I recently ate at BRAND inside Monte Carlo, and it was fantastic. I had the steak and lobster, it was perfect. I would love to hear what you guys have to say about this restaurant.

I like Brand a lot, not a top steakhouse but certainly better than Ruth's Chris.

I liked the steak I had there but the service was pretty lame, and a friend of mine had inexcusably bad service there on another occasion. Staff is not up to snuff for a nice restaurant (which it isn't really anyway). Atmosphere sucks too, I hated the casino view. I think bottom line is to not think of the place as fine dining or even close to that, even though you're paying regular steakhouse prices. I won't be going back.

Has anyone had the Suckling Pig at Jaleo yet? How much was it, is there a limit on how many you can order etc...

anybody ever been to wazuzu

I thought I would write a LV dining report since this thread has been very useful for me. I did a 4 day trip beginning of July 1st with various friends and family. We stayed at the Bellagio the whole time.

Thursday morning: Hash House A Go Go @ Imperial Palace

Flew in the morning with 2 friends. One of our friends said she was really hungry so I thought Hash house at Imperial Palace might work for us. Knowing portion sizes there, girlfriend and I ordered the chicken and waffles to share. They have a $2.50 share fee policy which sucks but if you order a side you get around that... so we also got a share of scrambled eggs. Other couple ordered a chorizo hash to share. The chicken was moist, the waffles fluffy, and they drizzled some sauce which was sort of sweet and savory. It was pretty good for IP fare. The fresh squeezed tangerine juice was good too.

Thursday evening: Raku @ Chinatown

This was the only dinner that was planned for our entire party due to scheduling conflicts. With a party of 7, I was told we had to order the omakase menu which was fine. We also had 2 of their cheaper sakes, I can’t remember the name but it was smooth and had a nice melon note. I think we had 11 or 12 dishes, most were pretty good. I especially liked the sashimi, roasted baby corn with dipping sauces, bacon wrapped enoki mushroom, chicken stuffed portabella, roasted baby tomatoes. I thought the cold tofu was just OK. I also thought they put too many meat dishes in a row near the end. Overall its a great value for so many dishes for $50 (not including drinks, tip/tax).

Friday morning: Jean Philippe Patisserie @ Bellagio

Woke up really early to play some poker so I stopped by on the way from the room. Very average ham, cheese, mushroom crepe. The accompanying micro green salad and dressing was good though.

Friday evening: e by Jose Andres @ Cosmopolitan

This is the meal I was looking forward to on our trip for obvious reasons. I skipped lunch for this meal! My friend and I had the early 5:30 seating. I’m not a wine guy so I was going with the non alcoholic drink pairing. Everything about this meal is exactly what has been written before. I especially liked *all* the small bites (10 dishes), the chickpea stew, rosemary mushrooms, secreto of iberico pork and the fizzy paper desert. The drink pairing was not worth it for $50. I did not feel they added enough to the accompanying dishes. I also found the head cook, Edwin, to be lacking a bit in his execution, but his table talk made up for that. Overall the experience is just as I thought it would be. It ended up on a slight downswing since the appetizers (small bites) were so good and the deserts had some hits and misses. I would gladly come back again.

Friday afterhours: pizza place @ Cosmopolitan

Girlfriend got done with a late poker session and was hungry so what better place then a slice of New York style. It was still really busy there with the Marquee crowd hanging about. Some ******* rudely bumped and dug his shoulder into me... and then did it again to some other guy and started a brawl in the pizza place. lol. The pizza is pretty good, I grew up in NJ so it’s a pretty good copy. The crust is definitely different from NY pizza though, comes out with a shiny glaze.

Saturday afternoon: pizza place @ Cosmo... again

Buddy is a big pizza fan and wanted to go the “secret” pizza place so he can write it about in the internet pizza forums.... This time we got a whole fresh pie made to order. Mmmm, fresh hot pizza out of the oven. The meatball topping is really good.

Saturday evening: Lotus of Siam @ Eastside

5 of us made it of here to this not so nice neighborhood. Coincidentally the other party at our e dinner was dining here also! Standouts include the crispy rice dish, charbroiled garlic shrimp, pad thai, spicy fried rice. I ordered the Issan sausage (Thai style sour fermented sausage) to try something new and it was supposed to be really good here. I would pass unless sour fermented sausage sounds good to you. The chicken sate was surprisingly ordinary here.

Sunday morning: Noodles @ Bellagio

I am not a fan of dim sum and Noodles has really good dim sum. It might not be super authentic (cannot verify) but the cooking technique is much better then other places I’ve been to. All the bites were light and not greasy at all. I recommend the dim sum, weekends only, for a quick lunch.

Sunday evening: Monta Noodle House @ Chinatown

Very good ramen house. The gyoza was not as good as I had read. Ironically, the pork belly rice bowl is the standout. The pork overall is very good here. It was very good in the ramen too.

Overall a great dining experience. Besides the crepe, I enjoyed every meal. Besides the e experince, every meal was $50 or under so I think we really got our bang for the buck in Las Vegas. Thanks again everyone for the helpful comments in this thread.

Only available on Saturdays IIRC, they are still in the testing phase when I was there last week. Dying to try it once they nail it though.

So if you want a great Italian mean you have to check out B&B in the Venitian

Nice reviews Hak. Even though this wasn't all fine dining, it's great to see you mixed up your food options well and even went off the strip which is always a plus.

Nobu tonight - 9pm. TR to follow..

friend here.

yeah, i tried to find the email i sent them after my wife and I ate there but couldn't. the "highlight" of the email was a statement to the effect of "at this point, having our water glasses refilled would have seemed like a transcedent dining experience compared to what we were experiencing."

that was a couple years ago, so maybe it has improved, but it was stunningly bad

The service was excellent all the way up until we were ready for the bill, then we had to wait quite a while. Nevertheless, the steak and lobster were excellent. Actually, the best I've ever had. I want to add one thing, the two house steak sauces were incredible. Did you guys try them?

I agree it is much better than Ruth's Chris. Glad to know you like this place also Jay, your opinion matters when it comes to this stuff.

Any recommandations for nobu ? Want to get the Best enjoiment out of it

Black cod miso

I thought they cheated on the steak by overseasoning- not that it was bad at all, it was just that they were cheating. Any monkey can put a bunch of salt on a steak and have it taste good, but it doesn't mean it's a great steak. Didn't try the steak sauce, that would be sacreligious in my book.

I understand feeling like sauce is cheating, but how is any amount of salt cheating? Why would you want any steakhouse to put less salt on your steak if more would make it taste better?

+1 Salt

The most important lesson I learned in culinary school was correctly seasoning food.

Headed to 'e' tomorrow before the 2+2 party. TR to follow.

Went to Jaleo with my girlfriend tonight with neither of us having been before. Can't remember exactly the order, but we got:
Mussels in sherry vinegar (decent but fell short when compared to the rest of the dishes)
Iberico burger (delicious)
Gin & tonic oysters x2 (very good, on par with the oysters from RM in terms of taste)
Sliced apple and fennel salad with Manchego cheese, walnuts and Sherry
dressing (probably worst dish of the meal, however it was not bad at all and when all of the ingredients were together, it combined very well)
seared scallops x 2 (loved these, gf said they were a very close second only to the scallops from Picasso)
valenciana paella (i've never had paella before, and we both couldn't get enough of it.)

dessert was flan + orange sorbet + cream/orange espuma (whipped cream). the flan was super light, less creamy, but still delicious and was a good end note for the meal.

overall, this was one of the better meals i've had in Vegas. service was really good and i thought all of the small words/phrases on the different menus was a really nice touch. end of the night, total was 165 after tip (no alch) definitely going back again.

looking forward to this. heading there friday night for the first time.

To anyone who has been, how is the food other than the sushi? Would you recommend looking over the whole menu or stick to sushi?

shocking

Having a great seasoning for your steaks, like for example Cut has, makes a great steak even better. To me, that's not cheating.
There's no reason to go to a place like Nobu if you just want to have sushi. Just a waste of money imo. But they got other great stuff no (or little) other places have.

Went to Cut tonight. Great recommendation on the pretzel bread. Steak was very good, but I def think I prefer kraftsteak and delmonicos.

Back to Nobu we have to admit that it wasn´t as good as we thought it would be. The Black Cod Miso was way to sweet for my taste. The House Special Roll was absolutely overwhelming with all the Flavors. It doesn´t make sense for a high price place like that to have an "everything we have to offer in one roll" dish to have. Lobster Ceviche was good, Japanese Snapper Dry Miso and Big Eye Tuna Tempura Roll where both ok to good.

Overall absolutely overpriced and i would highly recommend everybody to go for the Omasake Menu - i guess the overall experience will be much higher.

Oh .. the Atmosphere is not very nice in there. To Crowded, noisy - but that might be something Americans define as usual.

If you're going for a fine-dining sushi dinner and ordering rolls, you're doing it wrong. I agree that they shouldn't even offer them, but I guess if people keep ordering them...