Thanks hfrog.

Let me rephrase, what would you consider the latest date to book and be pretty certain you get a seat?

Doing Raku tonight. Any "must try" items I should look for?

All of them. Definitely get the green tea creme brulee for dessert.

Appetizers:

- Tofu salad
- Crispy Fried Shrimp

Robata:
- Tomato with Bacon

Boom. Got a reservation for 2 at e 3 weeks from today.

Marche Bacchus just keeps getting better and better.

What are your favorites at marche Bacchus? I've been there a few times and enjoys the atmosphere, wines, and apps, but haven't found a main course that I'm thrilled with yet

If you are in for the long haul, I'd go with Bacchus Platter, then Terrine of Foi Gras with Jalepeno jam (best item on the menu and one of the better regular menu items in the city IMO), then the house salad (an amazingly good, clean, simple salad) and the duck breast, followed by bread pudding for dessert.

This an excerpt from my TR and thought it was fair to post it here. My dinner at SW:


It's now time to meet Mitch and the ladies outside Table 10 and we take the short walk across Sands to Wynn. We descend the dazzling curved escalator from Parasol Up to Parasol Down and move left towards SW where we are promptly seated at an interior table that is right next to window such that it has a great view of the Lake of Dreams. We let the ladies take the window view and I let Mitch choose from the wine tome. He chooses a $68 Barbera and my wife gets a glass of white. Restaurant isn't terribly busy and service is just right. Our waiter, Ryan, seems to be a pro and handles any question with aplomb yet never speaks or gestures condescendingly. he makes you feel at ease. And doesn't try to sell you expensive water.

I've decided ahead of time to order the 16oz NY Strip that is prime corn fed Nebraskan beef. But I waffle a bit and consider the Colorado double cut lamb chops ($51). I've never had lamb from CO. and have heard ti's great. I can always get a great steak at a few places in Dallas, notably Pappas Bros or Bob's. But this is a steakhouse and I want to see how they do a steak. I also didn't care for the sides that came with lamb On the daily specials I see there is also a grass fed NY Strip and Ryan says it is leaner and slightly gamier. I decide on the more full flavored cut and order it medium. Mitch orders same but medium rare. Mitch and I are paying our own way while girls are on expense account however my wife's boss tries to be conservative when spending the company's $$ (even though it's a Fortune 100 co. whose share price just hit 52 week high) and we forgo hot appetizers in favor of a salad. Fine with me as I'm not starving after eating half a protein bar earlier. However we order 2 salads to be split among 5 adults and I wonder what this is going to look like. I was happy there was enough seafood on menu bc my wife doesn't eat steak/red meat. She orders the nicely described Sauteed Black sea bass with spinach, citrus salad, blood orange reduction ($44) and Ryan produces an interesting factoid that I was not aware of. The Patagonian Toothfish is more commonly marketed as Chilean Sea Bass and that is what we would have expected. The sea bass here is flown in from Italy I believe he said.

For sides I keep quiet and girls are considering ordering whipped potatoes and scalloped potatoes. Huh? I finally ask if anyone like brussels sprouts (with carrots and pancetta) and there is a silence as though everyone farted and didn't want to make eye contact with anyone else. I took that as a no and shut up again. Some sense finally prevailed and sides were yukon gold whipped potatoes, black truffle creamed corn and jumbo roasted asparagus. I wanted the sauteed wild mushrooms personally. I don't like the way pee smells after asparagus consumption.

The barbera is not bad but feels like it hasn't opened up I guess and I'm hoping it gets better. Just not enough explosiveness for me. But I don't know much about barberras.

While I didn't pay much attention to the vegan menu it didn't look bad and I have to ask myself if I was given choice of eating free off that menu vs. paying for my own non-vegan meal I think I could only say it would depend on how hungry I was and how net worth was fluctuating on that day. It looked more creative than the regular menu.

The salad (baby iceberg, grilled black pepper bacon, tomato, buttermilk blue dressing) arrives and is substantial enough portion for us. It is quality through and through meaning the lettuce is fresh the dressing seems house made and tomato was probably heirloom. So good it tasted like fruit. However the real kicker here was the bacon. It was one small thick chunk of pork belly that was a flavor bomb. Delish.

Next up was the mains and sides. creamed corn was great. I didn't appreciate any flavor from the truffle but I thought I tasted horseradish in there. Mitch didn't care for it but I thought it added something to a ho-hum type of dish. Whipped potatoes were well....just whipped potatoes. I've heard the pomme puree at L Atelier is incredible if not a bit too rich and I'm sure better than these. Asparagus were truly jumbo and well prepared with just right amount of seasoning and enough crunch and enough tenderness to enjoy.

Next up to try are the stars of the night. The reason we are here. The servers seem confused as to who gets what main dish and I double check that I am given the medium cooked steak vs. Mitch's medium rare. I take a bite and find there's a lot more chew to it than I expect. Fine, it's just some connective tissue/fat that is usually around edge of a strip. I spit out piece and try again. Ditto. This really just goes on and on. As I get into center of steak I see it's medium rare and compare to Mitch's steak. His looks same. Ryan does check in with us and I don't say anything as I'm with unfamiliar dinner companions and well, I just don't like making what I think of as a "scene". Near end of meal I see Mitch has eaten only half his steak and I ask him how it was. He rates it comparable to Outback. Ouch. But I have to agree. I've eaten at enough steakhouses that serve prime beef and have cooked just enough steaks to know what's what. As a matter of fact there is a thread Gobbo started in OOT called Cooking a Good Steak that I read before my last home-made steak dinner and it was just a flat out revelation to me. If you are into this stuff here's my post with pics utilizing the reverse sear method with pics.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...ostcount=10147


I don't finish my steak either but I don't leave as much on my plate as Mitch did. My guess is that they cooked the steak from a pretty cold starting temperature which never allowed the inside to do what it supposed to do.

I like the fact that my wife usually orders fish or some seafood dishes which allows me a chance to try something else other than what I ordered that she usually doesn't finish birthday. But I Notice she hasn't quite eaten as much of her main dish as she normally would. She offers me a bite and it's a slight bit more fishy then I would've expected but more than that the texture is just not that impressive. Somewhat mushy. Normally at fine dining restaurants the fish is usually impeccable and when pan roasted it will usually come out with a crispy skin and this one was far from that. I have to wonder if SW is getting Bartolotta's seconds or leftovers that it doesn't want to serve it's patrons? Or perhaps Alitalia had some flight delays?

By now the dining room is much busier and we don't see Ryan quite as often however when we do we don't bring up anything and looking back on the whole meal more than not not having had a top-notch steak and seafood dish I regret not letting Ryan know about it. If nothing else just to see what the Wynn service experience is really all about which in the past I've found to be very good even though this is the first time I'm eating at one of their restaurants. Maybe the A-Team wasn't manning the broiler and sauté station that night? I don't like casting judgments on restaurants based on one visit but this was my experience that night.

For dessert we all agreed on the chocolate soufflé and we order three of them. Is not your typical soufflé that might have some height to it. It was in a rather shallow pan and was not terribly impressive. I would've expected it to be like a molten chocolate cake where when you dig into it it oozes a nice warm chocolate stream but this one was just kind of sticky inside and had an amateurish quality to it. But this may not have been their signature dessert or maybe they don't have their own pastry chef.

On another note we noticed a table next to ours occupied by 2 young women who brought their own wine in. Ryan said you can do that for a $50 corkage fee. I think this isn't a bad idea but only if you are buying a decent bottle that fairly retails for about the $35-$40 range and up? Like a Stags Leap Artemis? And it has to be a bottle they don't carry.

This seems so awkward to me. The waiter just dumped some trivia about the Patagonian Toothfish on you as if you were a rube expecting a Pacific sea bass rather than one from the Atlantic?

I'm no fish expert, either, but from wiki: "Black sea bass (Centropristis striata), whose range is the eastern coast of the United States" doesn't seem very encouraging that it really was from Italy. Why didn't they call it bronzini on the menu if it's European Sea bass?

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your report, but I'm confused.

One thing I've been wondering about is whether the restaurants at Wynn have slipped since they made their conscious choice to gear the properties toward club-going douchebags rather than a more sophisticated crowd. I haven't been to SW in a few years so can't say personally about that one. My perception though is that with Daniel Boulud and Alex closing and others changing names/focus, it likely isn't going to be good.

It's possible I didn't hear "Italy" so I'm not going to quote him on that. I think I said "I believe..."

Last time I ate at Guy Savoy there was a guy with an untucked Hawaiian shirt, khakis, and sneakers at a neighbouring table. They seemed happy to be serving him.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most well dressed person.
With that said, I'm not wearing pants when it's 110 degrees out and I'm walking the strip.
If there's a pants only dress code, I'm going somewhere else rather than changing. Of course it doesn't upset me if thats the policy, I just won't go there when there is 200 other places to go. I just don't get the hate for other people's clothing choices if the restaurant doesn't care. Shouldn't your beef be with the restaurant chasing the dollars, not the customer wearing what is allowed? I just can't imagine ever caring what someone (that I'm not even eating with) is wearing.

Sw wet ages their steaks. If you are used to dry aged steaks at pappas then you are pretty much always going to be disappointed in a wet aged version.

Also, ordering a ny strip medium is a huge fail. I also lol'd at the paranoia of not getting your friends steak that was cooked almost right. I'd try rib eyes if you MUST have medium but I suggest you learn to eat medium rare or rare steaks since they taste several hundred % better than medium, especially ny strips.

Finally getting to do my dinner at e on Wednesday night. Will TR, but iirc they are nitty about photos.

Nah, they're cool with it. They were when I went anyway. Just ask first to be sure.

Yes, no problem when I was there in January.

Yeah, 3 dishes (plus dessert) was more than enough. I started off with what I believe is the standard amuse, foie gras and port wine gelee with Parmesan foam, which was absolutely stellar. I then had the Langostine fritters and the quail stuffed with foie gras, both just packed with flavor and perfectly executed. These two dishes were very much "small tasting plates", but my third course was the spaghetti. The same Parmesan foam from the amuse made this dish, but I still didn't think that it was up to the level of the first two. It was, however, a large serving, *very* rich (maybe too much so) and I was stuffed by the end.

I had the selection of tartes for dessert (OK, then I was over-stuffed) and they were each delicious.

Service was good, maybe even a bit slow, but it was fun sitting at the bar enjoying the show in the kitchen.

The restaurant probably does care, but can't afford to enforce a dress code because of the 200 other places that don't do it.

Some people just are offended when they feel other are people dressed inappropriately. I doubt Jesus really minds if someone wears a baseball cap to church, but some other churchgoers probably will.

Quick request for a suggestion for mine and my girlfriend's third meal in Vegas. We are planning to go to SW Steakhouse on the first night, and L'Atelier on the second. On the third we have tickets to the 7:30 showing of O at the Bellagio so we need something that will still be open when that finishes around 9:30 I guess? We had planned to try Picasso in the Bellagio but that closes at 9:30. Is there anything else that is very good in Bellagio? We are staying there that night so would be easiest to eat there but open to other suggestions, except steak.

Also, it's my first time going in years so I'm not really sure what is good. I saw a bad review of the SW a few posts ago. We're in the Wynn that night hence why I chose it. Is there a better choice?

Is L'Atelier = Joel Robuchon or is there another restaurant that I can't find by googling that goes by L'Atelier?

L'Atlellier (by Joel Robuchon) and Joel Robuchon are next to each other in the MGM

you can check out the different menus on the MGM site

Sage at Aria is open until 11.

My Raku experience:

We enter and place is packed. Too packed really. We check in and hostess says "please follow me" to my relief. That feeling didn't last long as we are shepherded to an area in the back along with several other people who are waiting At a rectangular bar height table that seems to be made out of an actual tree I'd say. Its like a bar that has no bartender, no cocktail service and not much atmosphere . It is situated right near the bathrooms And waitress station where they grab drinks from. There is a bar next to the kitchen that had 2 seats open the however it's not a sushi bar and I knew this coming in to the place that it's not a sushi restaurant. I heard the place is small but I just didn't adequately describe the size especially when you spent the last couple of days on the strip where every place is bathed in excess. While I love hole in the wall places tonight I'm feeling like I just want to get back to the strip life and see if my run-good is still alive. I ask my wife if she wants to just grab the two seats at the table and she says let's just wait for a little while.

We get seated and meet our friendly waitress. I don't think I saw any male waiters here. I can't remember her name but she explained the sake flight to me and I was sold. I don't know much about sake and the way it went was you started with a lighter sake and work your way up to the third sake which was actually kind of cloudy and she suggested not to have that with sashimi or any raw seafood as it wouldn't pair well with it.

The all female waitstaff seemed pretty friendly overall and while we were looking at a menu while in the waiting area one of the other waitresses overheard me mention tofu and said to try a half order of their fresh tofu and a half order of the agedashi tofu. This sounded like tofu overkill and I wasn't quite fully committed to this idea. But when it came down time to order I was pretty hungry as it was getting close to 10 o'clock and we ended up ordering the half order of each tofu. Some other posters in the fine dining thread made some recommendations of what to try and I went by their advice as well as what our waitress recommended and then we picked a couple of items on our own. The prices here are really reasonable and more so when you just come from the strip.

The house made fresh tofu came out first and Like someone else had mentioned it has the texture of something between burrata and Ricota cheese and you basically scoop a little bit on your plate sprinkle it with their green tea smoked sea salt that's made in-house, some bonito flakes,Green onion and a little grated ginger and then pick it up with chopsticks and eat it. It was a total flavor bomb that awakened my taste buds with a "wow". We just couldn't get enough of this. May have to do full order next time. Along with this tofu they sent out the fatty tuna (toro) dish that was like a carpaccio and mixed with some other stuff. I've never had toro and would have liked to try it in sashimi or sushi form but this was very tasty. This was on their daily special board.

Food comes out as the kitchen sees fit and it suited us fine. There is a blackboard of what's fresh or best that day and its apparently a good idea to order from that as some of those items may not be available later in the night. Raku stays open till 2 or 3am I think.

Next We had the sashimi salad and fried shrimp which I thought might be tempura shrimp but it was not actually. It was served with head and tail on that were well season and then deep-fried. The waitress expected us to eat the whole thing including head. I wasn't quite willing to eat the head and pulled those off and left them to the side but I did eat the entire tail including shell. Also had the enoki mushroom wrapped in bacon prepared on the charcoal grill. it was also superb.

Sashimi salad was pieces of sashimi with fresh spinach their own dressing and a tiny dollop of a spicy sauce that you can decide to add or not add into the wooden bowl that it's presented in. You got to mix it up the way you prefer it and we just mixed everything together. As you would want and expect the fish seemed super fresh and you looked forward to each bite. We thought they forgot to bring the I agedashi tofu but that Showed up toward the end of the meal and even though we were stuffed and really couldn't finish some of the other items we finished that dish because it was that good. I drank the sake as the waitress recommended depending on what I was eating and it was fantastic. Ended up ordering a regular serving of the first sake (lighter and crisper one ) for my wife and after I finished my flight I ordered a Sapporo draft.

For dessert there is a green tea crème brûlée I think it was that is highly recommended but honestly we were just too stuffed . otherwise I would've tried it and will definitely plan on trying that next time.

This is a truly incredible and memorable meal and I'm glad I didn't cancel out on it just to go play some cards. I don't know enough about Japanese food to know if this is what they would serve in Japan but whoever is in the kitchen is taking great care and skill to come up with some fine dishes here.And there just seem to be a lot of details that go into to what may seem simplistic On the surface yet puts these dishes over-the-top. It's the kind of place I eat at and want to keep it a secret from others For fear of it getting too busy and maybe the quality getting diluted but it's too late for that. the secret is out as you can tell from the Hordes of people trying to make their way in the doors during peak times. I found it works best if you just put yourselves in the hands of waitstaff to pick dishes for you. Because really the only two things we didn't care for were things that we picked ourselves off the menu. Haha.

Here's our bill showing what we ordered.



Pro tip: make sure your waitress calls a cab in advance for you so you're not stuck in Chinatown too long after your meal.