Las Vegas Dining Experience: Cut, Aureole and Bouchon

Please forgive the short entries as life has become more and more hectic.

Aureole in Mandalay Bay Resort is known for its 1 Michelin Star dining experience and the 42-foot-tall glass-enclosed “wine tower” filled with Lucite wine bins and thousands of bottles of wine. It is a quite a site as you spiral around the tower on your way down to the restaurant. The restaurant is beautiful and the food was good, but wasn’t great. We expected more but walked away with a less than memorable experience.

CUT in the Palazzo, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious! It is the second location for Wolfgang Puck’s Beverly Hills steakhouse of the same name in the Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel. I love the ultra-modern decor even though it doesn’t feel like a steakhouse. The steak was cooked to a perfectly seasoned medium-rare and we ordered a wild mushroom medly with shishito peppers that was absolutely and innovatively delicious. Our dessert was a very interesting new twist to a classic fruit cobbler. It was so refreshing and delicious with the balance of the strawberries and raspberries paired with the crumbling cookies. Absolutely amazing!

Bouchon in the Venetian surprised me this time with the best chocolate croissant I’ve ever had. Crumbling and flaky crusts and real dark chocolate on the inside. Fabulous! They also make the most crispy bacon – just the way I like it. Yum!

Sorry for the lack of pictures. It was difficult to use flash as we didn’t want to disturb someone else’s dining experience and sometimes we forget to take them because we’re eager to taste the food.

Aureole  http://www.aureolelv.com/

Cut http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/restaurants/fine-dining/3801′

Bouchon http://www.bouchonbistro.com/

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Napa Rose is a gem in downtown Disneyland

 

One of my top 5 favorite restaurants in the United States, Napa Rose was a surprisingly wonderful experience when we were first introduced to it a year ago. All I can remember was the most fabulous, juicy and tender short ribs I’ve ever had and the variety of delicious bread they serve. So during this Disneyland trip, we definitely wanted to go back to Napa Rose, located inside the Grand Californian Hotel. Executive Chef, Andrew Sutton came from Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley to create a Californian cuisine with French and Asian flair. The restaurant is beautifully decorated with earth-tone woods, 20-foot-high vaulted ceilings and an impressive wine cellar. It’s floor to ceiling windows provide you with a serene garden view that’s both tranquil and beautiful.

The basket of different kinds of bread started off the dinner on the right note. I wish I could eat all the bread and still have room for dinner. It was that good. Our server recommended a wonderful Pinot Noir from Ambullneo Vineyards of which only 4,800 bottles were produced. I asked for a glass of which he filled and with a little less than another glassful left in the bottle, he volunteerily left the remaining for my enjoyment. That was a really wonderful and sweet gesture. 

We shared an ahi tuna tartare dish as appetizer that had a nice contrasting taste of creamy sauce with mango, green salad and seaweed; somehow all of these unique tastes came together wonderfully. For my entree, I ordered an Osso Bucco dish. I honestly am not crazy about Osso Bucco at all, but the description was so yummy and the server highly recommended it, saying that they marinated the Osso Bucco days ahead and assuring me the meat will smell and taste great and that it will fall off the bone easily. I think it speaks volume when a chef can prepare a dish that completely changes someone’s dislike for that dish into loving it. I loved it! I wish I could finish it, but as you can see from the picture, it was a generous portion. Luckily, my husband was kind enough to finish the rest for me along with his nut encrusted halibut which he said was one of the best halibut he’s ever had.

Dessert was a trio of house-made sorbetto and fresh raspberries. It was so good that we dived right into it and forgot to take a picture until we were done. So if you’re interested in finding out, I guess you’ll just need to go to Napa Rose!

http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/en_US/hotels/dining/detail?name=NapaRoseDiningPage

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Miami Beach Restaurants

I recently visited Miami Beach on a business trip and was lucky enough to stay at the famous Fontainebleu Hotel that was recently renovated. It is a beautiful, modern hotel. The weather was unpredictable as occasional rain was forecasted during my stay. Nonetheless, it didn’t prevent me from going out to try different restaurants as I learned after I arrived at the hotel that nothing is within walking distance. A short cab ride would take me to the famous Lincoln Road where the indoor/outdoor dining experience are aligned alongside many different shops. I wish the weather was better so I could experience the outdoor dining more, but I was only able to dine outside for lunch while two dinners were dined indoors. Miami Beach is very expensive. Fontainebleu is even more expensive. So now that the stickershock factor is out of the way, below is a list of the restaurants I visited and a short summary of my opinion.

Yuca Restaurant on Lincoln – Contemporary Cuban cuisine. The skirt steak was awesome because of the sauce. So yummy. Service is so-so. Oh, most of the restaurants automatically included gratuity (17 – 19%) on the bill. My rating – good and worth going.

Quattro Restaurant on Lincoln – Italian. Quite authentic as I had their fettucini with clams. It was very tasty. I enjoyed lunch there very much and their outside seating is nicer than a lot of the other restaurants there. Still expensive, but not stickershock expensive. Service – friendly but impersonal. My rating – very good and definitely worth going!

The Meat Market – Steak place on Lincoln. YUM!!! It is one of the best steak places I’ve ever dined. I had the ribeye and the flavor was so tasty. The spices they use to marinate the steak is just out of this world. They also give you a tray of munchies when you sit down and there’s there flash fried, seasoned Peruvian corn that is so good. I had to ask for extra because it was that good even though I ordered a ribeye. Service – fantastic., the best I experienced in Miami, way better than even the hotel staff. My rating – need I say more?

Scarpetta – Italian at the hotel. It was good. A pre-fixe menu, their hamachi slices with the sea salts were good. The spaghetti for the pasta dish was surprisingly good even for a non-spaghetti person like myself. I had the ribeye steak again and it was good. Rating – very good.

Blade – Japanese at the hotel. Very good sushi to my pleasant surprise. It was fresh and the pieces were generous. Very expensive as everything at the hotel was expensive. A small bottle of water cost $6. Crazy! Anyhow, rating – very good, but uneventful. The restaurant is cool though because it’s completely lounge style.

The food in Miami Beach was good but not “Wow” other than The Meat Market, but I supposed if I had to pay at that level, I would expect nothing short of good.

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