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"FacebookPinterest\n\nI telephoned Danny Meyer, all-knowing New York restaurateur, and told him I had a question about Las Vegas.\n\nBefore I could continue, he cut me off.\n\n\u201CThe answer is money,\u201C he said. \u201CWhat\u2019s the question?\u201C\n\nIt would have been this: Why can\u2019t chefs say no?\n\nToday, everybody goes to Las Vegas to gamble, except chefs, who go there with their fortunes guaranteed. Name a chef who has published a cookbook (good), won a James Beard Award (better), regularly appears on television (best), or has his own cooking show (jackpot), and somebody from Vegas will be calling. The new motto of the Vegas hotel mob: Kill \u2019em with cash.\n\nBefore Vegas hotel ecutives discovered the awesome profit potential of food, I loved eating there. Not at the buffets, those feedlots for the human race. I\u2019m talking about an earlier time, when every hotel had three kinds of restaurants\u2014no more, no less. They spoke of the city in the same way that the Brown Derby spoke of Hollywood, and now they\u2019re gone.\n\nThe coffee shops were community centers, hubs of political, social, and sometimes even family life. The best was at Caesars Palace, where I had Thanksgiving dinner in 1968 with the hotel\u2019s head of gambling, an old family friend. He wanted to give me a nice send-off before I left for Vietnam, so he had a couple of tables pushed together, and I ate turkey and stuffing with his family. Afterward, his wife loaned me her pink Pontiac convertible to drive around town, and he loaned me a showgirl for when I wasn\u2019t driving around town.\n\nThe casino showrooms weren\u2019t just for ogling career girls gone astray. They also provided regal dining (usually on prime rib) before Steve and Eydie took the stage. Now showroom seating is almost always theater-style, and you won\u2019t get a free performance with dinner unless you\u2019re in the mood for jousting at King Arthur\u2019s Arena (Invading armies! Dancing maidens!). The gourmet rooms were for high rollers\u2014they weren\u2019t called whales yet. Almost everybody was comped, a practice that held firm until the \u201990s. The gourmet rooms generally featured the gaudiest possible gastronomy plus first-growth Bordeaux from bad years. They had wonderful names: Sultan\u2019s Table at the Dunes; the Regency Room at the Sands; Palace Court at Caesars Palace; House of Lords at the Sahara; and the Candlelight Room at the Flamingo.\n\nIf you\u2019ve been to Vegas in the past few years, you probably think it has become a great restaurant city. You may be right. It just isn\u2019t a very good food city. The hotel restaurants\u2014nobody cares about the other kinds\u2014are all the same, cavernous and expensive. They have no significant differences except for their decorations, which can be pretty astonishing, everything from Limoges china to swan-filled lagoons. Still, when every restaurant costs $6 million to $10 million to build, similarities exceed distinctions. It\u2019s the curse of the overly affluent: There are just so many places a person with unlimited money can shop.\n\nFine dining in Vegas is about the glittery and the new. It\u2019s high-end corporate cuisine for the masses. It\u2019s about seating a lot of people and quickly moving them along to the casinos and the showrooms. Most customers plow through their tasting menus in ninety minutes, but all you have to do is ask and the food will come even faster. Size isn\u2019t limited to square footage. Cubic feet count for a lot, too. Restaurants not only have to be wide, they also need to be high\u2014forty-two feet in the case of Aureole. Is everybody happy? I\u2019m afraid so.\n\nHere\u2019s a bulletin: These new restaurants are not just changing the city. They are also changing fine dining in America. That\u2019s big news. Vegas is up to 40 million wide-eyed visitors per year, and their only mandatory recreational activity, besides acting silly, is eating. Vegas is now the template where lessons on eating well are being imprinted on the collective consciousness of America.\n\nInexperienced customers are finding out that luxurious restaurants offer sensory overindulgence combined with gastronomic uniformity. Were they spending their money in San Francisco or New York, they might learn something different, but they aren\u2019t going to those cities to become accomplished diners, not anymore. Their schoolrooms are restaurants geared to conventions, expense accounts, and blowout vacations, establishments without history or traditions, restaurants that didn\u2019t exist ten years ago.\n\nHere\u2019s the first troubling message: They\u2019re being taught that a restaurant can be great even if it has no past, no personality, and no uniqueness. America invented food standardization in order to sell fifteen-cent hamburgers, and now the monster is loose.\n\n\n\nVisitors to Vegas believe that dining at chef Guy Savoy\u2019s restaurant in Caesars Palace is no different from dining at his restaurant in Paris, and that dining at Daniel Boulud Brasserie in Vegas is the same as dining at Daniel in New York. (Guy Savoy in Vegas is indeed intended to be a culinary replica, but Boulud\u2019s somewhat casual place in the Wynn differs considerably from the New York flagship.) To average Americans\u2014absolutely satisfied with adaptations and too indifferent or too blas\u00E9 to care about experiencing originals\u2014Vegas has become the real thing.\n\nI\u2019m not even sure what the names attached to restaurants mean anymore. Do Daniel Boulud and Guy Savoy represent real people to those eating at their restaurants, or are they merely logos? Maybe Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse are perceived as flesh and blood because they\u2019re seen on TV. Everybody else is a trademark. To neophyte diners, chefs are no longer people who cook.\n\nThe culprit here is branding, which is mindless replication. Charlie Palmer, a chef with two Vegas restaurants, is planning a condo-hotel, the next (but surely not final) step in creating a comprehensive Charlie Palmer lifestyle. This is occurring in the name of our two great American ambitions, making money and having fun.\n\nFundamental to the essential breakdown of the fine-dining experience is the nonappearance of famous chefs. I went to thirteen restaurants in Vegas, and only three chefs were present: Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the Wynn; Guy Savoy, in town for the opening of his restaurant at Caesars Palace; and Tom Colicchio, who runs Craftsteak in the MGM Grand. Colicchio happened to be in the city taping an episode of Top Chef for Bravo, not to suggest he wasn\u2019t toiling in the kitchen between takes. Chefs with restaurants in Vegas are likely to earn $300,000 to $750,000 a year, basically for the use of their name. A few who come to work regularly can earn additional bonuses for showing up.\n\nMost Vegas restaurants, regardless of cost, are high-end franchises. They have big names, big budgets, and little else. They are knockoffs. This is tragic, because franchising destroys creativity. It halts the development of chefs. It deludes customers. Established restaurant owners, for the most part, disagree with me.\n\nI asked Drew Nieporent, the famed New York restaurateur, whether he thought a replica of a cherished establishment was superior to an original from an unheralded chef, and he replied, \u201CThe knockoff is better.\u201C He opened a branch of Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel &amp;amp; Casino\u2014when I was in Vegas, it was the most difficult reservation to obtain. He says, \u201CThese big developers would rather call somebody like me than create something new and original. It\u2019s easy, and it\u2019s packed. In fact, it\u2019s off the charts. They think it\u2019s effortless, and for somebody with money, it is.\u201C Adds Charlie Trotter, who had an unsuccessful restaurant in Vegas in the \u201990s and is expected to try again next year, \u201CLet\u2019s say Spago in Las Vegas isn\u2019t as good as Spago in Beverly Hills. I don\u2019t know if it is, but isn\u2019t a Spago that\u2019s 85 percent as good as the original better than a hotel operator opening a restaurant?\u201C\n\nI\u2019ve eaten at Nobu in New York and in Vegas. The same for Spago in Beverly Hills and in Vegas. The problem is that they\u2019re not 85 percent. I\u2019d give 60 percent to Nobu in Vegas, partly because the ecution is sloppy and partly because the joint is chaotic. Spago in Vegas drops under 50 percent because it\u2019s not nearly as ambitious as the estimable Spago in Beverly Hills and because the food seems to be ecuted mechanically\u2014the famous Chinese chicken salad looked and tasted as though it had been assembled in a Cuisinart.\n\nTrotter is correct in principle: If those restaurants were at 85 percent, they might be acceptable, but they\u2019re not close. They lack animation and spirit. Most are classy looking, but they look like the creations of hotel corporations, not restaurateurs, and the most exciting day for a hotel ecutive is the one in which a chandelier salesman stops by. There are no adventures in dining in Las Vegas. Missing are independent-minded restaurants, such as Montrachet in New York and Charlie Trotter\u2019s in Chicago, the places that launched the careers of Nieporent and Trotter.\n\nVisitors to Vegas are getting the message that restaurants aren\u2019t worth patronizing if they haven\u2019t made a name for themselves somewhere else.\n\nEven before Las Vegas ecutives created their new economic prototype\u2014hotels, casinos, and restaurants as revenue partners\u2014hotel dining in America had undergone a revival. Owners realized that restaurants could bring life, as well as customers, to the terrible void that was their lobbies and bars. And if they brought in restaurants with the right names, the seats were practically presold. Only beloved old Broadway musicals are more of a sure thing. Vegas gets no credit for ending the terrible ennui that was hotel dining. What it has done brilliantly is work out a particular ambience problem. It created a perverse form of alfresco dining, seating areas open not to the air but to the noise and lights of the casino. To some guests, this constitutes entertainment. At the very least, the clatter is an excuse for people dining together to engage in no conversation whatsoever.\n\nHotel planners follow systems, like card counters at blackjack tables. The architect David Rockwell, who designed the interior of the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, calls the climactic design element at every Vegas hotel the Big Weenie. He explains, \u201CIt can be a lake, a volcano, a sphinx, a pyramid.\u201C\n\nThere are Restaurant Weenies, too. The most famous is Aureole\u2019s four-story wine tower, which features \u201Cwine angels\u201C soaring up and down on wires\u2014they have a lot more in common with rappelling Army Rangers to me. The ultimate Restaurant Weenies are at Alain Ducasse\u2019s Mix in Las Vegas, on the sixty-fourth floor of the Hotel at Mandalay Bay. Above the bar, suspended from the ceiling, is an intimate seating area my showgirl-quality waitress described as \u201Ca strawberry that\u2019s landed in the dessert.\u201C In the dining room is a huge white amorphous blob, a kind of space platform, possibly representing a champagne bubble. Celebrities canoodle in both the berry and the bubble.\n\nThe most normal-looking restaurant I visited was Michael Mina\u2019s. It has low ceilings, an open kitchen, and simplicity of design. I never ate in one similar to it. The overly colorful Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare is a tribute to a time-honored fishing technique\u2014toss a stick of dynamite into a lake and splatter bits and pieces of things everywhere. The room has several centerpieces, Mini-Weenies, huge urns that appear to serve no apparent purpose, although they are large enough to hide the bodies that the Mob used to bury in the desert. Oddly, this restaurant also offers one of the most serene and attractive dining options in Vegas, cabana-style tables circling an artificial lake. Such a wacky indoor-outdoor contrast could exist only in the mind of a Vegas entrepreneur.\n\nAbsent from Vegas restaurants are women. Don\u2019t expect hatcheck girls. There are none. Don\u2019t look for female celebrity chefs. Not represented. Mother Nature doesn\u2019t get much respect, either. In Vegas, the natural world exists only in bogus form. Hotel owners love ordering up artificial lakes or indoor gardens, and most are predictably calming, an exception being Wynn\u2019s Lake of Dreams. I found it unsettling to eat while staring out at a bunch of semi-immersed statues that seemed to represent naked gamblers drowning themselves after losing their shirts. At Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare, just as the chef was telling me that he wanted his restaurant to feel as though it were on the coast of Italy with speedboats roaring by, along came a vacuum-cleaning machine about the size of a Zamboni, noisily sweeping the carpet outside his front door.\n\nNoticeably missing from Vegas restaurants are smells, which are sucked away with uncanny efficiency. Hotels are continually invaded by tourist bodies sweaty from walking up and down the Strip. Once a magical string of lights, the Strip has been transformed into a garish indoor-outdoor mall with a scorching pedestrian walkway. Walkers walk in. Walkers cool off. Walkers walk out. The coefficient of perspiration\u2014my term\u2014must be stupendous. Without gigantic ventilation systems, hotels would ripen. Think of the crew quarters on nuclear submarines. Still, something is lost when restaurants become as sterile as operating rooms.\n\nAnother lesson: The natural world never wins in Vegas.\n\nLas Vegas is essentially artificial, a cubic zirconium. The hotels shimmer in the desert, one part Imax, one part simulacrum, one part mirage. The city offers one great experience that no other major city on earth can match, free parking for one and all. (You can upgrade to valet parking at no additional charge.) The restaurants are the apex of American extravagance. They have the tallest ceilings, the biggest rooms, the largest portions, and the maximum prices. This, by the way, is good news for struggling chefs across the country. The people who visit Las Vegas are learning to pay staggering prices for food.\n\nSurf and turf at Michael Mina\u2019s goes for $85. Rack of lamb at Jo\u00EBl Robuchon\u2019s L\u2019Atelier, $55. Colicchio\u2019s ten-ounce Kobe filet, $110. My meal for two at the newly opened Guy Savoy was about $500 without wine. The last man I knew who operated an all-comp room was Trotter. He opened at the MGM Grand in 1994 and was out of business a little more than a year later. A nonrival restaurateur said of Trotter\u2019s failure, \u201CHe did tasting menus, the same as he was doing in Chicago. That\u2019s just what a person who has lost $50,000 gambling wants to eat\u2014minuscule portions for four hours.\u201C\n\nTrotter smiles when reminded. He says he was brought in after a big-time gambler who was staying at the MGM Grand went over to Caesars Palace to eat dinner and hung around long enough to lose $10 million. \u201CThe people at the MGM Grand said, \u0091That was our $10 million. We need fine dining.\u2019 \u201C\n\nHe took the offer. He liked the rush and the money. He got to promote some of his Chicago employees and send them to Vegas. The room was intended to be 100 percent comped\u2014no paying customers. Even the grandest rooms today\u2014Alex in the Wynn, Jo\u00EBl Robuchon at the Mansion\u2014are less than 25 percent comped. That particular Charlie Trotter restaurant cost $3.4 million, seated sixty-four, and took in no money, at least until the suicidal no-comp policy was dropped. \u201CEight months into our stay, the hotel started losing so much money, especially on a Mike Tyson fight,\u201C he said. \u201CThey bought us out and put in a new restaurant, \u00E0 la carte, double the size, spaghetti and meatballs for the kids.\u201C\n\nThe space was named Gatsby\u2019s. It was pure Vegas, built on a whim. It didn\u2019t last.\n\n\n\nWho, you might wonder, has said no to Las Vegas, resisted the migratory call? Not many. The New York restaurateur Danny Meyer has, over and over again, but he admits he might someday say yes. \u201CI\u2019m a huge believer that the context in which you put a restaurant is as important as the food, the decor, and the service,\u201C he says. \u201CI\u2019m not saying that in the context of a casino it\u2019s impossible to have a great restaurant\u2014I\u2019m just saying that I have yet to find a way to draw inspiration from a casino. If I do, and the dollars are right, I\u2019m open to it.\u201C\n\nThe only absolute no I heard came from Keith McNally, owner of Balthazar, Pastis, and Schiller\u2019s Liquor Bar in New York. Ironically, all three brilliantly evoke other countries or other eras, and McNally\u2019s talent would translate easily to Vegas. Nevertheless, he says no all the time. \u201CI always will,\u201C he adds.\n\nVegas angers him. \u201CI\u2019ve had a lot of offers, a couple of big ones, but nothing is less alluring to me. Steve Wynn was immensely generous and pleasant to be with, but the place just doesn\u2019t suit me. If there were something wicked or sleazy about Las Vegas, that would be more attractive to me. But it\u2019s boring. The restaurants out there are wax effigies, mummies. They are unceasingly artificial.\n\n\u201CThere are a hundred different owners of a hundred different restaurants, and they will give you a hundred different reasons why they are out there, but they are there for the money. And the most interesting restaurants are done by people without money. They don\u2019t have the money to solve problems, so they do so in an interesting way. It\u2019s like rock bands\u2014their most interesting work is always their early stuff. Anyone who is in Las Vegas is not doing stuff for the first time, and if I were out there, I\u2019d just be adding to the list.\u201C\n\nHere\u2019s one more dining deficiency: The people who eat in Vegas will never establish a relationship with a fine restaurant, possibly the most essential facet of eating well. It\u2019s unlikely that many Vegas spots will last ten or fifteen years, not when fine dining is equated with celebrity rather than with the virtues of warmth, familiarity, personal service, and cooking. Nor are these restaurants likely to mature in the few years that they do exist\u2014why should a chef bother to create new dishes when he has almost no repeat customers?\n\nWhat visitors to Las Vegas are able to do is return home and tell friends that they experienced the food of the most famous chefs in the world\u2014Robuchon, Boulud, and Savoy, to name a few. If they are lucky, and people who come to Las Vegas always believe that of themselves, nobody will tell them no, in reality they did not.\n\n\n\nRestaurant Guy Savoy\n\n Caesars Palace\n\nGuy Savoy likes carts. Champagne carts. Bread carts. Dessert carts. In his cramped three-star Paris restaurant, they\u2019re practically parked. In Vegas they zoom around. One friend said it was like eating French dim sum. The Paris restaurant is located near the Arc de Triomphe, half a block down from a McDonald\u2019s. Ditto for Vegas, only the Arc de Triomphe is a replica, two-thirds scale. Although it\u2019s large, the Vegas room is dreary. The only cheerful touches are some poundingly bright paintings and the hostesses, who wear purple blouses and would perk up the decor by walking around more. I ate in Vegas two weeks after it opened and about a month after a lunch at Guy Savoy in Paris. The chef was around on both occasions, which probably accounts for the flawlessness of every appetizer and main course. The best dishes in Vegas were a seared cube of foie gras brushed with duck jus, sprinkled with mustard seeds, and served in a red-cabbage reduction; and sea bass with a spicy, crunchy coating reminiscent of crushed cornflakes. The bread was more interesting in Vegas, especially a bacon bread that\u2019s a cross between a brioche and a biscuit. Desserts were better in Paris. Put a gun to my head\u2014not all that common in Vegas anymore\u2014and I\u2019d be tempted to call Vegas the better of two superlative meals.\n\nBouchon\n\n The Venetian\n\nBouchon has the pleasing feel of a brasserie plus superb oysters, a classic complement to the decor. When the wine I ordered for my oysters came after I\u2019d finished them, my waitress brought more, free. Nice. My confused busboy poured tap water into my sparkling water, then sparkling water into my tap water. Bouchon is a casual spot opened by Thomas Keller of the French Laundry and Per Se, and it has nothing in common with either. Steak frites was a thick, juicy, bland flatiron steak (let\u2019s face it: chuck) topped with mashed onions, an unwelcome surprise. A pat of butter sat on the onions, doing nothing. The fries were standard, the kind at mediocre bistros far and wide. The profiteroles were ordinary, too, except for the chocolate sauce, which befitted Keller\u2019s reputation. The problem with Bouchon is that a thousand other places run by chefs not named Thomas Keller serve food just as good.\n\nAureole\n\n Mandalay Bay\n\nPractically all the attention this place receives is for its forty-two-foot wine tower, an edifice that successfully challenges the fundamental concept of keeping wine underground. Little is said about how sound Aureole in Vegas has become over the past seven years. I\u2019m not an unabashed fan of Charlie Palmer\u2019s style\u2014his recipes seem overwrought\u2014but anybody who appreciates lots of ingredients will enjoy the food. The airy room matches the desert climate perfectly, and the Swan Court indeed boasts swans. Portions are generous, dishes are carefully prepared, and $75 for three courses is a deal. I loved the generous chilled-seafood appetizer accompanied by a watermelon granit\u00E9 and the seared barramundi accompanied by way too much.\n\nSpago\n\n The Forum Shops at Caesars\n\nThis is where it began. In recent years, Caesars Palace has fallen behind other top hotels in stockpiling RMCs\u2014Restaurants of Mass Consumption\u2014but it was the first to recognize their potential. In 1992 the hotel brought Spago to the shopping arcade it calls the Forum Shops at Caesars. Wolfgang Puck doesn\u2019t cook here\u2014he doesn\u2019t cook at Spago in Beverly Hills, for that matter\u2014but it remains one of his prime locations. I\u2019m not certain who was in the kitchen at this particular Spago the day I was there. The chef de cuisine was appearing live on a local show, and I watched him on the TV over the bar as he cooked somebody else\u2019s meal. Here you will find no shortage of Puck\u2019s trademark touches\u2014the food is sweet, creamy, and/or colorful. The bread basket was a treat in a city where most bread seems desert dried. I had potato-Cheddar soup (creamy, colorful) that could have benefited from a more assertive Cheddar flavor, Chinese chicken salad (sweet, colorful) hacked into indefinable bits, and bucatini bolognese that didn\u2019t need the mound of parsley-flecked ricotta plopped atop it, except that parsley-flecked ricotta is sweet, creamy, and colorful. Dining tip: When I didn\u2019t finish my chicken salad, my waiter told me he preferred the preparation at Chinois, another of Puck\u2019s places, just a few steps away.\n\nCraftsteak\n\n MGM Grand\n\nWalking through the MGM Grand, I counted sixteen overhead signs pointing the way to the restaurants of chef Jo\u00EBl Robuchon. I counted none for Craftsteak. When I was recognized by chef-owner Tom Colicchio, I asked him why the MGM Grand loved Robuchon more than it loved him. Sputtering and grinning sheepishly, he replied, \u201CWhat I think it means is\u2026what I mean is\u2026I\u2019d like more.\u201C Then he mentioned that the MGM Grand put up $8 million to construct his place and the money went a long way toward making up for having no signs. Craftsteak is an odd stepchild. Originally, Colicchio opened Craft in New York. It\u2019s not a steak house but acts like one, offering an array of dishes intended to be shared. Craftsteak is a spin-off of Craft, which makes it a steak house imitating a restaurant imitating a steak house. Makes my head hurt. Each dish I tried was well prepared except the Caesar salad, terrible in more ways than I can list. The avocado was creamy and fatty. The oysters were easily worth $3 apiece\u2014I\u2019d have paid more. The wine list is badly overpriced, but nobody cares. In Vegas, steak houses are where men who gamble go to drown their sorrows in blood and wine. Money is not an issue.\n\nDaniel Boulud Brasserie\n\n Wynn Las Vegas\n\nMaybe I was just missing the old days. That\u2019s when hotels had bargain meals for slot junkies, $2.99 for steak and eggs, usually after midnight. When I saw that chef Daniel Boulud had a $48 fid-price dinner before 7 p.m., I couldn\u2019t stay away. After three days of losing steadily at a sports book, I figured this was the meal to recoup. The food here isn\u2019t cheap: Rack of veal, $55. Lamb shank, $43. That made $48 for three courses irresistible to a loser like me. Because I was so early, I got a lovely outdoor table. The country p\u00E2t\u00E9 was a thin slice, intensely satisfying. The steak was beefy, just right, and it came with typical Boulud fries, better than almost anybody else\u2019s. (He\u2019s a master of spuds.) On the steak was butter mid with port-wine-marinated shallots, a bad idea, because a hideous purple discoloration spread across my plate. Think of a dye bomb exploding in a bank robber\u2019s satchel of loot. Avant-garde cocoa-crusted profiteroles were made with homemade rocky-road ice cream\u2014the mini-marshmallows were a triumph. I\u2019m not sure the radical concept of simple food overseen by a celebrated chef at a reasonable price can catch on in Vegas, but should visitors be interested in exploring that concept, this is the place to go.\n\nL\u2019Atelier de Jo\u00EBl Robuchon\n\n MGM Grand\n\nLong ago, in a strange land called France, Jo\u00EBl Robuchon became so famous the GaultMillau restaurant guide declared him Chef of the Century. He is so respected that when he decided diners must eat his extremely expensive food at a counter, perched on a stool, the way Americans might have eaten a blue-plate special in Illinois in 1954, his vision was applauded. The original L\u2019Atelier (\u201Cthe workshop\u201C), in Paris, features doors that do not open from the outside, which prevents desperate diners from rushing inside and trampling everyone, much like crazed soccer fans. L\u2019Atelier in Vegas is more gracious and accessible than the Paris branch, although the cooking isn\u2019t as refined. Several dishes were too oily, including grilled vegetables layered with buffalo mozzarella; a mackerel tart (okay, mackerel is always oily); and a deep-fried langoustine that went for $22. (Yes, that was for one.) Quail stuffed with foie gras, a signature dish in Paris, was tasty, but the foie gras had fallen out. The spaghetti special, as it was in Paris, was an outlandish interpretation of carbonara, as heavy as fettuccine Alfredo, as inauthentic as macaroni and cheese with bacon. When I asked to try the beautiful bird turning on the rotisserie, I learned it was a guinea hen placed there for decoration. It\u2019s tossed away, overcooked and unwanted, at the end of the day. Vegas is a very tough town.\n\nBartolotta Ristorante di Mare\n\n Wynn Las Vegas\n\nChef Paul Bartolotta recognized me. I\u2019m impressed that (1) he was there, (2) he was there at lunch, (3) he was on the lookout for people like me. He says he doesn\u2019t miss a lunch service because critics checking out Vegas are always short on time, and when they find out his place is open for lunch, that\u2019s when they show up. Smart man. Excellent cook, too. He specializes in wild fish from the Mediterranean, such uncommon varieties as saber fish, horse mackerel, and the prized slipper lobster, which has an earthy flavor that reminds me of grass-fed beef. Don\u2019t miss his vongole in red sauce, as splendid a Southern Italian dish as you\u2019ll find in this country. The beautifully focused desserts are the best in Vegas, especially the semifreddo, the lemon cake, and the granitas. Whole fish can be pricey, but rombo (turbot) at lunch is a bargain. On the other hand, you might want to eat later simply to sit at one of the soothing cabana tables that circle the artificial lake\u2014they\u2019re only in use at dinner.\n\nAlex\n\n Wynn Las Vegas\n\nAlthough not among the best-known names in Vegas, Alessandro (Alex) Stratta is treated as a member of the elite. The atmosphere of his extravagant establishment is very ornate, very Vienna, a tribute to heightened buying power. Those who dine there must walk down a grand staircase to the seating area. (The hostess told me she fell once and tumbled down.) I ordered the tasting menu, $155 for seven courses plus an array of amuse-bouches\u2014the lobster tempura was of luscious fragility, and the mushroom tartlet was so light it should have been tethered to the table. The wine guy arrived. I asked for a $131 Burgundy. He shook his head and pointed out a $180 Burgundy. I countered with a $114 Burgundy. No, only the $180 bottle would do. Nearing defeat, I suggested the $90 wine pairing. No, the $180 bottle. Finally, we agreed on something red for $100. By then I just wanted him and this restaurant to go away. The food was predictably luxurious, but it lacked the refinements I admired in the amuse-bouches. Also predictable was the swiftness, another ninety-minute sprint, but in this case I didn\u2019t mind. I had only enough time to drink half of that damn wine I didn\u2019t want.\n\nMichael Mina\n\n Bellagio\n\nEating in this quiet, softly-lit room was nearly a joy, except dinner progressed at an insane speed. The waiters moved fast and talked fast. I noticed most guests, me included, asking the same question: \u201CTell me again what you said?\u201C I ordered a five-course tasting menu, well priced at $105, and I was out the door in ninety minutes. The food was fresh and rich, but Michael Mina\u2019s signature seafood items were a little clunky\u2014why, for example, was there an oversize scallop raviolo wedged between the fabulous miso-marinated sea bass and the luscious mushroom consomm\u00E9? The ma\u00EEtre d\u2019 told me Mina appeared every two or three weeks for three or four days, more than most chefs do. I was impressed, but the ma\u00EEtre d\u2019 wasn\u2019t, because he added, \u201CWell, he has three restaurants to look after.\u201C Wait until he finds out Mina has seven.\n\nMix in Las Vegas\n\n The Hotel at Mandalay Bay\n\nThis restaurant is Alain Ducasse\u2019s worst idea. The menu: a bunch of stuff little better (but fancier sounding) than what you get at an upscale buffet. The bar is wonderful, with a panoramic view of the Strip\u2014from the sixty-fourth floor of the hotel, you\u2019ll believe you\u2019re looking down on the most colorful and joyous place on earth. I hated the hostess, who was giggling with pals and turned surly when I requested her attention. I hated my table, about a foot from the one on either side and wobbly. I hated the butter with peanuts in it. I hated the sommelier, who tried to force a $128 wine on me when I picked one costing $48. I hated the view from the dining room side of the restaurant: Vegas tract developments. The only dish worthy of the great Ducasse was the crab salad with tomato gel\u00E9e, avocado, papaya, and sweet peppers. It was beautifully finessed. This place isn\u2019t merely Ducasse\u2019s worst idea. It might be the worst idea ever.\n\nEmeril\u2019s New Orleans Fish House\n\n MGM Grand\n\nEmerilizing the sea is not such a great idea. Fish can be gutsy, sure, but after one such plate\u2014shrimp in barbecue sauce or the much better salmon in barbecue sauce\u2014it\u2019s hard to know what to order next. The Emeril Lagasse touch can be appealing with meat or vegetables, but seafood barely survives his onslaught of ingredients. The pan roast had grated cheese on top, an awful concept. The polenta fries with crawfish were tasty enough, but when I asked my waitress what happened to the crawfish, she explained how they\u2019re ground up, liquefied, and added to the polenta batter. I had nightmarish visions of Emeril demonically attacking scuttling crawfish with a huge mashing machine, screaming bam as he demonically pounded them into fries. I took just one bite of my dessert. Emeril\u2019s Banana Cream Pie might be homemade, as the name implies, but Emeril sure didn\u2019t make it the day I was there. Here\u2019s better news: The wine list is one of the best in Vegas if you factor in price, and the mundane room manages to appear attractive at night. Practically everything in Vegas looks better at night. Except those fries."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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