW STEAKHOUSE

Wynn Hotel and Casino

3131 Las Vegas Blvd. South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

702.770.3325

http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/Dining/FineDining/SWSteakhouse

 

Aging Beef Gracefully – THE STEAKHOUSE and CHARLIE PALMER

You’ve gotta hand it to THE Steakhouse at Circus Circus. It’s been around since 1983 and it still looks and feels the same way it did when I first walked through its manly-musky-meaty facade thirty-three years ago.

Truth be told, I had been avoiding going there ever since I finished my roundup of vintage Vegas dining spots a month or so ago. So depressed was I from hauling my ass from one sad, tired, tourist trap of a meal after another (over the past year) that I couldn’t handle another “Vintage Vegas” disappointment. And I sure as hell didn’t want to write another word about another regretful experience, much less chew on shoe leather and tepid memories.

But memories are a powerful thing. And I remembered the sweet whiff of mesquite smoke that had perfumed my last (very good) steak here seven years ago. And the room — a thick, dark, paneled-and-padded homage to days of old — always held a lot of appeal. It had always been a time warp of sorts, but unlike the faded, shopworn tackiness of the Golden Steer, perhaps it hadn’t gone to seed.

Service as I recalled, had always been top notch as well — with a crackerjack waitstaff that looked proud to be there, rather than just going through the motions.

With all these things in mind, I braved the environs of Circus Circus — overrun with families and reeking of bargain-basement desperation — and found the familiar sight of that heavy, wood-paneled entryway:

One of the joys of eating here is the incongruity of it all. Everywhere you look there are fanny-packers and families —  none of whom look like they can afford a Vegas vacation — and smack dab in the middle of it all is a plush steakhouse that would be right at home in mid-town Manhattan.

The prices are rather Manhattan-esque too, which only adds to your sense of victual vertigo. $61 is a lot for a porterhouse, getting right up there into Carnevino territory, but this one is properly aged, even if it was cut a bit thin and cooked a bit much:

 To be fair, it comes with a potato (how retro!), and some very good vegetables, or an extremely good black bean soup — that soup comes with a jigger of sherry, just as it should. But what really set off the meal for us was the pitch perfect wedge of lettuce with bacon and blue cheese:

….and the gorgeous pile of fresh spinach with just the right sort of hot and sour dressing:

.

 We were also nuts about some big, beefy(?) shrimp that came with their own, warmed-over-a-candle garlic butter, and the a top-notch bread basket. The service is top shelf as well, full of old pros who know what they’re doing and make everyone feel at home.

About the only things not to like about THE Steakhouse are the by-the-numbers desserts and a very limited wine list. It’s far from the “best steakhouse in town” (that it advertises itself to be), but on the whole, it succeeds where too many old warhorses fail. And even after all these years, it still feels like a blast from the past in all the best ways. It is the steakhouse that the Golden Steer wishes it could be.

It was fun eating at THE Steakhouse, in part because no one recognized us.  We had avoided Charlie Palmer STEAK for years precisely because we always get recognized there and were tired of holding our tongue about how pedestrian it was.

If you recall, CP Steak was the steakhouse that Anthony Bourdain’s (now soon-to-be-ex) wife called “the worst steak she had ever eaten” four years ago, sparking a tempest in a Twitter teapot between me and Mr. “Fuck Nuts.” Good times.

Truth be told, we weren’t surprised to discover, when the dust cleared, that Bourdain’s terrible meal had occurred here. Of all the steakhouses in Vegas, it had been under-performing for a decade. Of all our celebrity chef steakhouses, it consistently ran dead last, and was not even in the same league as CUT, Carnevino, Prime et al.

What was holding it back? Tough to say. Complacency might have had something to do with it. As the main dinner restaurant at the tony Four Seasons Hotel, it could be assured of hitting its numbers, no matter how uninspiring the decor or boring the food. And, as a steakhouse in a steakhouse town, all it had to do is keep a bunch of big hitter California cabs on its list to keep the fat cat, middle American conventioneers swilling…and swearing it was the best damn steakhouse they’d ever been to.

Even at its worst, CP Steak would’ve still been the best damn steakhouse in dozens of American cities. But this is Las Vegas — home to the greatest beef emporiums in the country outside of the Big Apple — and the bar is set pretty friggin’ high. So, how could the estimable Charlie Palmer — one of America’s greatest chefs — get his meat market back in the ballgame? After sixteen years of running on cruise control?

Well, a facelift was a good place to start. (See picture above) Gone is the beige on beige interior. Chairs are brighter and the mood (and the lighting) is lighter. ELV ain’t no arch-EE-teck, but he can tell when thangs have been spruced up to a fare thee well. And indeed they have, and indeed this place now looks like a top-notch beef emporium, not a forlorn hotel dining room.

Elevating Master Sommelier Steve Geddes as Director of Operations was a plus, as was giving Executive Chef Tom Griese license to upgrade the menu. Neither is brand new to the operation, but along with the remodel, they’ve brought some caché back to the wine and food. Everything seems snappier and happier about the joint, right down to the platings that no longer look like they got lost on their way to Morton’s.

One dinner for two people is just scratching the surface, but this was the first time in years we found ourselves excited by the meal and stunned by the salad:

….and the pasta:

 ….and the steaks:

We opted for the dry-aged strip (with a little Kagoshima A-5 thrown in for good measure) and both cuts were the equal of anything in town. The basil ravioli with guanciale and chanterelles was no slouch either, and would’ve been right at home at B&B Ristorante. It, along with that superb spinach salad, had me and the Food Gal® fighting for the last bite.

But what really floated our boat (as it was clogging our arteries) was the duo of foie gras:

 

A dish that tasted as good as it looked and was au courant without being over-done. It reminded us of the food that made Charlie Palmer famous over 25 years ago: confident, precise and bold. French technique given American sass and style. “Very Charlie Palmer,” I thought to myself when it arrived. Very Charlie Palmer indeed.

Welcome back, Charlie.

ELV’s dinner for two (with one porterhouse and two glasses of wine) at Circus Circus came to $126 + a $30 tip. The meal at CP STEAK was comped and we left a $60 tip.)

THE STEAKHOUSE AT CIRCUS CIRCUS

In the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino

702.794.3767

http://www.circuscircus.com/dining/the_steakhouse.aspx

CHARLIE PALMER STEAK

In the Four Seasons Hotel

702.632.5000

http://www.charliepalmer.com/charlie-palmer-steak-las-vegas/