^^. Awesome. Can't wait for the SLS resto writeups

I you want some good SLS restaurant reviews, head over to vegastripping. They've been reviewing all of them from their LA incarnations (since most if not all of the restaurants there are in LA).

Wow, ok, so Bazaar Meat was awesome. Pictures here: http://imgur.com/a/PLZ2g -- sorry that many are sideways. Uploaded and couldn't edit afterwards, presumably because I didn't create an account. I'll inline a few, imgur link has menu and restaurant pics plus pics of each course.






No pictures of the man himself, but he was walking around the dining room in his chef gear all night. He left around 10 wearing a beat up t-shirt that was a size too small, carrying a bottle of wine and laughing. He gave absolutely zero ****s, and it was fantastic. Inspirational.

1. Bagels and Lox Cone
1-2 bites. Thin cone with cream cheese, dill, and salmon roe. Flavors super intense, and somehow the cone is reminiscent of a toasted bagel. Very cool dish, though I eat (ate? when I lived in NJ..) bagels and lox enough that I probably won't order this if I go back. Speaking of which -- where should I be getting bagels in this town?

2. Live Scallop
Sliced and served with small diced peppers, onions, and tomatoes. I do love raw scallop, incredibly sweet. Didn't love the garnishes -- I actually thought they distracted a bit from the scallop. So through 2 courses I was feeling kind of like I did when we went to e by Jose Andres, a bit underwhelmed.

3. Jamon de toro.
Light "airbread" -- think ultra-thin pastry shell in a croissant shape. Stuffed with tomato espuma. Then lay thin salt-cured tuna belly on top and glaze it with rendered fat from Jamon Iberico. Sweet Jesus.

4. Geoduck. "Gooey duck" sashimi topped with a yuzu and ginger soy sauce, served alongside several dots of coconut cream. Weird in concept but the coconut cream was so subtle and awesome. This was a really, really good dish, and I will absolutely order it again. Better imo than the jamon de toro, and I really enjoyed that.


5. Abalone. Served raw with ponzu dashi gelee and salmon roe. Everything worked, and I know that some people have issues with abalone texture. I don't have issues with it, per se, but the whole shebang just wasn't for me. Nothing at all wrong with it, and I can see people falling in love with this. The abalone had a great standalone taste though, kind of smoky, and neither we nor the raw bar chef had any idea why.


Timing was superb through this point in the meal. We always had something to eat, but there was typically just one thing on the table. We could focus on it, talk about it, try it a few ways, and there wasn't anything getting cold (helps that most of the things we had were cold to this point also).

We polished off a G&T (Mrs W) and a tempranillo (me) -- nice light drinks with the light courses.

Then we ordered a bottle of cotes du rhone for the mains. Wine took awhile to come out -- it arrived after our meats, which was a little annoying. And we poured our first refills. I don't know if the sommelier or the waiter is tasked with keeping our glasses non-empty, but the restaurant wasn't busy enough that we ever should have had empty glasses. Slightly nitty, and doesn't really bother me, but it was noticeable.

We do steaks at home, reasonably well if i may say so, so we went a different way with the meat. We ordered wagyu cheeks and braised lamb necks.

The mains and sides came out pretty much all at once, and since there were only 2 of us, things got cold before we were done. We were at a marble table (many others were wood), so the table was cold, and that could have contributed. But the food was great, so...

Mains:
6. Wagyu beef cheeks.
Sous vide, then braised. Served with a mojo rojo and small orange slices. Every single thing about this dish was perfect. The beef was cooked perfectly. The mojo was just amazing, and I couldn't believe how well the oranges went.


7. Braised lamb neck.
Braised. Lamb. Served with fried oysters and potatoes that were fried at least twice. All of the pieces were good separately, but I was pretty amazed that braised lamb on a fried oyster was so good. Honestly I used most of my potatoes to sop up the remaining mojo from the wagyu cheeks.


8. Roasted padron peppers.
They do these in a Josper oven. Just google it. Charcoal grill flavor with no real char. Delicious. And amazing with our earthy wine. Super simple preparation, probably too many peppers for two people.

9. Baby corn
Grilled in the Josper. Served on a bed of powdered popcorn, topped with micro-cilantro, chile piquin, and a small amt of mayo. This was delicious.

10. Robuchon potatoes
I mean it says a lot that Jose Andres put a Robuchon item on the menu. Potatoes/butter 50/50.

We bowed out at this point, despite our waiter's insistence that we order a "foieffle" -- which is exactly what you think it is.

We had another glass of wine each to go, so we hung out for awhile. As we were drinking, new plates arrive and the waiter asks us not to be mad at him. Lol.

11. Foieffle
Light waffle, stuffed with foie gras espuma, topped with peanut butter drizzle, honey, and pecans. Mother of god. Somehow a waffle, foie gras, and peanut butter ended up kind of light. It was seriously amazing, and it would be a mistake to not order it. He told us next time we should try the foie gras smores, but that the foieffle is where it's at.


Dinner was about 230, not including foieffle or drinks.

Our waiter was Marc, who used to be a waiter at Cut. Great guy, knows his ****. He's super nerdy about food and cooks a lot at home. We discussed home-aging of steaks, pit roasting pigs, and local joints including Echo and Rig, Herbs and Rye - which he said has great food but a service issue, and Honey Salt. They don't have business cards yet but will. If you can get him, he's great.

If you're looking for an intimate dinner, I would go earlier rather than later on the weekends. Once the club starts, you get a lot of bass in the restaurant, at least intermittently. Starts around 10p.

There are 5 kitchens open to the restaurant, which is a very cool space. Highly recommend checking it out.

Don't love SLS in general. The carpet is shedding and fuzzing, so the floor was filthy. This will probably get better over time. There were cocktail glasses and beer bottles everywhere. I guess they expected fewer people than they got, so good for them? The space is pretty cool and industrial, dark and fun. The pit is broken up all over the floor. High limit area is super tiny, open on two sides to the casino, and better lit than the rest of the floor. So it's definitely not private.

SLS is a huge improvement over Sahara, but they had valet problems with the volumes, so almost everyone had to self park, which is still the Sahara structure and was also never intended for these volumes. It was basically full. Pretty crummy. But everyone was pretty excited, and I haven't seen this much energy on a floor in awhile. Crowd was heavily local. And headed back into the parking garage, I got a taste of the old Sahara, when a guy coming out of the elevator in a tank top said "whoa, nice suit bro!"

I was in a sport coat and jeans.

Great write up on Bazaar Meat, thanks!

Ku Noodles sucked.

Update: Chada still best restaurant in town. I'll be back soon for another update.

How do you really feel?

What was the crowd like on a weekday after opening day weekend?

Went Sunday night. There was still a fair number of people, but Ku felt (and was) empty. We made reservations, and they were like "oh you must be Brian" -- and we were early, so we were clearly the only reservation.

Mini TR in casual dining.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=2016

Yeah, this is definitely a case of "really go there a lot right now if you like it because in a year they'll cut back on everything" situation. Kinda like Cosmopolitan early on when they had live DJs and bands at every bar in the place. Knew it couldn't last. This is even more extreme due to the terrible location.

Wy,

Amazing trip report. BM on my list for next trip!

Me too...and I also might check out Bazaar Meat.

Ku Noodle

http://www.yelp.com/biz/ku-noodle-la...A9+Andr%C3%A9s

Jesus.

Yeah that had me like WTF, I hope that's exaggerated because I respect what Jose Andres does for food to much to want to believe that although chefs can be *******s.

that bitch cray

Tbh I'm not going to believe much from someone that is crazy enough to go up to the chef and be a total psycho

this

Obviously I agree that the review is biased if not factually inaccurate. Or someone got super smug and told the guy he's a terrible chef or something and he told them to **** off.

Here's the thing though: the food was bad enough that it doesn't even make sense that JA's name is attached to it. I was upset enough with my experience that if he were there, I may have asked him what I was missing. I wouldn't have interrupted his dinner to do so or anything, of course, and I wouldn't have gone in guns blazing. It was pretty clear the waitstaff had no idea what was going on, so we left without giving feedback. Figured it would have been futile.

Reservations booked for Wynn CC and Joel Robuchon. Hopefully just crush early in the trip and I get to do both, but only planning on one right now.

Don't know if it qualifies as fine dining, but wife and I hit Morel's at the Venetian for lunch yesterday. We both had the special steak frites - for $22 you get their Romaine heart salad and the steak frites - considering the steak by itself is $21 it's a decent value. The salad was fair to good - dressing a bit bland. The steak was much better than expected, tender and good flavor. Service attentive, nice venue (we ate outside facing the strip)

Pretty good for a lunch option - so many places are only open for dinner. We enjoyed it.

MM MD

Definitely need good lunch options. I'm disappointed there aren't more good lunch places offstrip. DW bistro the best option imo.

If a single dish is wrong, that's just variance. If the whole meal is off, you are doing the chef a favor if you can calmly explain what you didn't like.
If a chef is approached in a polite and concise manner, he should 100% listen. For about 2 minutes. Then he can do what he wants with the feedback.
No chef is above critique.

And yes, I have done this. Always with an open mind that I might learn something about what the chef is trying to do.

If there is an open Q&A, that would be fine. If he's just enjoying a meal two tables away, no he does not have to listen to your critique for two minutes.

Jose Andres' Bazaar in Miami is the only of his restaurants I've tried, both times it was subpar to bad but for a restaurant in that price range. Both times there were a few good dishes and a handful of ok to actually bad dishes.

Still going up to the owner during their meal to bitch out their restaurant seems very entitled

If a chef is at his own restaurant, he's at work.
I wouldn't approach him, (unless to ask for an autograph (yes, I have done that) or make a passing complement on the way out), but he has to be open to customers approaching him.