Went to Craftsteak last week and it was excellent. I'm not that much of a foodie but it was easily the best (and most expensive) meal I have ever had.

My wife and I had the Wagyu tasting menu which included a Kobe Rib-eye and Kobe Skirt Steak. We ordered med-rare but probably should have gotten rare which is my fault since I usually order medium. I preferred the ribeye and the wife the skirt so it worked out well.

The rest of our menu which was selected for us:

Warm Frisee Salad w/ poached egg - Odd to think a salad was a highlight but this was so incredibly good.

Grilled Pacific Prawns - I don't eat a lot of seafood but these were absolutely excellent.

Italian Buffalo Mozzarella - Good but nothing spectacular.

Prosciutto San Daniele - I thought this was just ok but my wife loved it. Since she's usually the seafood eater she left me the rest of the prawns and I left her this plate.

Main Dish - Kobe Rib-eye & skirt steak

Sides - Asparagus, Mushroom Assortment, Yukon Gold Puree - Nothing special among the sides but I also wasn't exactly focused on those.

I'm sure the deserts were good as well but it was such a ridiculous amount of food I think we each only had one bite of the three(!) deserts they brought out: Cinnamon Monkey Bread w/ Vanilla Ice Cream, Chocolate Souffle, and Fresh Fruit w/ sorbet. If anything I would say the Monkey Bread was the standout.

I went to Botero last night and was disappointed. The bone-in filet Chimichurri style was great but everything else was mediocre. Also I thought it was overpriced for what it was.

Tis true!! Mo butta mo betta!

I think you should eat out a bit more. No offense, but if Craftsteak is the highlight of your culinary experience, you're missing some great food.

Joel Robuchon's at MGM is easily the best meal I've ever eaten. Le Bernadin is really high up there along with French Laundry, Per Se, and Cyrus. I, in fact want Eric Ripert to open a restaurant in Vegas so bad that I'd consider investing in it.

I can't say you're wrong. Robuchon's was a possibility before the trip but we both agreed on a steakhouse instead. I do eat out quite often but I wouldn't classify much of it as "fine dining". Most of my fine dining experience to date would all be steak houses. I've tried just about all of them available in Cleveland (Morton's, Ruth's Chris, Red, XO, Hyde park) as well as a few here and there in other cities and Craftsteak was the best steakhouse I've eaten at, XO being the runner up for steakhouses.

I did really enjoy the concept of the tasting menu which added to the experience and I intend to branch out a bit now that I can actually afford to drop a few hundred on a meal now and again. Not that there's much left to try in Cleveland but Lola (Michael Symon) has been on my list of places to try for a while now.

After eating at Craftsteak my wife and I decided we would make more upscale dining our goal this winter. Normally we'd go out and drop $100-$150 almost every Friday but usually our bar tab would be 1/2 - 2/3 of that. We're going to try and go out less often but spend the same overall $$$ and make the food the larger portion of the tab this winter.



On an unrelated note I would suggest avoiding Beijing Noodle No. 9 at Caesar's. We stopped in last week for lunch while wandering around and placed our order. Shortly after placing our order we noticed a rather large cockroach hanging out right over the food prep area. We pointed it out to the waiter who offered to move us to a different table so we couldn't see it (lol) but we opted on telling the hostess to cancel our order and pointed it out to her and left rather than waiting to see the reaction. Needless to say we did not eat anywhere else in Caesar's the entire trip.

I hate to break it to you, but every restaurant on earth has cockroaches.

There are ways to Craftsteak and reign in the budget (somewhat).

Suggestions:

1) Lay off the Waygu and the Kobe. IMO, overpriced for the flavor difference between those names and a good ol' prime grade ribeye
which Craftsteak will prepare and split for two.
2) Lay off the overpriced vinos. Hit the scotch.
3) Personalize your side dishes.
4) Do leave room from that Monkey Bread dessert. It doesn't sound like it sound be that good; but it is.

Now your bill will only be big; not an earth shattering, credit score sinking
steakhouse "dining experience." And you still will have eaten too much.

Now that you've been to Craftsteak once, your 2nd time there should be even better precisely because you can personalize it based on what you learned this trip. And even tho I am a foodie, don't let the food snobs push you into places where you know you won't be comfortable.

If you want to go somewhere fairly cheap but for a great experience to go upstairs RM seafood. Probably the best value fine dining place in town but honestly some of the food is top 5 in the city. The presentations are also my favorite in all of town. The downstairs is ridiculously good too.

went to the new Firefly on Sahara last night with my girlfriend. I've never been a big fan of the Firefly on Paradise, but it's ok. For tapas, I much preferred Babariba in Fashion Sow Mall on the Strip, but since that is no longer there, Las Vegas has been bereft of a good tapas place that's not upscale Julian Serrano in Aria. Serrano, btw, is fantastic.

Firefly:

Awful. Probably the worst dining experience I have had in Las Vegas.

the decor looks like a cheap Mexican restaurant, which, surprise, it was before Firefly took over. The bar looks ok but the seats and tables are all of the old, cheap wooden variety - not comfortable and too big - you're too far away from one another if you and your date sit on opposite sides

The place is LOUD. Like, ridiculously so. Yes, there was a full crowd, but my date and I couldn't carry on a conversation without yelling. Very annoying.

The service was fine, even if no one noticed us for ten minutes after we were seated.

The menu looked good...we both ordered flavored mojitos - her blood orange, me raspberry, but both drinks were on the meh side and you couldn't drink out of the glass without getting bits of mint leaf in your mouth - you had to use straws.

First, we got the Artichoke toasts, with hearts, aioli, basil and pepper. The toasts were a soggy mush and the thick, aioli was not just olive oil, but some kind of pink sauce that completely drowned out the tast of the only good part of the dish - the artichoke. Bad start.

Next up was the Manchego mac ‘n’ cheese (baked w/baby shells)
and the Terra y Mare skewers (grilled shrimp, filet mignon, chorizo sausage, salsa verde). The mac n cheese was decent, but really, it's hard to mess that up. The Terra y Mare skewers were the best dish of the night - which is saying that it was just ok.

We also had ham and cheese croquettas, which was obviously reheated and not fresh, and the Chicken skewers (marinated chicken, tomato, mushroom, roast garlic cream), which was ok but completely covered in the garlic cream, leaving us unable to actually taste anything else.

I ordered the Chorizo clams (peppers, 2 kinds of spicy sausage, white wine, parmesan toasts), which sounded and looked great, but had one overpowering taste to it: salt.

My gal ordered the Camarones al ajillo [shrimp in lemon-garlic butter sauce], which was just your basic shrimp scampi taste but with - again - way too much sauce.

This seemed to be the theme of the evening: dishes that might have had some taste to them if they weren't completely drowned in sauce, salt and oil. Each dish was brought out incredibly fast, which leads me to think they are not making anything to order.

By this time, my date's stomach was not doing well - yes, this food actually made her sick - and today as I write this, my stomach is arguing with what it ate last night. We were in and out of there in about 30 minutes - no dessert or coffee, we wanted to leave.

The bill came to $74 without tip.

Firefly in Summerlin sucks. For some reason, it seems to have a bit of a "scene" going on, but I have no idea why. It was truly one of the worst dining experiences I've had in Vegas.

If you want tapas, forget about Firefly.

Not really. Cockroaches are pretty common in warm regions, but not so in colder ones. Though I know people who had massive problems with cockroaches here in Germany, I've never seen one in my kitchen. Ants, spiders, moths have visited me, but never cockroaches. So I wouldn't expect to see one in a restaurant here.

@Dominic: Thanks for the extensive TR, doesn't sound appealing. Anybody know what's the status is with the tapas place that wanted to open where fleur de lys was?

I really don't remember what exactly I got, as it's been well over a year since I went. I got a bunch of different cut rolls I'm sure as it's my style, and maybe tried some salmon nigiri or some yellowtail. And I went at probably 6pm.

I'm with you on hating mayonnaise slathered or cream cheese covered baked rolls.

I don't know, for the price I think that Sushi Mon or Kaya are way better, also, for really good sushi Sen of Japan is amazing, and also imo waaaaaaayyyy better than Naked Fish.

Not really fine dining, but I am looking at the menu for Todd English Pub in City Center and it looks really good and kinda unique. A lot interesting dishes that I am going to have to try.

We ate there during the last trip as well. I had the buffalo burger which was decent but I found the buffalo a bit too lean and it didn't have as much flavor as beef although the blue cheese was tasty. Probably more of a personal taste commentary than anything wrong with the burger itself.

The beef burger sliders I thought were better than the buffalo burger.

The sweet potato fries were good and better than the skinny.

The carving board looked interesting but no one tried it.

Reasonably priced and very good!

My Amazon order of Eating Las Vegas: The 50 Essential Restaurants was delayed. I won't get it til December 17th.

John Curtas posted the top 10 on his website:

Very surprised to see Raku NOT on the top 10 (although he later says that Raku not making the top 10 was their biggest debate).

RM and Twist haven't impressed me as much as the other 8. Personally I'd replace those two with Raku and Lotus.

Think I found the full list:

Bar Masa has no place on this list; most of the others that I've tried are truly outstanding though.

I noticed that the Cosmopolitan kinda spring up - the website doesn't give much info about the restaurants, was anyone able to find a menu?

You should at least be able to find similar menus online for the ones that are in other cities (Comme Ca, STK, etc.) Can't imagine anything else has been finalized a month out.

I've been to Comme Ca in LA, wasn't impressed. Pretty ordinary. Haven't been to STK but enough people have told me it's more about the scene than the food, and it isn't like you can't find a great steak anywhere else. Very intrigued by the Jose Andres places.

These lists are always debatable, but no Michael Mina in LV's top 50 restaurants??

American Fish is a Michael Mina restaurant. I don't think Society Cafe belongs in that list. SW not being in there is odd, Nobu not in Top 50 wtf? Kaizen could have a spot as well.

Not sure if this has been brought up but by far the best meal i've had in vegas was also one of the cheaper ones. http://www.casadiamore.com/

casadiamore ..they actually picked me up from the MGM in like a 1994 burgandy limo ..

PORK CHOPS WITH VINEGAR & PEPPERS
A favorite among many of our regular customers. This dish features two 8oz. pork chops sauteed with olive oil, Italian
seasonings, then topped with cherry peppers in a tangy vinaigrette sauce. Served with a side of wedged potatoes
Full 23 / Half 16


We went there twice and each time I had the porkchops a house speciality. The second time I went was a sunday and it was like half priced bottles of wine. Seriously you can't beat a free ride in a limo, half priced bottles of wine, amazing pork chops vinegar/peppers, and they also have two guys on piano playing old school italian music. Its like 30-40 bucks a person to eat/drink like a king.

Enjoy

Wow. I didn't realize Nobu wasn't on the list. That's crazy.

Pretty surprised Micheal Mina @ Bellagio isn't on as well.

Edit: Kaizen would be a big stretch IMO Jay.

Too much emphasis on fusiony kinds of places. Some well known but ultimately overrated casual places (Border Grill, Burger Bar, Society Cafe).

Ya, I wouldn't have put any of those 3 on the list personally.

Only eaten at Border Grill and Burger Bar once, but both meals were disappointing enough that I'll prob never go back.

Society Cafe is good as far as cafes go... but top 50? I don't think so.

I don't think Nobu is very good at all and he clearly likes Sen just as much as I do and I'm sure it took its place on the list.