A number of celebrity chefs are cooking in Vegas, awakening us to the opinion that Vegas's rep for lackluster restaurants is no longer deserved.
Best All-Around: Given our druthers, we are hard-pressed to choose between Alizé, at the top of the Palms, where nearly flawless dishes often compete with the sparkling view for sheer delight, and Rosemary's Restaurant, a 20-minute drive off the Strip and worth twice as much effort, for some Southern-influenced cooking. Each of these may well put the work of those many high-profile chefs, so prominently featured all over town, to shame. Lastly though, speaking of high-profile chefs, we never ever turn down a chance to eat what Julian Serrano is making over at Picasso, nor what Alex Strada is cooking up at Renoir.
Best Inexpensive Meal: The beautiful, fresh, monster submarine sandwiches at Capriotti's. They roast their own beef and turkey on the premises and assemble it (or cold cuts, or even vegetables) into delicious well-stuffed submarine sandwiches, ranging in size from 9 to 20 inches, and none of them over $10. We never leave town without one . . . or two.
Best Buffet: On the Strip, it's the Paris, Le Village Buffet, where the stations break from standard form by adhering to regional French food specialties (from places such as Provence, Alsace, and Burgundy) and the results are much better than average. Though not cheap, this is a reasonable substitute for an even more costly fancy meal. Mirage Buffet remains our favorite midrange choice. The salad bar comes loaded with countless possibilities, including a variety of cold salads (when was the last time you saw gefilte fish on a buffet?). And the gigantic mountain of shrimp is the right sort of decadent touch you want in a Vegas buffet. The Palms Festival Market Buffet offers the best of the more budget-oriented options, with an array of Middle Eastern goodies and some eccentric additions to the ubiquitous carving stations. Downtown, the Main Street Station Garden Court, 200 N. Main St., has an incredible buffet: all live-action stations (where the food is made in front of you, sometimes to order); wood-fired brick-oven pizzas; fresh, lovely salsas and guacamole in the Mexican section; and better-than-average desserts.
Best Sunday Champagne Brunch: Head for Bally's, at Mid-Strip, where the lavish Sterling Sunday Brunch features tables dressed with linen and silver. The buffet itself has everything from caviar and lobster to sushi and sashimi, plus fancy entrees that include the likes of roast duckling with black-currant and blueberry sauce.
Best Group Budget Meal Deal: Capriotti's again -- a large sandwich can feed two with leftovers, for about $5 each. Or split a bowl of soup at the Grand Wok in the MGM. This pan-Asian restaurant offers a variety of soups in such generous portions that four people can make a decent meal out of one serving.
Best Bistro: Actually, we just invented this category to have a way to call Mon Ami Gabi, in the Paris Las Vegas hotel, to your attention. Offering lovely, reasonably priced bistro fare (steak and pommes frites, onion soup), it may be our new favorite Vegas restaurant (at least of the noncelebrity-chef variety).
Best Restaurant Interiors: The designers ran amok in the restaurants of Mandalay Bay. At Aureole, a four-story wine tower requires that a pretty young thing be hauled up in a harness a la Peter Pan to fetch your chosen vintage. The post-Communist party decor at Red Square is topped only by the fire-and-water walls at neighboring rumjungle.
Best Spot for a Romantic Dinner: Alizé, at the top of the Palms, has windows on three sides of the dining room, with no other buildings around for many blocks. You get an unobstructed view of all of Vegas, the desert, and the mountains from every part of the restaurant, not just the window seats. Seriously, aren't you in the mood already?
Best Spot for a Celebration: Let's face it, no one parties like the Red Party, so head to Red Square in Mandalay Bay, where you can have caviar and vodka in the ultimate capitalist revenge.
Best Free Show at Dinner: At Treasure Island's Buccaneer Bay Club, everyone rushes to the window when the ship battle begins outside. (Though as we write this, that battle is getting altered, and so is the restaurant. But still.) And then there is the vista offered by the restaurants in Bellagio ( Picasso, Le Cirque, Olives, and Circo ), which are grouped to take advantage of the view of the dancing water fountains. See chapter 6 for reviews of all of the Bellagio restaurants.
Best Wine List: It's a competitive market in Vegas for such a title, and with sommeliers switching around, it's hard to guarantee any wine list will retain its quality. Still, you can't go wrong at Mandalay Bay's Aureole, which has the largest collection of Austrian wines outside of that country, among other surprises.
Best Beer List: Rosemary's Restaurant offers "beer pairings" suggestions with most of its menu options, and includes some curious and fun brands, including fruity Belgian numbers.
Best View: Alizé wins with its floor-to-ceiling window views, but there is something to be said for seeing all of Vegas from the revolving Top of the World, 106 stories off the ground in the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower.
Best Seafood: The Asian-influenced dishes at Bellagio's Aqua are the only fish dishes consistently worth eating in this desert town -- fresh, light, and beautifully and expertly flavored.
Best Italian: For a Mediterranean angle, head to Todd English's Onda, in The Mirage, which is quietly but swiftly heading to the top of the "locals' favorite" list. For Tuscan cuisine at slightly less dear prices, Circo, in Bellagio, is terrific.
Best Deli: The Stage Deli, in Caesars, will give no cause for complaints (your mouth will be too packed with out-of-this-world pastrami to say much of anything).
Best New Orleans Cuisine: Emeril's New Orleans Fish House, in the MGM Grand, and his Delmonico Steakhouse, in The Venetian, bring the celebrity chef's "Bam!" cuisine to the other side of the Mississippi, and we are glad.
Best Southwestern Cuisine: We still dream about the huge portions of spicy, amusing food at The Venetian's Star Canyon. It's the brainchild of Stephen Pyles, the chef most often credited with inventing Southwestern cuisine.
Best Red Meat: Lawry's The Prime Rib, 4043 Howard Hughes Pkwy. has such good prime rib, it's hard to imagine ever having any better.
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Themed Restaurants
It shouldn't be too surprising to learn that a town devoted to themes (what hotel worth its salt doesn't have one, at this point?) has one of virtually every theme restaurant there is. Almost all have prominent celebrity co-owners and tons of "memorabilia" on the walls, which in virtually every case means throwaway items from blockbuster movies, or some article of clothing a celeb wore once (if that) on stage or on the playing field. Almost all have virtually identical menus and have gift shops full of logo items.
This sounds cynical, and it is -- but not without reason. Theme restaurants are for the most part noisy, cluttered, overpriced places that are strictly tourist traps, and, though some have their devotees, if you eat at one of these places, you've eaten at them all. We don't want to be total killjoys. Fans should have a good time checking out the stuff on the walls of the appropriate restaurant. And while the food won't be the most memorable ever, it probably won't be bad (and will be moderately priced). But that's not really what you go for.
The House of Blues , in Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S.; open daily 8am-1am on event nights and 'til midnight on nonevent nights), is, for our money, food and theme-wise, the best of the theme restaurants. The food is really pretty good (if a little more costly than it ought to be in a theme restaurant), and the mock Delta/New Orleans look works well, even if it is unavoidably commercial. You can dine here without committing to seeing whatever band is playing, as the dining room is separate from the club (note, though, that HOB gets very good bookings from nationally known acts). The gospel brunch might also be worth checking out (the food is good, but there's too much of it), but be warned: It's served inside the actual club, which is miked very loudly, and it can be unbelievably loud, so bring earplugs (we left with splitting headaches).
Presumably filling the hole left by the demise of the All Star Café, so that you sports fans won't feel left out in the theme restaurant race, ESPN, in New York-New York, 3790 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (open Mon-Thurs 11:30am-11pm, Fri 11am-midnight, Sat 9am-midnight, and Sun 9am-11pm), is a gigantic facility featuring rather wacky and entertaining sports memorabilia (such as Evel Knievel set up as the old "Operation" game, displaying his many broken bones), plus additions such as a rock-climbing wall/machine. It's pretty fun, actually, and the food, in a couch-potato-junk-food-junkie way, is not bad either, especially when you're sitting in one of the La-Z-Boy recliners, ordering delights such as three Krispy Kreme donuts topped with ice cream, whipped cream, and syrup, and watching sports.
There are those who rave about the warm Tollhouse-cookie pie at the Harley Davidson Cafe , 3725 Las Vegas Blvd. S. at Harmon Avenue (open Sun-Thurs 11am-11pm, Fri-Sat 11am-midnight).
The Hard Rock Cafe , 4475 Paradise Rd. at Harmon Avenue (open Sun-Thurs 11am-11:30pm, Fri-Sat 11am-1am), has decent burgers. The serious hipster quotient at the adjacent hotel means that the people-watching opportunities are best here.
Visually, the Rainforest Cafe , in the MGM Grand, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (open Sun-Thurs 8am-midnight, Fri-Sat 8am-1am), with its jungle interior, complete with sound effects and Animatronic animals, is the best of the bunch.
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Source: Frommer's 2004
