Vegas Top 3 Food Post

I will make my Las Vegas food blog short this year. As I was in the city for just over two weeks, I didn't have much time to venture into enough new restaurants to find a new favorite. I visited my old favorites such as Raku, SW Steakhouse, and Bachi Burger throughout the trip, but I will summarize my top experiences in one post.

Thoroughly enjoying that hand-fed burger.

3 favorite restaurants visited in Las Vegas this summer:

Kabuto

Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the lack of quality sushi in Europe. Over the years I've learned to tolerate raw fish and normally I don't crave sushi under any circumstance. But this summer I finally found myself in an unfamiliar position: a bite of a wasabi-rubbed piece of fresh fish.



And Kabuto was the immediate answer.

Tucked away at a shabby shopping center as neighbors to a D-grade sex trafficking massage parlor, it's not somewhere you find by mistake. The raving reviews of this authentic Japanese sushi with only Japanese staff is difficult to ignore. They get their fish specially delivered and it seems they make each the delivery specific to the following day's exact customer menu, since you choose and pay for the meal at the time of reservation.

I found the reservation process extremely cumbersome, more so than the top steakhouse in all of Las Vegas. I called for 6 people and they wanted me to pay the entire amount of the dinner, with menu items which we cannot choose or even know until we arrive. Their reasoning (fairly common practice in Japan) is that the chefs do not know the menu until the day of, entirely depending on the daily market. They hold the table for 15 minutes with a 100% cancellation fee including anyone that does not show up. In our case one person didn't make it and the 5 of us ended up eating the 6th portion.

Menu for extra order

Starter, sweet homemade alcohol drink 

Seabass with Japanese yam and vinegar seaweed along with squid

Red lean tuna, oyster, freshwater shrimp. Yellowtail and live sweet scallops

Mushroom soup with fish, snail, yellowtail collarbone, salmon, grilled tuna with crab

Rice with salmon roe, squid, zuke tuna, yellowtail

Uni, fatty otoro tuna, mackerel. Medium chutoro tuna, egg omelet, unknown Japanese fish

Extra orders of the marinated zuke tuna and otoro

Medium and fat tuna belly

Shrimp miso soup

Raspberry sorbet as dessert

Fluffy cheesecake

Bazaar Meats by Jose Andres

Tucked away at the wrong end of the strip, the SLS Hotel is a fading fantasy of the new Las Vegas hotspot. In the last year they added a steakhouse by the famous Jose Andres to pump things up a bit so I decided to check it out. It was incredibly easy to make a last minute booking for a party of 7 on a Friday night - good for us, bad for them.

First things first - I was blown away by the decor and the massive effort they put into this place. Steaks flown from all over the world and 5 separate open-view kitchens each serving different style of food from the menu. The marble. The gold. The works.

5-kitchen setting next to the dining tables

Open fire grill near the entrance

Real Japanese Kobe beef and aged steaks from the US 

Other meats including the suckling pigs

Bar area with ... blood drops. 

My table's centerpiece - giant gold lamp hanging from above.

Marble on black lacquer menu

Unfortunately the downside was the price and location. They charge more than the most expensive restaurants in Vegas and for what you're paying for Kobe beef, you can actually get a plane ticket AND eat the meat at the origin. And with such highly regarded steakhouses already on the staple must-go-list for most visitors at convenient walking distance on the strip, it's not easy to will yourself for another 10-60 minute taxi ride depending on traffic.

These were some of my favorites from their massive list of food items.

Crackling pork skin

Candy foie gras and gazpacho

Olives, classic and modern twist.

Patatas bravas, more like Spanish twist on french fries.

My favorite, the giant rib eye steak aged forever.

More steak but with less flavor and cheese.

Various bite-sized desserts

Me, my boyfriend, Kayane, and her brother 

Gordon Ramsay BurGR

Haha, get it? GR? His initials???
I guess the famous chef does have a bit of humor in him. He decided to open a casual American - oh the horror - burger joint couple years ago and it's been a big hit. I only came when it first opened because I had some VIP bypass while there was a non stop 90 + minute line even during off hours. Not much into burgers, I just decided it was decent enough and that was that.

This year I came again to a surprisingly uncrowded restaurant on a Saturday night. We ordered burgers in peace and I ordered what I really wanted - a hot dog. Oh man what a change. Burgers I don't care so much, but hot dogs I can appreciate.

Cheesy, bacon-y, BBQ-y burger.

Regular cheeseburger

My glorious, caramelized onion-ed, spicy BBQ-ed, jalapeno-loaded, hotdog.

My dog was left a bit in the frier for an extra bite squeezed in freshly made and toasted bread. Yum!
The burger, I hear, was fantastic as well.