vintner grill.

Vintner Grill resides in an unfortunate location. Sure, it's in Summerlin, a nice part of town, but more specifically it's hiding among tall buildings in a quiet office park. This must have helped the restaurant build its reputation as a West side professional power luncheon, but it's really too nice of a place with too fascinating of a menu to be hiding out anywhere. Summerlin boasts the best dining options of any Vegas suburban area, and Vintner Grill is at or near the top of the list.

Executive chef Matthew Silverman -- also the guy behind the cuisine at the local Roadrunner bar chain and Agave Mexican restaurant -- shines at Vintner with a Americanized bistro menu accented by Mediterranean flair. Dining here on New Year's Eve, our party feasted on delicately seared diver scallops with sweet corn risotto, a stunning, crispy half-chicken with mac and cheese, and a wood-fired smoked mozzarella flatbread. The restaurant, decked out in modern whites and greens, complete with a multi-canopied patio and feeling quite San Francisco-ish, was packed on this special occasion and the service was up for the challenge. They knew the menu backwards and forwards, including the expansive selection of fine cheese and charcuterie that many choose to start their meal with. This feature is rare in Vegas, especially off-Strip, and we took advantage of it at a more recent dinner at the bar.

Accompanying our cocktails were small portions of aged Wisconsin cheddar, creamy yet full Colorado goat cheese and slices of smoked duck breast, cured to a ham-like consistency. The halibut with couscous was simply prepared and delicious if one of the least exciting dishes on the menu. Sweet, firm pumpkin gnocchi, on the other hand, proved truly unique. A butter lettuce salad with warm brie and orange balsamic dressing is another favorite.

Some dessert options are furnished by the luxury chocolate store Vosges. Vintner Grill has a great bar and a great wine list to complement the interesting cuisine. It might be hard to find, but many jewels of Vegas dining are. The neighbors are lucky, and for everyone else, it's worth a trip.

memphis championship barbecue.

This is a plate of tender, crazy-smokey baby back ribs, burnt ends and beef brisket, with some fries and slaw. It was pretty good. The leftovers will be pretty good for lunch tomorrow. And I'm sorry, but we ate all the deep fried pickles so there's no picture of those.

There are certain restaurants that are standard bearers. You try a new place, decide it's great, and it makes you want to go back to your favorite to see if the new joint is better. Memphis Championship Barbecue is such a benchmark. There are bountiful little 'cue pits around Vegas (Harry-O's BBQ, Buzz BBQ, CJ's Texas Barbeque, Longhorn BBQ), reliable franchise faves (Lucille's, Famous Dave's) and even a fancy hotel-casino restaurant (RUB at Rio), and most serve great food. How can you screw up barbecue? Most of these menus are similar, as well, even if some of these guys are from Texas and some are from the South and some are from the Midwest.

Memphis stands out from the pack. Mike Mills is from the Midwest, and yes, he's pretty famous as far as barbecue guys go. But that doesn't make these restaurants (there are three) any less Vegas. The original location on Las Vegas Boulevard North near Nellis Air Force Base has been there longer than you have. The service and high quality food is consistent, which accounts for why it's one of the most popular event catering restaurants around the valley. And there's just a ton of great stuff on the menu, like that three-meat combo dinner up there, terrific, meaty chili, a spicy vinegar-based sauce for you to slather on your ribs, overstuffed hot link sandwiches, slightly smokey turkey that'll hold you over until Thanksgiving, and soulful sides like mac'n cheese, collard greens and fried okra. They do everything well, and that's really what puts Memphis ahead of the competition.

china mama. bosa 1.

Two of the more interesting recent discoveries in Chinatown happen to be right next door to each other, on Jones Boulevard just north of Spring Mountain Road: the Vietnamese Bosa 1 and the Taiwanese China Mama. I've been to lunch, alone, at both in the last month, and had some great food and kinda funny service. Not funny bad, just ... interesting.

China Mama is not the most English-friendly Chinese restaurant, but it's not too tough to figure things out here. The place is pretty big and the walls are a bright green color. This is not an Americanized Chinese restaurant, so there's no lunch special with an egg roll and egg flower soup on the side; why would you want another joint like that? Unfortunately, the menu is not built for the solo diner who wants to try different things, so I had a big dish of shredded pork and dried tofu for lunch. It was a bit salty and quite tasty, not spicy at all but very satisfying with rice.

Other notable dishes on the menu include green onion pancakes, cucumber salad, cold salted duck and pork soup dumplings. Those dumplings were what I really wanted to try, so once my lunch was brought out, I asked for the juicy dumplings, too. And then things got weird. They shot me down. The server told me I'd never be able to eat it all, this heaping plate of pork and tofu plus 8 rather large soup dumplings. He seriously talked me out of it. That hasn't happened before. Almost out of spite, I devoured my food, all of it, and I will be back for those dumplings. Be ready, China Mama.

Something very different happened to me when I visited Bosa 1, just a few steps away. I walked into the much smaller but clean and comfortable Vietnamese restaurant and immediately noticed a sign that read "Cash Only." Crestfallen, I started to ask the lady behind the counter where the nearest ATM could be found. "Well, if you want you can pay next time."

Um, what?

"Have you been here before?" No. "Well everybody always comes back, so you can pay next time you come in." Seriously? "Sure."

That's never happened. I wasn't sure if it was an act of supreme culinary confidence or just good faith, but I was impressed. Turned out Bosa 1 has every right to be confident, but they shouldn't be giving this stuff away. Las Vegas' top two restaurant critics both love this place, and now so do I. They stuffed me with fresh shrimp spring rolls that I could have eaten all day and a broken rice combo plate with a skewer of grilled shrimp, barbecued pork, a peppery quiche-like egg cake with more pork inside, shredded pork skin, a fried shrimp cake and a pickled vegetable salad. This was all on one plate, everything was delicious and had I paid, I would have cleared the place for $15. The best parts were the homemade fish sauce, which I mixed with a little scorching chili paste and dumped on everything, and the also homemade chicken soup, a clear, clean broth that I used to soak some of those vegetables and pork skin. At any price, this is one of the best lunches in Vegas.

joe's in the forum shops.

It's been ten years since I came back home to Vegas, and I've been thinking a lot about things (and restaurants) that have shaped my experience here. For better or worse, Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab fits into that category.

When MenuVegas went up in the summer of '06, Joe's was the very first featured restaurant on the site. It was chosen not just because the food was good, but because it seemed like the epitome of what I then thought of as the Vegas restaurant experience. It's expensive. It's inside the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. It's not really ours; it's an extension of an iconic Miami restaurant and operated by the Lettuce Entertain You company, which opened Joe's Chicago in 2000 and Joe's Vegas in 2004. So, like so much of this Vegas Experience, this restaurant is meant to re-create an entirely different, faraway destination. Also, it's nice. It's a classic dining room, all dark wood and white tablecloth. And the menu: seafood and steak, simple and timeless.

And still, five years later, pretty damn good. In my early visits to Joe's I was impressed with the sweetness of the namesake stone crab claws and the creamy crab bisque, and quite surprised by the steady steaks. The perfectly charred, bone-in, 16-ounce filet mignon I had on my first visit years ago remains one of the best steaks I've ever tasted. And maybe I was just in the right mood, sitting by myself at the bar, the first person in the restaurant, but today might have been the perfect lunch:
1. Hendrick's and tonic.
2. A wealthy bread basket.
3. A lot of chilled king crab legs. (The menu said 12 ounces but it had to be closer to 16.)
4. Potatoes lyonnaise, crispy and good.5. Sweet corn, pan-roasted.6. Strawberry pie and strong coffee.It was about $40 before the tip. Typically, I feel remorse after dropping this kinda money on lunch for one. Not today. The esteemed Max Jacobson recently reviewed the lunchtime offerings at RM Seafood, naming it one of the best places on the Strip for your mid-day meal. I wouldn't put Joe's at the level of Rick Moonen's place, but the lunch specials are very reasonable and, as you have just read, quite a bit of tasty food for twenty to thirty bucks.

Joe's is the type of restaurant I don't want to like. It's for tourists, sure, but so is everything else on the Strip. It's make-believe, yes. There is fresher seafood and richer beef to be found in this town. It isn't even close to being the best restaurant in Caesars. My skeptical side wants to slam this place, find something absolutely wrong with it. But I don't think that part of my brain got the message when I was fork-shoveling chunks of tender, butter-drenched king crab into my face at 11:30 this morning. I can't deny you, Joe's Stone Crab. You are good.

agave.

When it comes to Mexican food in Vegas, there are two types of restaurants: places worth going back to and places that aren't. Even though I've had lots of food and drink at Agave in Summerlin over the last few years, I'm afraid it falls into the latter category.

Despite what any critic writes or what any foodie snob will tell you, there is plenty of worthwhile Mexican food to be found in Las Vegas. Some of the most convenient, affordable, fun and interesting food on the Strip is being served at Border Grill, Dos Caminos, Diego, Isla and other restaurants, and there is no shortage of awesome hole-in-the-wall taquerias scattered about the valley. Of course, there is a powerful presence of run-of-the-mill, beans-and-rice, please-the-gringos restaurants as well. But it's pretty easy to cut through the boring (Macayo's) and discover the fantastic (Frank & Fina's).

Agave is somewhere in between. It's hard to believe this restaurant is run by the same company behind the splendid Vintner Grill just a short distance east on West Charleston Boulevard. Vintner's menu is playful continental with a Mediterranean flair; Agave's menu seems to grow less impressive every time I visit. A recent lunch on the patio started unfortunately with too-sweet, no-heat salsas, but the braised beef taquito appetizer made up for it. A gigantic machaca tostada was a massive salad atop a mound of beans and tender shredded beef, and the chicken torta also was too big to finish, a well-spiced grilled chicken breast swimming in plenty of guacamole and braced by a decent, baguette-like sandwich roll. It was filling, but far from satisfying.

I've eaten just about everything here, from fajitas to carnitas to tiny tacos to seafood, but still, the best thing one could order is a drink. All cocktails are made fresh (and a little too slow, if you ask me) and I've never sampled one I didn't like. The Tlaquepaque, with its fresh raspberries and Casa Noble tequila, remains the only blended margarita I've ever enjoyed. The house margarita is made with Herradura El Jimador and Patron Citronge, and the Jalisco Martini, which we just tried recently, blends honeydew melon and Midori with tequila for a smooth, crisp treat. Agave serves over 100 different tequilas, and you can taste by flight if you like. With its festive vibe and splashy pinkness, Agave could be a great party bar. Could be. But for now, it remains a fine place for a summer margarita with mediocre-at-best food.

home again: bagel cafe, grape street.

So I moved. It'd be easy to see, if you keep track of which restaurants I write or rave about, that I've been partial to the west side of Las Vegas. That's because it's been my home for the better part of the last 22 years. I think I get down to eat on the Strip as much as any other local, and I'm up for a jaunt out to Henderson, the south end or any other distance if there's great food to be found. But like any other suburban eater, I'm more likely to be found in my neighborhood. For the last three-plus years, that's been the northwest suburb of Centennial Hills, where I discovered some great places to eat: Indian Curry Bowl, Vega's Cafe, Retro Bakery, Sushi Loca, and the Charcoal Room, to name a handful. There really is outstanding dining to be found in every corner of the Las Vegas Valley.

But now I'm back home again, the neighborhood I more or less grew up in: the very tip of Summerlin, right along the Pueblo Park. Sure, it's not far from my previous location, just a few minutes on U.S. Highway 95. But it offers a certain comfort to me, a familiarity, and there are even more delicious restaurants nearby. Probably the best closest joint is the beloved French bistro Marche Bacchus, and I have to admit I have not been there recently. It won't be long before I return. But I have already paid a visit to two other long-popular destinations.

Bagel Cafe is quite simply the best deli-style restaurant in Vegas. This is the place for huge, homemade bagels, in every flavor variety you could think of and topped with every flavor of cream cheese imaginable; terrific, soul-satisfying matzoh ball soup; super-stacked deli sandwiches; gigantic fresh salads; and my personal favorite, monstrous fish platters with fresh, colorful vegetables. This morning I went overboard (pictured) with a plate stocked with dill shrimp salad, baked smoked salmon salad, coleslaw and potato salad, and an array of juicy red tomatoes, cucumbers, homemade pickles, olives and red onion to top my toasted sesame bagel with scallion cream cheese. It's easy to see (and taste) why the Bagel Cafe is packed for lunch during the week and all morning long on the weekends; it's truly a Vegas favorite. I also like to drool over the fresh pastries and cookies in the case up front.

Grape Street Cafe is almost as popular, a friendly neighborhood wine bar serving a lot of salads, some steak and seafood, pasta and pizza to a very Summerlin crowd. (What I mean by this: middle aged white people.) The wine selection is extensive and there's usually a seat at the bar if you're looking to do some sampling, but they stay pretty busy for dinner. A light dinner last night consisted of crostini, crisp toast with gorgonzola, goat cheese and roasted peppers; a pizza margherita and a tasty flank steak salad that could have been vastly improved by using any lettuce other than iceberg. I've never had a bad appetizer or dessert at Grape Street, and the kitchen handles fish well, too. The prices could be a bit lower, but it's not a bad deal for a reliably good meal from a diverse menu and a great bunch of bottles to choose from.