back to raku. oh, now i get it.

Let's get simple. There are three places to eat in Las Vegas. There's the Strip, there's your neighborhood, and there's Chinatown. For most of us, the Strip is for special occasions. (If you're just visiting Vegas, that's pretty special, right?) Your neighborhood is where you dine most of the time. It's normal for humans to do this. And unless it happens to be your neighborhood (or if you're one of the food obsessed), Chinatown is an occasional culinary adventure, for the more adventurous. That's all there is to it, really.

And now let's accept the fact that Strip dining, as dynamic as it is, can get old fast. It's too much sometimes. And your neighborhood can get boring, even faster. Chinatown doesn't have those problems. It's never too much, and it's never boring. It's the sweet spot every time.

So now let's return to one of the undeniable highlights of Las Vegas Chinatown, Raku. After my virgin visit, I accepted this place is something different, and can be a puzzling experience. But now I am compelled to recommend that you return to Raku often and find your own experience there. It will be rewarding. The high-fallutin' foodie folk will tell you this is just pure, authentic, clean Japanese pub food, but forget those people. Those are not normal people. There are challenging things on this menu, but you don't have to try them. There are just as many simple, delicious plates as there is crazy shit. It is inevitable that you will find something you love. For my lovely yet fearful wife, it was crispy asparagus okaki, perfect vegetable bliss (pic right). For me, it was everything else. But what really blew me away was something I would normally stay away from, an ingredient I only pretend to enjoy when it's mixed in and drowned out by lots of other ingredients and flavors. The beef tendon from the robata grill doesn't look like much, but after an evening of trying just about everything, tons of tastes subtle and powerful, it's the one bite that I can't get out of my head. First the lingering cloud from the charcoal grill hits you as you get ready to chomp, and then it's overwhelming. Distinctly beefy, but also salty, smokey, rich and buttery. And the texture attacks, spreading itself around without asking permission, but just go with it. This is not going to sound appetizing, but it's like The Blob from the old cheesy movies (I prefer the Kevin Dillon version), only a tiny version that tastes awesome and only wants to take over your mouth, not the whole city. It's simply a rendition of a dish that I've never experienced, and now it's the only way I want to eat tendon ever again. And there are so many other things at Raku that are just as great.

Kobe beef skirt with garlic.

More beef? Okay.

Back to the robata skewers, here's pork cheek, fatty, firm and delicious.

Peace in a bowl. Cold green tea soba noodles with a poached egg.

Amazing pork belly, great slabs of it in Raku's astonishing dashi with a little Chinese mustard. Wow.

And here's that beef tendon. Told ya it doesn't look like much. I'll have yours if you don't want it, sucker.

pin kaow.

Stop for a moment and think about the wonderful comfort of the neighborhood restaurant. You know which one I mean: It doubles as a place you'll go for a special occasion and the place you can't wait to get to when your Friday shift is over. The service is either good or it's great, but it doesn't really matter because they know you here. It's your place. The stuff they cook at your neighborhood restaurant probably isn't your favorite type of cuisine, but there are a few dishes that are so good, it's as if they're cooking just for you, just to your palate's specifications. Or maybe they are cooking just for you, maybe the guys in the back know exactly how you want it and they're happy to reward your loyalty. Because you eat at your neighborhood restaurant at least once a week, and if it's only once a month, you'll feel like you haven't been in ages. The restaurant will miss you. And like an ex that may still have some sort of magic spell on your emotions, this restaurant will be your constant comparison, your frame of reference when you venture away from home and try things new and different. That was excellent, you'll tell your husband or wife after a great adventure of a meal, but I still like the Whatever at My Neighborhood Restaurant. You will think this, you will say this, and then you'll think of me, because I wrote that terrible ex metaphor you just read. And you might be a little uncomfortable because now you ARE thinking of your ex while discussing dinner with your spouse. Oops. Whatever.

The point is: your attachment to the good food in your immediate area is a strong connection. Great neighborhood dining can be a substantial block in the wall of community. And if you don't live here, there's a chance you don't realize that Las Vegas really is like any other place, and we have neighborhoods, and we have great neighborhood restaurants. Of course, we don't all choose the good ones to be our go-to spot. In fact, sometimes we don't choose at all. Perhaps it's a combination of circumstances that allows the restaurant to choose us. And I'm not gonna get all judgy; it's perfectly fine if your spot is PF Chang's or a sports bar with great chicken wings or a greasy little pizza joint. We work with what we have. Not all neighborhoods have as many tasty destinations as mine. I am lucky. And my neighborhood restaurant is called Pin Kaow.

There are three different Pin Kaow restaurants in the Vegas valley, which is great news, because that means I can share my favorite northwest neighborhood grub with people who live in the southwest and southeast. It can be ours. The original restaurant, which is just off U.S. Highway 95 at Lake Mead Boulevard, opened in 2001. I do not know the name of the family that runs these places, nor do I need to. I don't know who cooks, and it doesn't matter. There are really only two things you need to know about Pin Kaow:

1. The food is really fucking good.
2. It's Thai food.

First, let's explore why I love to eat here so much. The menu is pretty traditional, and it has been called authentic. (The atmosphere also is traditional and very pretty, with lots of lacquered wood and tables big enough for family dining.) It's open every day and serves pretty much every Thai dish you've heard of, with a bit of familiar Chinese mixed in for those folks who are, sadly, missing out on the spicy and sweet treasures of southeast Asian food. There are chef's specials that change with the seasons and focus on seafood, dishes like clams sauteed with chilis, bell peppers, onions and basil, or deep fried prawns in a deep tamarind sauce. Pin Kaow does the basics very well: creamy coconut and lemongrass soups, a way-above average Pad Thai, and spicy salads like larb and Crying Tiger Beef drenched in fresh lime juice and fish sauce. It's so steady here.

The curries are impeccable, thick, rich and well balanced. We particularly dig on Masaman curry with potatoes and crushed peanuts, and red curry to which you can add, of course, your choice of tofu, chicken, beef, pork or shrimp. There's also a special duck curry with tomato, pineapple, basil and chili. Also, don't skip the fried rice dishes, which include standard stuff like combo meat or pineapple, and better stuff like chili fried rice with egg and broccoli or, again, duck fried rice with Chinese broccoli and tomato. For dessert, all you'll need is sweet rice with mango, if it's in season, or coconut ice cream if it isn't.

I am stuck on a few dishes at Pin Kaow, just as hard as I am stuck on the restaurant itself. I cannot seem to stop myself from ordering Chinese broccoli with crispy pork, a super-simple dish of stir-fried vegetables in a chili-laden, garlic brown sauce with mighty chunks of pork belly. Each bite of pig falls somewhere between sauce-absorbing meatiness and a full-blown cracklin, and even though I order the dish with medium heat, it always comes out with the perfect amount of forehead sweat inducing power. This is my food, one of my favorite dishes anywhere. In a close second is the soft shell crab salad, which I hope finds a home on the permanent menu. Just typing about this stuff right now has increased the odds of my dining here tonight by 50 to 60 percent.

Now let's discuss point number two. If you're going to claim any Thai restaurant in Las Vegas is a good one, it's going to be compared to the infamous Lotus of Siam. Years ago, L.A. writer Jonathan Gold wrote in Gourmet magazine that Lotus, a relatively small, family-run restaurant in the aging, eclectic Commercial Center on Sahara Avenue just east of the Strip, is the best Thai restaurant in North America. Vegas visitors picked up on the tip and have made Lotus one of the most popular off-Strip restaurants in the city. Locals love it too, including local critics, and so this unassuming spot has become regarded as the be all and the end all of Thai cuisine in Las Vegas. (Recently, chef/owner Saipin Chutima and her team did what once seemed impossible and expanded their Vegas brand to New York City. But within months, they pulled out of the new restaurant, and continue to operate in Vegas.)

So does Lotus live up this reputation, built on word of mouth and hype from a few critics? I've eaten there a handful of times, and the food is amazing. There are specialties from the chef's native Northern Thailand and other delicious, hard-to-find dishes that aren't on the menu at my beloved Pin Kaow. I'm probably the only active restaurant writer in Vegas that would choose Pin Kaow over Lotus. But it's an easy decision, and this is why: I know Lotus is tremendous. I love great Thai food, and there it is, and it's not inconvenient to go there. And yet I don't. It's been more than a year since I made the quick trip across Las Vegas Boulevard. And why would I? I've got my favorite Thai spot, it's completely delicious, and it's right down the street. It's Pin Kaow. Behold the power of the neighborhood restaurant.

attack of the asian burgers!

There are those who would say Las Vegas has no signature food item to call its own, nothing to compare to the Philly cheesesteak, the Chicago dog, the slice of New York pizza, etc. (Nevermind the fact that we have all of those.) To those doubters I offer this: the gourmet burger is all Vegas, baby. Sure, it may not have been invented here, but that doesn't matter. We've got the greatest burgers from across the country, from California's In-N-Out to Illinois' Steak 'n Shake, and that's just the beginning. Almost every hotel-casino on the Strip has its very own upscale burger joint, from Hubert Keller's Burger Bar to Kerry Simon's KGB at Harrah's. Americans never seem to get sick of eating burgers, and Vegas is the most American city you could ever hope to visit. So take that.

But ... I do get sick of eating burgers. I didn't even want to try all the new cowdisc emporiums popping up all over the place. In fact, I was completely burger'd out, until something magical happened ... something Asian happened ... something new was born. The first time I tried an Asian-flavored burger, it was disappointing. The attempt: combine a Vietnamese banh mi sandwich with a hamburger. The flavors were muddled and messy, and it didn't come close to working.

Then I tried Bachi Burger, and despite the previous banh mi letdown, I took a risk and ordered this version from a very interesting menu. Despite a lot of positive buzz about this small-but-hip neighborhood restaurant, I wasn't expecting much. But I was blown away by the flavor explosion of Bachi's banh mi burger, a super-meaty patty of beef, pork and shrimp with a sweet-and-sour tang. The bun is slightly sweet, those necessary pickled veggies and fresh jalapenos are served on the side so you can add as much as you need, and there's even a slice of porky pate to bring some extra authenticity. It's beyond juicy, and really represents the flavors of this Vietnamese standby without sacrificing beefy goodness. And Bachi's menu is full of other Asian-inspired burgers, like the Ronin, which has a fried egg, Japanese coleslaw and miso sauce.

With these awesome new options, I was back to loving burgers, as long as they were Asian. So it was okay, again, to go to some new, fancy, Strip casino's burger place, like Holsteins in the Cosmopolitan, as long as I could order something awesome like the Rising Sun: teriyaki-glazed Kobe beef with threads of fried yam, furikake, spicy mayo and tempura avocado. Holsteins also appears to have mastered the subtle art of infusing Asian flavors into our iconic American sandwich without fucking up what we love most in a burger -- big beef in every bite.

But this blog entry is a PUNCH OFF! and you know what that means ... there was to be a winner. There has to be a king crowned in this Vegas Asian burger battle, and I don't think it gets any better than Fukuburger. Now, keep in mind that when you're eating from a food truck, you can't let hipness be a factor. It's fun to order from a truck, hang with the homies in the parking lot and eat outside, but none of that stuff changes the fact that Fukuburgers are delicious. The number one, standard Fuku is a good starting spot for this menu, with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickled ginger, American cheese and special sauce. The ginger, contrasting nicely with the miso and other flavors in the beef, throws everything into another world of flavor. I also deeply love Fuku's version of loco moco, that Hawaiian gutbuster of a burger over rice with a savory brown gravy. But definitely do not miss the Tamago burger (pictured), with a perfect, oozy fried egg, crispy onions, a little teriyaki and a little furikake with the special sauce. The egg brings a potent richness, and the combination really brings out the fact that Fuku cooks their meat perfectly. It's juicy with a great burn on the outside and pink on the inside, exactly the way a burger is meant to be. That's why these guys are one of the top food trucks in the burgeoning Vegas scene. But wheels or no, Fukuburgers can go head-to-head with the best in the city.

shh. nittaya's secret kitchen.

Nittaya's Secret Kitchen is, I believe, poised to become the next great neighborhood restaurant in Vegas. I believe this because the food is really good, but here are some other reasons:

1. Thai food is still pretty hot right now. We all agree there is very good Thai food to be found in Las Vegas. And this chef is cooking her native cuisine, and she's already been operating two more straight-ahead Thai-Chinese restaurants, so we know she knows what she's doing.

2. Nittaya's is on the corner of Lake Mead and Rampart. This neighborhood and the people in it are getting a little older, but there are still plenty of folks nearby that will get behind a restaurant with great, unique food.

3. The owners of Nittaya's have very wisely placed the word "tapas" on their menu and signage. It doesn't really matter if these tasty small plates are tapas or if they're not. It only matters if they're tasty. They are.

The "world famous" spinach salad (pictured) already has been written and talked about, partly because they push it so hard at Nittaya's and partly because it's delicious. Individual spinach leaves are fried tempura-style until crispy and piled on a plate with what is basically a larb salad, ground chicken, veggies and cashews in a spicy lime dressing. Stack some of this tangy goodness on these crazy, crunchy greens and you've got yourself a signature dish. But the truth is, of the many dishes I've sampled at Nittaya's, this is one of the least inspiring. And it's really good.

Nittaya's lettuce wraps are the best version I've tasted, and curry puffs are another great appetizer, a flavorful explosion wrapped inside a delicate pastry. While you're eating fried green things, try the panko-breaded avocado. The two other salad options I've enjoyed both blow the fun spinach dish away: beef flank steak salad, which also incorporates that spicy lime dressing over seared beef and fresh garden veggies, and the must-have ginger chicken salad, tender meat, red onions, cilantro and peanuts absolutely drenched in ginger. It's a mouth shocker, and very addictive.

Next time I dine here, I need to get at the entrees section. The wonderful curries and rice dishes have prevented me from sampling these main plates. (I did enjoy a simple plate of grilled chicken thighs with a sweet chili sauce, and some decent spicy catfish.) The green curry, full of basil, was impressive, until we got to the red stuff, spicy and coconut creamy. The pineapple fried rice here is served in a half-pineapple, only adding to the sweetness. It's great, but I also like the spicy basil and green curry fried rice, the latter of which is stacked with Chinese broccoli, onions and egg and takes on a new texture thanks to the coconut in the curry.

Nittaya's is a small place, and it will need to grow. A chef who is doing these things is cooking for herself, to have fun, and to building something. The neighborhood will appreciate that, and they will keep coming back. Different is good, and we could use some more of that around here.

the red rock resort belongs to me.

Food is important to most everyone, but we all create our own connections to the experience of eating. Few of the most memorable meals of my life have been break-the-bank, once-in-a-lifetime gourmet adventures. Those are usually enjoyable. But the combination of the right environment, the right food and the right company makes for a powerful memory, and in my experience it’s been near impossible to engineer such a situation.

But I’ve done it, at least once. It was a Friday night in December. After a day of drinking and grazing on snacks at home, it was time for a late supper at T-bones Chophouse, a swanky if unfortunately named steakhouse at the Red Rock Resort. We began at the bar, slurping martinis and chewing on pretzel bread as friends began to arrive. I ordered dinner: the signature chopped salad, a shrimp cocktail, a petite filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes. More friends arrived, and we slid from the shiny bar top to a group of high tables in the restaurant’s lounge area, setting up between the long double-sided bar and tall glass doors that lead to a beautiful patio overlooking the resort’s pool.

More arrived, soon we were all drunk, and our group had officially taken over T-bones. This was a gathering of our closest people, siblings, friends from out of town, friends stretching beyond a decade. It was the night before we got married. Drinks were flowing freely and there was an easy happiness floating around, and I seemed to be the only one eating. Somehow that made everything taste better. I took down the chopped salad after my almost-wife munched a couple bites before deciding to focus on liquid nourishment. The shrimp cocktail was quite fine and delivered in a block of oddly shaped ice; my brother examined it after stealing a shrimp and ended up breaking the thing. I continued to share, forking a tender bite of beef into the mouth of almost-wife’s best friend from back home in Colorado. She requested another, this time with a little more of the peppery red wine reduction sauce. I was happy to help. I was happy to be surrounded by my favorite people in one of my favorite places, and enjoy a simple, classic steakhouse meal. That doesn’t mean this restaurant is average, and definitely not mediocre. T-bones is one of the better steak joints in Vegas, which may be hard to believe considering there are so many, and so many expensive ones on the Strip. But know the food is almost always the same at these places, and a little extra luxury, creativity and convenience goes a long way. I’ve also had a terrific Scottish salmon at T-bones, and we returned for an anniversary dinner and feasted on a supreme foie gras appetizer, another steak with a gorgonzola crust, au gratin potatoes and some of the best short ribs I’ve ever had.

The Red Rock Resort is my favorite hotel-casino in Las Vegas, and I’m not alone on this one. A great steakhouse is just the beginning of a solid, occasionally spectacular restaurant lineup. The hotel rooms, casino design, bars, pools and lounge spaces are equal to or greater than what we see at the big properties on Las Vegas Boulevard, and the whole place has a casual, easy-access feel that creates exactly the kind of comfort I desire. It feels like it’s too nice, yet welcoming. When I check in at the Red Rock for a completely unnecessary fake vacation weekend, when I waddle into the fancy, central, rose-red Lucky Bar in tacky green-and-white swimming shorts and order a gin-and-soda, when I cap off the night before my wedding with a 3 a.m. stroll to the food court for a Fatburger with my almost-wife and two best friends from high school, I feel like I’m a bum who hit Megabucks. I feel like some bozo who lucked into some really sweet surroundings. And really, feeling like that is my objective. I don’t know if that’s the exact vibe the guys at Station Casinos were going for when they spent a billion dollars building this place, but that’s what they got. And I’m happy about it, and grateful.

Red Rock opened in the spring of 2006. It cost around $925 million. It resides in the heart of Summerlin, one of the country’s biggest master-planned communities and, up until this whole shitty economy stuff, the fastest growing suburban neighborhood anywhere. Red Rock marked Station Casinos’ next step up from the Green Valley Ranch Resort, another upscale neighborhood casino in another suburban community on the east side, in the city of Henderson. GVR opened with much excitement at the end of 2001, considered as the evolution of the neighborhood or off-Strip casino. (George Maloof’s Palms, famous for attracting celebrities, also opened that year and also was considered part of this new wave of hip joints beyond our most famous street.) Before the Green Valley resort, Station Casinos had upgraded and expanded its brand with the Texas Station (1995 in North Las Vegas), Sunset Station (1997 in Henderson) and Santa Fe Station (acquired in 2000 in northwest Vegas), all shiny, fancy casino-hotels with family-friendly amenities such as bowling lanes, food courts and movie theaters. These places became one-stop entertainment destinations for the thousands of families who had flooded the valley since the mid-1980s, places where the younger set could have fun while the adults would gamble. Their huge success built Station into a dynasty, a gaming company that would spar with and eventually overtake the other locals, Boyd and Coast, and join the conversation with the heavy hitters on the Strip. And when things were going great, brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, leaders of the Station family, decided to do something kinda crazy and build a new flagship, something that would rival those big dogs, only it would be way out west, in the shadows of the brilliant Red Rock Canyon. It would have a much more modern design, with rich colors borrowed from those vaulted desert mountains, chandeliers with millions of crystals, miles of onyx lining the walls, gold-leafed ceilings, and a shitload of other fancy stuff. It would have a giant casino with plenty of machines and tables, a massive sportsbook, and an intimidatingly cool high limit room. It would have awesome accommodations, unique penthouse suites, convention spaces, swimming pools, nightclubs, a movie theater and the nicest bowling lanes in Vegas. It would be the kind of place the Fertittas themselves would hang at, and so it was.

I’d like to write there will never be another place like the Red Rock Resort, that because of the recession that will forever change the way Las Vegas works, no one will ever spend many millions of dollars to build a supercasino in our neighborhoods. But it has happened. The $600 million Aliante Station opened in 2008 in an even more distant community, and at the southernmost tip of town, the billion-dollar M Resort came to life in 2009. In my world, those places don’t matter, because the Red Rock is mine. I grew up on the west side of the valley, I ran around the suburbs of Summerlin, and when I made my post-college return to Vegas in 1999, my ‘hood was still without a truly great place to play tourist, eat, drink and party. There were casinos: the Suncoast, and what is now the JW Marriott resort, living uneasily next to each other just off Summerlin Parkway. Both are an ill fit, a little low-rent. Then Red Rock came along and blew everything else away.

When the Station guys started thinking this over, design came first and food came second, and that’s right on the money. All those little (expensive) touches add up to create that too-nice vibe, and the details are everywhere. These are nicest movie theaters around. This is the nicest spa. These are the nicest bathrooms. This is the nicest hotel lobby around, especially because they don’t build hotel lobbies like this anymore, with grand circling staircases and a 30-foot-tall crystal chandelier hanging above the tiny lobby bar.

I’ve seen every type of hotel room and suite in the building, and I’m perfectly fine with the standard. It’s pretty badass: 42-inch plasma, Bose soundsystem with iPod dock, 15-inch LCD screens in the bathroom, one of the greatest beds of all time, and of course, robes and slippers. The colors are chocolate with some greens, oranges and reds, and your view is either the breathtaking canyon or the distant, shimmering Strip. But the suites get ridiculous, easily setting a new standard away from that Strip. Take a step up and you’ve got a couple 65-inch plasmas, big party-ready bars, private bedrooms, marble bathrooms with huge soaking tubs, all spread over about 2,500 square feet. If you manage to score one of the seven penthouse suites, you are a special person. Private elevator. The black, brown and blue one is called the One 80, because the view affords both the canyon and the Strip. The TV is only 103 inches. The sofa rotates. The green one is called the Canyon. It’s a bit smaller at 4,000 square feet. It has a private massage room. The white one has a pool table and two bedrooms, one of which has its own balcony and jacuzzi. The red one is Cherry, and it has survived the vomiting heathens of Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, season one. The shower is in the middle of the master bedroom, which seems about right. The TVs are not that big, but there is a 20-foot projection screen. The purple one is Lucky. There are more. Why are they here? So the Station guys can throw awesome parties up on the top floor? Unnecessary awesomeness is how you set new standards in Vegas. The centerpiece of it all is the “backyard” area. There is a large round swimming pool with a playful fountain in the middle, several smaller, rectangular pools branching away and a large shaded bar with blackjack tables and sexy cocktail servers. How can I describe a day at the Red Rock pool? It’s like you went to one of the hip hotels on the Strip and they didn’t let any assholes in. Even though marketing has tried to make money and douche it up out here, things have stayed relatively peaceful. Evidence: the Cherry nightclub closed down to make way for the more easygoing cabana club. Good move.

Food may have been ranked second in the grand scheme of things, but Red Rock’s restaurant offerings are definitely first among neighborhood casinos. Besides the exemplary T-bones, you have other standards that are quite serviceable (the Grand Cafe coffee shop, Cabo Mexican restaurant, Terra Rossa Italian restaurant, LBS burger joint, Yard House beer and food depot, and the Feast buffet), you have a miniaturized version of one of Vegas’ best deli-style restaurants right next to the sportsbook (the Bagel Cafe), and you have quite possibly the best casino food court of all time. Here’s the lineup: Fatburger, one of the best hamburger chains of all time; Capriotti’s, Vegas’ favorite sandwich shop gone global; the respectable fish tacos of Rubio’s; and then, you can’t win them all, so Villa Pizza, Panda Express, Ben & Jerry’s, Tropical Smoothie and Starbucks. Very formidable, all next door to the movies, bowling and bingo.

The best restaurant here is Hachi, billed as modern Japanese. It is criminally under looked in the local dining scene, reliably pitch-perfect and therefore more than deserving of my constant affectionate raves. The chef, who was recruited from New York specifically to open an off-Strip pan-Asian concept in Vegas (this is something that has never happened before) is Linda Rodriguez, a very nice lady from the Philippines who just happens to be the first woman to train under Nobu Matsuhisa. She has cooked in Brooklyn, Mexico City, London and Louisiana, and we are lucky to have her, and her partner/husband, Martin Swift. Their restaurant is edgy and awesome. Its main dining room is walled by a Murakami eyeball piece opposite a wispy, peaceful image of cherry blossom trees, and it feels good to eat sushi here. But the menu boasts so much more. Most people know Hachi for its LSD roll, with spicy shrimp and crab, tempura flakes and avocado, or its incredible 38 for Under $8 menu, which offers great small plates like veggie fried rice, spicy kabocha coconut soup, barbecued ribs and kushiyaki meat skewers for low prices. I love the four varieties in the sashimi sampler, especially the fluke tiradito, the perfect little square of braised short ribs on top of roasted apple puree, the kobe beef potstickers, the light, sweet crab salad with cilantro vinaigrette, and the tempura’d pumpkin. Everything is good here, creative, refreshing and delicious.

Hachi is my favorite place to eat at Red Rock, and my favorite place to drink is … still up for grabs. It might be that quiet, throwback lobby bar. Just upstairs, the amber Onyx Bar is a nice little nook, too. It’s exactly the kind of casino bar that is lacking in the other spots in our neighborhood, a comfortable place to sit and pay a few dollars too many for a good stiff drink while trying to talk your way into something you probably shouldn’t do. Maybe the best spot is back at T-bones, out on that nifty patio, sitting on a big circular couch swigging Hendricks muddled with cucumber and lime and making fun of the Summerlin cougars and their shiny-shirted husbands/male mistresses. It’s very nice out here, when things cool down at night and they’ve closed the pool for the day, and you could drink a little too much and start thinking about how nice it’d be to have a room tonight. It’s happened. When I visit the Red Rock now, and do stuff like this, I start thinking about living here. Permanent room service in my Presidential Suite … yeah, I don’t need the penthouse, I’ll stick to the one with his-and-hers bathrooms and just a 42-inch plasma behind the bar. That’s where I’ll have my final nightcap each evening, after my penultimate whisky in the lobby. Bagel Cafe for breakfast, then I’ll hit the pool. On a Tuesday. Fantasies are fun, but the reality is: this joint is 6 miles from my house, it’s one of the biggest and beautifullest resorts in Vegas, and it’s far more accessible than anything on the Strip. These are the reasons why it’s mine.

vegas gets mobile tasty.

Fueled by Twitter and persistent word-of-mouth, the gourmet food truck trend has officially arrived in Las Vegas. "Local" cuisine is but one of a million ways Vegas is under the influence of Southern California, and at least two of the street food carts/vehicles I'm about to shout out are directly inspired by the famed Kogi BBQ Korean taco trucks of Los Angeles. Nothing wrong with that.

But this ain't L.A. Even though we've got plenty of transplants in Vegas -- people from every major city and every point in between, really -- there aren't as many hipster foodies dwelling in the desert. This group is growing, no doubt, but Vegas gets knocked for lacking culture and the same criticism can be levied here. It's the only explanation for the notorious dominance of chain restaurants like Olive Garden and P.F. Chang's in the daily newspaper's annual Best of Las Vegas reader poll. So ... can the concept of gourmet roach coach succeed in Las Vegas? Is the populous willing to endure blistering heat, stand outside and munch on mini-burgers and Asian tacos? Does the city have enough ambitious innovators to build an exciting, all-access street food tribe? So far, it's looking good.

It starts with Slidin' Thru (pictured), the slider-slinging crew on patrol all over the valley in a truck emblazoned with colorful illustrations. Its young creator, Ric, blasts out the day's location online, sweats through lunch and dinnertime shifts in the cramped, oven-like environs with a couple of dedicated cooks at his command, and gives plenty of "window love" to his faithful following, which seems to be growing exponentially by the week. They love the attitude, they love the novelty of hunting down the slider truck, and they really love the great grub. Freshly formed Angus beef burgers come in a variety of flavors, like barbecue with crispy onions, bacon, sweet sauce and caramelized jalapeno, or Greek-style with feta cheese, ripe tomato and cucumber dressing. Specials include pulled pork mini-sandwiches or baby French dips, and the sweet potato fries are sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. It's simple, good food, sharply conceptualized, and if this food truck thing does take off in Vegas, you gotta hail Ric as the godfather of it all.

Burger truck number two is called Fukuburger. The offerings here are full-sized and somewhat Japanese, perhaps because its creators, Colin and Rob, were servers at the most money-makingest Pan-Asian restaurant in the country. These guys may also be bringing that edgy, after-hours vibe from Tao, since they seem to be targeting the late-night crowds and recently set up camp in their big red truck near the Hard Rock Hotel when the Sunday Rehab pool party let out. The burgers are marinated in mirin, sake and yuzu for a unique beefy taste. Toppings can be pickled ginger and daikon, fried eggs, crispy onions, bacon or wasabi mayo.

On the cool and sweet side, Philly's Famous Italian Ice is run by an incredibly friendly couple named Jim and Tanya, and they serve some pretty great treats out of a truck or a cart at various events and gatherings. They've been around a bit longer than these new guys, a couple of years now, but they're moving around more and capitalizing on the splendor of social media. Light, refreshing Italian ice (I like banana, sour apple and pineapple a lot) is not a tough sell in Vegas, as it hits the spot in a way the old ice cream truck never could.

There are more trucks and carts serving up street food (and stuff you don't usually get on the street). There are quite a few burgeoning taco carts sprinkled about. A few hours ago I ate some delicious Korean tacos, flour tortillas stuffed with marinated, grilled pork, kimchi, a crispy and sour Asian slaw and a handful of cilantro, from a six-week old trailer posted up at Lee's Liquor on Lake Mead Boulevard near Buffalo Drive. It's called HanShikTaco, and it's a one-man show. His name is Ron and he's too busy making tacos right now, but soon he'll have a website up and I wouldn't be surprised if there are several red taco trailers all over the place in a matter of months. It's good stuff, and it's really too cheap to be this good, and that's kind of the thing with street food. It's too good to be true. It's 110 degrees out there right now, but I think I can take it for a couple more tacos.

raku at last.

Aburiya Raku is one of the most talked about restaurants in Las Vegas. It has been hailed by critics, chefs and food and bev pros, and the common diner alike and may be considered the best restaurant in Chinatown. What is most fascinating to me about Raku, which was opened quietly in 2008 by chef Mitsuo Endo, is how it has managed to develop such a powerful following in spite of its location and the type of restaurant it is.

By location, I'm not merely referencing the fact that Raku is small and stashed in the back of a tiny, quiet strip mall on Spring Mountain Road. I'm talking about its location in Las Vegas, a young city without a huge population of foodies craving exotic cuisine. Raku is an izakaya, a Japanese pub and snack bar, and there are few of these establishments in Vegas. That's a generic description for the type of restaurant Raku is. The experience at Raku is compellingly different from anything else you'll find in Vegas, completely at odds with what most local diners (and probably tourists, too) understand as Japanese cuisine. That is why the buzz surrounding the place is interesting to me; I imagine many people -- including the drunken out-of-towners who sat near us on our recent first visit to Raku -- who have read or heard about the restaurant show up with excitement, expecting some sort of easy-access Asian tapas bar, and are perplexed by what they find. After my first meal at Raku, I am perplexed. Unless you are experienced with this type of food, it is a challenging restaurant.

Many bloggers and writers have offered their take on exactly how to dine at Raku, since the normal menu has about 75 different items. Most are small portions of intricately prepared, affordably priced food. There are daily specials exhibited on a chalkboard your server brings to your table. Since I'm still a Raku rookie, I am unable to offer such advice, but we did try quite a few different dishes. The restaurant's homemade tofu is a treasure. The simple, cold version has a creamy, almost cheese-like texture, delicous with soy, bonito flakes and Raku's green tea salt. Even better is the fried version, with a slightly crispy outside in a small bowl of amazing dashi with a bit of salmon roe on top. This was my favorite dish.

In in effort to fully Raku myself and get outside the comfort zone, I sampled the poached egg with roe and sea urchin (pictured), one of several dishes on the menu that fit that "challenging" label. The slimy texture of these collected components is not for everyone, and the egg was so soft that I'm not sure if it added or subtracted from the dish. The explosive flavors of urchin and roe were nicely complemented by tiny mushrooms and okra. Very interesting, to say the least. A simple dish of green tea soba noodles also was augmented by this soft egg and roe combo.

The name of the restaurant reflects its specialty of charcoal grilling, and we tried quite a few different skewers of meat and vegetables imparted with a very deep smokiness. Bacon and smoke always go together well and you can order just about anything wrapped in bacon; sweet cherry tomatoes and asparagus were delicious. Great grilled meats we sampled included duck with balsamic soy sauce, American Kobe beef filet with wasabi and skirt steak with garlic, and salmon.

The setting is intimate, the menu is puzzling, the service is polite and the food is --like it or not -- otherworldly. After getting past an intial shock to the system, I am looking forward to tasting the oden hot pot (which you can construct using various ingredients such as fish cake, boiled egg, seaweed and fried bean curd), a mini foi gras bowl, and some of those chalkboard specials.

INTERVIEW: Jet Tila

Jet Tila is was executive chef at Encore's Wazuzu.

How did you become part of the Wynn-Encore stable of restaurants? Were you recruited, or how did it happen?
Jet Tila: I think it was 2007 and I was just doing my thing in L.A., teaching, moonlighting at different restaurants there, and I was doing a lot of consulting in those days. I got a cold call from Elizabeth Blau, and she was telling me I was on their radar. They wanted to do Pan-Asian at Encore. It was such a cold call that I really thought someone was messing with me. But I played it cool, I was going along with it. I wrote a menu concept and sent my resume and they called back and said, "Let's do a tasting." So now I know this is for real, so let's do it. The whole time I knew in my bones they were not going to hire me. I don't have the normal pedigree. I didn't spend 20 years at any restaurant. I've had a varied career so far: I was at the L.A. Times, I've been in management, I was at Bon Appetit. I've really kinda tailored my career to have fun and do these different things. I'm not a restaurant dog. So we did the tasting. It was like nine courses in 45 minutes, and everybody was there. I came in for two days with one day for prep, and I cooked my ass off. I was working out of Richard Chen's kitchen at Wing Lei and he was just an amazing resource and inspiration. So they told me to stay a little longer and I thought this might be for real. And I flew back to L.A. with a contract in hand. In my opinion, I think coming into it, I was not necessarily what they were looking for. It was more a matter of just leaving it all here. This was my one shot, and I wasn't really nervous because I didn't think they would hire me. I was able to just relax and cook.


Before that, what was your previous Vegas experience like?
It was from being a child and coming here with my family. I was one of the arcade kids who would get dropped off while the parents go to the casino. My dad was a big player in the '80s. Later on, like everyone else, I came out a couple times a year to party my ass off. As far as restaurants go, like most people, I think you see a lot of big names but never really felt like it was the exact same experience you'd get from those names in other cities, like in New York. Very few people really cook their asses off all the time, and now I understand more why. The numbers here are just crushing. Sometimes you have to tailor your approach in fine dining, and this is one of those places. You can be working in a great Michelin restaurant doing 80 a night, and then here you're doing 200 to 300. It's crazy. And you don't really understand it, the different approach, until you see it.


Traditionally, Asian restaurants on the Strip have been Chinese or sushi, and then more recently we've seen this all-encompassing Pan-Asian label a lot. With that in mind, how did you develop the menu and concept for Wazuzu?
I cook like what I lived in L.A. I'm a Chinese kid by blood, growing up in Thai restaurants, and I'm a total blend of the San Gabriel valley where I was born. There you've got Chinatown in the west, Thai-town, where I really grew up, and Little Tokyo. All of them are inspirations and part of my life experience. My angle on Pan-Asian is a little different. I've got these three cores that I'm super comfortable doing, and that has translated into some dishes you're not going to see anywhere on the Strip. Where are you going to see Nasi Goreng (a Malaysian fried rice dish) on the Strip? At the end of the day, I feel like I know Asian people and they want it hot and dirty, and they want it authentic and clean. This is not the place for fusion. I think that approach is dead or dying.


You've blogged about restaurant critics and would-be critics, and one of the reactions to Wazuzu and other ethnic restaurants on the Strip is that there is a certain amount of watering down that has to be done to the cuisine in order to appeal to the masses. Yet you seem like a purist. Do you feel like you have to compromise your cooking?
I think my heart is pure. But you really have to respect guys like Mr. Wynn who are going to give a kid a few million dollars to play with in terms of restaurants. It's a bigger problem I have with reviewers sometimes. At the end of the day, our bosses know their market. If I cook the first menu I wrote for this restaurant, 40 percent of the dishes are going to get returned. It's a little too foreign, a little too weird. I think I'm one of the few white coats who has seen it from both sides, and I sympathize with both sides of this ballgame. Chefs need to understand that writers need something to write about. Writers need to understand it's not easy to build a restaurant. We spend all that money, and we have to recoup that. Now, we see it's coming to a point in time where we, the chefs and restaurants, have a voice, and that's on the internet. Back in the day, critics would throw something out there, and the restaurants would never have the chance to respond.  But going back to the food, I think I'm as authentic as I can be for my property. I'm definitely somebody who fights for my food. There is integrity in my food, and if you're an honest and traveled diner, you can pick apart my menu and say, "I get it." If you're just going to do a snapshot review, you can pick apart anybody. And as far as working with managers, there's always this line where you're going to push and pull with each other. They're giving me a voice so even when they reign me in, I can understand why. I wanted to do stuff like little suckling pigs here. Everyone raves about Momofuku, and I naively wanted to create something like that. But that doesn't work here. That can't work when you have more of a captive audience instead of regulars. 

You still write, you blog, you pop up in a lot of articles and at events, and you have become pretty active in the restaurant community in Las Vegas in a short time. How important is that to developing your restaurant and your brand?
There is some calculation there. I feel like anyone who is good at what they do understands that it's important in this day and age to embrace technology and good marketing and public relations. It is genuine, for me, but I'm not going to lie and say I'm cool like that. I'll take advantage of any outlet possible to get my food out there, but I'm not going to be a jerk about it. I want to know who's who in my community and I try to stay plugged in to what's going on.


You've written a little about local places you like. Do you get to eat out a lot? And what are your Vegas favorites so far?
I'm like you. Most writers are genuine adventurers. Unfortunately I live in the culinary wasteland of Las Vegas known as Henderson. I mean, I love it where I live, but outside of Grimaldi's, Settebello and a few others, there's not a lot. Chinatown is amazing. In some ways it's bigger than the area I grew up in. It's vast, and it's going to take a long time to really get through it. My short list is Krung Thai, Raku is another one, KJ Kitchen for Cantonese, HK Harbor is another one. For Indian, I do Origin India. The naan bread there is some of the best I've had. It's always such a personal thing, what's good or bad. Pho So 1 is dope. I really don't get to eat on the Strip so much. Like so many in the corporate chef world, I'm taking a cut and eating on the Strip is so expensive. So that's my short list for now.

archi's thai.

"Here's the thing you need to know about Thai food in Las Vegas: Even at its most middling, it beats the hell out of most of the junk they're serving up on Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue. Archi’s isn't the best Thai joint in town, but it's one of the most pleasant."

This is from the New York Post last week. Not that we need out-of-towners to tell us there is terrific Thai food in Vegas, but at the very least, this is proof that our city's reputation for southeast Asian fare has grown beyond our physical borders. And I agree that Archi's isn't the best Thai joint in town, but it might be top five, so far.

I write "so far" because I eat a lot of Thai food, but not necessarily because I want to. I love it, but not more than I enjoy Vietnamese food or a great deli or a perfect slice of pizza. It's wifey. It is difficult to be an ever-wandering, culinarily curious restaurant writer when your first pick of dining companions only ever wants to get Thai food. Though it is delicious, we eat at our neighborhood joint twice as much as we go anywhere else. This woman actually came home one day and complained to me, like it was my fault, that her co-worker had tasted the goods at Aria's Lemongrass (the first Thai restaurant on the Strip) before she did. So yeah, it's something of an obsession.

That same co-worker helped wifey discover Archi's, a casual restaurant with three locations in Las Vegas. Other local eateries specializing in this cuisine often have extensive menus with a lot of Chinese dishes leaking in, but Archi's is a bit more authentic, sticking to its own style and flavors. My first go-round included Tom Kha soup with a refreshing lime flavor balancing the smoothness of coconut milk, a mild but tasty yellow curry with potatoes, onions and carrots, and the big winner: a forehead-sweat inducing Pad Kapow, spicy basil ground chicken with zucchini, bell peppers, garlic and chili. I actually ate most of it, even though wifey placed the order. That should teach her.

pho little saigon.

Is all pho the same? Restaurants that specialize in the traditional beef broth noodle soup are most common when it comes to Vietnamese cuisine in Las Vegas. There's even a pho joint on the Strip, in the Treasure Island hotel casino, and that's not a bad thing.

The dish may be similar from one restaurant to the next, but there are many differences, big and small, that set each eatery apart. Pho Little Saigon, for example, is a relatively large, family-friendly spot on the corner of Spring Mountain Road and Valley View Boulevard. Long, numbered tables line the dining room, lending an authentic feel. This is not unusual decor for a pho spot, but the size of the place and speedy service offer a little more comfort than many of the smaller mom-and-pops that serve similar cuisine.

The satisfying soup itself is just fine, the broth soothing with a clean taste if not overwhelmingly rich or salty. There are plenty of extra ingredients to choose from to customize your pho, chili sauce or fresh basil, bean sprouts or sriracha, along with your choice of meats. The beef served at Pho Little Saigon appears to be of a higher quality than we've experienced elsewhere, but overall, the pho is not as flavorful as it could be. That's just fine, because there are plenty of other tasty items on the menu. Sure, they'll serve up fresh rice-paper wrapped spring rolls, but the crispy Cha Gio, densely packed ground pork with shrimp and carrot, are even better. Unfortunately the kitchen was out of the Vietnamese pancake Banh Xeo on our recent visit. Pho is far from the only soup option available; you can sample porridge of beef, shrimp, fish, chicken, pork blood or pork innards. Rice plates and noodle bowls round out the menu, and some of the specialty dishes strike some Chinese notes. There's marinated beef with lemon grass grilled tableside, fried rice noodles with meat, seafood or vegetables, and finally, the titanic Seven Courses of Beef. At $24.99, it's hard to avoid. You'll get Goi Bo, or beef salad, beef in sour sauce, beef wrapped in Hawaiian lot leaf, grilled beef sausage, that grilled lemon grass stuff (Bo Nuong Xa), steamed beef and beef porridge. That's a lot of cow.

Of course, we were stuffed after the delicious Cha Gio and about a third of a huge bowl of pho. You have to be serious to try that magnificent seven.

killin' some korean barbecue at tofu hut.

Tofu Hut probably is named so because the house specialty is a soft bean curd soup. The restaurant also touts its traditional bosam, boiled pork and duck eaten with steamed cabbage, onions and pickled beets. But we hit the hut for lunch with a certain something else in mind: Korean barbecue.

One of my partners in Chinatown exploration, Chi, recommended Tofu Hut and was happy to lead me through the all-you-can-eat, grill-at-your-table barbecue menu. He also proved particularly adept at relieving our busy (and kinda slow) server at moving the meats around the hot grill in the middle of our modest table, using tongs ninja style and shears to clip our food into smaller bite-sized pieces before tossing them onto our tiny plates. Chi had first experienced Tofu Hut on a visit to a different, nearby Korean barbecue joint that was closing and couldn't accommodate his crew's late-night urge. A Korean friend suggested Tofu Hut instead, especially since the all-you-can-eat prices are more affordable here (It's about 18 bucks during the day and 15 after hours).

We attacked, ordering everything that looked interesting: the marinated sirloin known as bulgogi, thinly sliced beef tongue and beef brisket, pork belly marinated in chili paste, sugar, garlic, soy and sesame, and some squid to top it off. Everything cooked up quickly. The squid and brisket needed some additional seasoning and the salt-and-pepper sesame dressing served on the side worked well. The bulgogi was so flavorful and tender that we ordered a second plate, and the tongue was almost as delicious. But as always, it's hard to top pork belly, especially crispy-grilled, spicy pork belly.

All this meat was accompanied by small dishes of kimchi and seaweed, cold noodle salads, peppery potato-veggie pancakes, sweet fish cakes, and a salad of greens with a light peanut and sesame oil dressing. All these side dishes are all-you-can-eat as well, and the salad was particularly fresh and tasty and a perfect complement to all the grilled protein. Planted in a small group of auto repair shops on Spring Mountain Road near Valley View Boulevard (on the other side of the street from Chinatown Plaza), Tofu Hut doesn't look like much from the outside. The dining room is pretty humble, too. But the barbecue was delicious and there was plenty of it. Like so many mid-day meals of the past, this feast made me wonder why anyone would go anywhere other than Chinatown for lunch.

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.

indian curry bowl.

Please, please let things pick up just a bit. The Centennial Gateway retail center at the corner of West Ann Road and U.S. Highway 95 must thrive, because this tiny, delicious restaurant in the middle of a lonely parking lot cannot be allowed to close up shop. Indian Curry Bowl must live!

A big 24-Hour Fitness just opened here, but a Sportsman's Warehouse just closed. There is a Cafe Rio Mexican fast-food spot and a tanning salon, and a Fresh & Easy waiting to open. But everything else is empty in this center, save for the ICB. It's maybe a few weeks old and we've already been twice, and the food keeps getting better. Lamb samosas are my new favorite snack. Curries are complex and delicious, made mild but spiced up at your request. Chicken tikka and lamb vindaloo with potatoes are great, but the favorite dish so far is paneer masala tikka, grilled paneer cheese in a slow-simmered sauce of onion, garlic, ginger, and too many other spices to bother yourself with. Just good. And with freshly made naan bread, especially the potato-filled aloo kulcha, you will be too stuffed to believe this is one of the most healthy meals around. If we have to, we are willing to keep this place in business until the recession relents. Whatever it takes.

Other delicious things consumed yesterday:
Albondigas soup from Frank & Fina's Cocina.
Lime pie from Cafe Deia.
Chili and cheese fondue covered potato chips ("Potato Twister") at LBS in Red Rock.
Cucumber gimlet with Hendricks gin at T-Bones bar in Red Rock.

the gold coast is good.

The Gold Coast opened at the end of 1986, less than a year before I arrived in Vegas. I doubt I'm alone in being surprised at that date; I'm sure lots of people thought it has been around a lot longer than that. This is because it is so consistently popular among locals. The Gold Coast really is the epitome of the locals' casino, the standard long before Station Casinos blew the whole thing up with super swanky suburban joints. I don't remember a whole lot about life as a sixth-grader, but I do recall going to the Gold Coast buffet with my family (My father had rather odd tastes when it came to choosing which buffet or coffee shop was worth regular visitation. He was a fan of places like this, the Village Pub in Desert Shores, the Sunshine Cafe on Vegas and Decatur, and the Rio coffee shop. Why? No one knows.) and occasionally bowling here as well.

It's very different now. The buffet isn't in the same place in the casino. But the casino looks exactly the same as it did through my 11-year-old eyes. In fact, the Gold Coast is keeping it real on a level you're not going to see very much anymore in Vegas. It's old school in here, right down to a spacious, red-and-gold, boothed-out casino lounge with drink specials, free bands and karaoke on Mondays. Check out the leather chairs in the casino bar between Ping Pang Pong and the Cortez Room. It feels like you're having a drink in Casino, waiting for Joe Pesci to come through and slap somebody.

Nostalgia is not the only reason to visit. I came to grab a quick lunch of sweet and sour braised shrimp, glistening and delicious fried rice and above average egg flower soup at Noodle Exchange, which, like the dim sum haven Ping Pang Pong a few steps away, is owned and operated by Kevin Wu, who knows what he is doing. (He also does Noodle Asia, at the Venetian, in case you are wondering.) These two restaurants are always full of local diners, mostly Asian, and serve food much better than you would suspect.

If you're new, you might not remember, but the Gaughan family used to run Coast Casinos, before Boyd Gaming came in and basically fucked them all up. For some reason, and I'm guessing it's Gaughan-related, there was always good Chinese food to be had at Coast properties. (Of course, Chinatown is very close to the Gold Coast, but these two restaurants give the neighbors a run for their money.) If there wasn't an Asian restaurant on property, you could go to the coffee shop and they'd have a full-on Chinese menu. The cafe here at Gold Coast was a great example. But now they've gone the corporate route with a TGI Friday's, which took over that space. The classic steakhouse, the Cortez Room, also is in a new location, where the Arriva Italian restaurant used to be (over by that cool bar).

What I'm saying is, I'm going to eat great Chinese food and drink cheap beer or whiskey at this old-school bar, and I'm going to like it. And if I can't make it out of the building, at least the rooms are super cheap.

hachi.

If I was creating the website for the Japanese restaurant Hachi at Red Rock Resort, I would call it ilovehachi.com too, because I love it. And this is after one meal. Love.

I had heard the cuisine of chef Linda Rodriguez was outstanding from several sources, but I was skeptical as I entered the fancy, modern dining room. After all, this is a non-steakhouse in a Station Casino, a setting typically reserved for mediocrity. Still, I have been excited to try it here, especially after we took over the Red Rock for a weekend in December but were unable to pry ourselves away from Cabo Mexican restaurant, T-Bones Steakhouse and the LBS burger joint.

And now I have a new favorite.

It looks and feels cool enough to be in any Strip hotel. I particularly like the warm, soothing colors and wall of Murakami eyeballs in the back of the dining room, which is much larger and comfortable than it appears from the casino entrance. But the setting means nothing compared to the food, which set a new standard for neighborhood dining with each arriving dish. I began with an unnecessary order of edamame and miso and followed it with a signature appetizer, crispy spicy shrimp, which sounds like something you could get anywhere. And you can. But here it actually succeeds in being super crispy, thanks to an invisible layer of tempura, and spicy enough. And there's plenty of shrimp in this $15 dish. The spicy kabocha coconut soup, however, is not spicy, nor does it need to be. It's a perfectly smooth and balanced blend of coconut and the pumpkinish kabocha, punctuated by salty, toasted pumpkin seeds. Speaking of pumpkin, there was a piece of it in the vegetable tempura plate, along with asparagus, broccoli, avocado, zucchini and shiitake mushroom.

Wifey, being anti-fish, chose a special of medallions of beef, tender and largely portioned. I couldn't decide and I didn't want to get full on sushi rolls, so I split between two more small plates and couldn't have been more pleased. Braised short ribs with a roasted apple puree was everything you expect short ribs to be, so soft that the breeze from floating a fork over the top collapsed the dense square of meat into shredded deliciousness. And most impressive of all was the sashimi sampler, four types of fish, each of them reminding me what this is supposed to be about: paper-thin shards of fluke laced with yuzu and topped with a single cilantro leaf and a dot of the most intense sriracha ever; Barely seared salmon belly; yellowtail with jalapeno in chili ponzu; tuna in a warm bacon vinaigrette with actual bacon and onions floating about. Sublime is the word that comes to mind. And we closed it all out with crispy, chewy, green tea and chocolate beignets with a caramel sauce that tasted of strawberries. Wifey: "It tastes like what's left over in your dish after eating a banana split."

Now that I've discovered Hachi, I may help keep Station Casinos from declaring bankruptcy. Only thing is, the food here is a fraction of the cost of the big boys on the Strip. And so far, it's better.

INTERVIEW: Linda Rodriguez

Linda Rodriguez is executive chef at Hachi, the modern Japanese restaurant at the Red Rock Resort.


When the Red Rock Resort opened in 2006, Hachi was not part of the restaurant lineup. It took a little while longer to finish the restaurant up. How did that work?
Linda Rodriguez: Actually it was about a year before everything was set up, just a year. It was still dirt and sand when Red Rock was opened They just couldn’t find a chef to create a restaurant in time. But for me it was a good deal that it wasn’t opened by somebody else, that it was fresh and built right in front of our eyes. It gave us time to really prepare for training and staffing and menu development.


And this was your first adventure to Vegas from New York?
Yes, I came from New York. I had been living there almost 20 years. I was born in the Philippines and both my mom and dad are from there. I came to the States when I was seven years old. We traveled around, stayed in California a little while, and then my dad was stationed in Japan for three years. Then we came back to Florida, and from there I sort of headed out and worked in a lot of restaurants, from there to Louisiana. I was in New Orleans a little while, and it was there I started cooking. My experience before then was waiting tables, bartending. Not until Louisiana, where I worked for a classical French restaurant in Baton Rouge, did I get in the kitchen. There was a lady chef there who kinda inspired me. We got really close, she let me in her kitchen, and I started training there. She really pushed me to go to school, to go to CIA in New York. So drove all the way from the South up to New York and went to school. On weekends I would go to New York City since it was just a couple hours train ride away, and I really tried to knock on doors of really nice restaurants in New York and try to work for free. I saw a lot of exposure doing that. After school I had to go back to the city. I thought, why not stay? It was so vibrant, the food capital, and I moved in with a friend in the city and eventually found my place. I worked in a few places. My first paying job was at River Cafe in Brooklyn, under the Brooklyn Bridge. And after a couple years I heard about this Japanese restaurant coming called Nobu. Nobody knew it at the time. But I was able to get my foot in the door and I got a job at Nobu. Ever since that, I've been doing Japanese, ever since. And that gave me the opportunity travel to Europe and open Nobu in London in the Metropolitan Hotel. It was an awesome experience, and that’s where I met my husband. After London, I came back to New York and thought I'd stay with Nobu, but I ended up getting hunted down for my first executive chef job at BondSt. I was there for nine years. I also had the opportunity to go to Mexico City for two years and open a restaurant from the owners of Bond St.


You really have been all over, and worked in some of the most intense restaurant cities in the world. Has that experience made it easy or difficult to develop your own style?
It has helped me to cultivate my style a lot. With my classical French training and experience at a classical school, with working in Baton Rouge with a really great lady chef, and with my Asian background -- she was French Vietnamese, also, so she was cooking classical French in the restaurant but at lunchtime cooking Vietnamese, Chinese, Cajun, Indian -- it has given me this great base. Everything else came with that. I was very fortunate to have someone that really took me under her wing. A lot of what I do comes from her.


So how did you end up in Vegas at the Red Rock?
I was in New York. I was getting calls from Vegas all the time, headhunters. Usually I'd hang up. But I drew interest in this one because it's not on the Strip. We were thinking of doing our own place in Brooklyn. But it was really expensive. So we thought, let’s talk to Station Casinos. We had no idea what Station was. We talked to them, and they agreed to fly us over to check on the property in Summerlin and see Vegas. Last time I was in Vegas I was really young, and it was just desert. I didn’t remember much of what it was. It has grown so much, and it's especially beautiful over here. And it sure beats New York weather. We saw the property and talked to all the people, checked everything out, did research, and decided to take a chance.


What made you want to stay away from the Strip?
I'm just so used to local clientele. I've never been to the Strip, not since I was little. In my mind it was just a place for tourists. I never really knew how big it was over here right now. But, you know ... I wouldn’t work in Disneyland. I didn’t want to be stuck working in that kind of vibe. Finding out Station Casinos was more local, that seemed more attractive. And we have a lot of regulars.


Did Station always want a Japanese restaurant?
It was always going to be Japanese. I told them they were crazy. They wouldn’t listen to me.


Have you tried lots of Japanese and sushi restaurants around town and in your neighborhood?
We've hit them all, just to see how far sushi has gotten in Vegas. The difference is the East Coast is more traditional, while the West Coast is more...


California?
Yeah. and that did change our thoughts about what kind of sushi we were going to do. For a while, we were still feeling it out, but I think finally we're feeling it right now. Traditional is boring. It has to be fun.


So now that you're settled, what are your impressions of the restaurant and food scene in Vegas?
It’s definitely here. Maybe it's five years behind, especially with sushi. It’s weird. I never thought seaweed salad would sell here but it's selling like hotcakes. I didn’t think people would appreciate the different colors and textures, or the different kinds of textures in fish. I really didn't know if they would order it or not. Things are bit more exotic on the fish side at hachi, but we're introducing it slowly. It's not bad. We're trying to educate without being too pushy. In New York, you can put cod sperm in a martini glass and people would order it just to try it out. Here, you have to be more careful, ease it in a little bit, introduce it. Give it a try. It can be frustrating sometimes but I don’t mind it, because in a way we're kind of lifting up the community a little bit.


Where do you like to eat when you get a chance to try something new?
We mostly eat at Chinatown. It's pretty good. Thank god they have a Chinatown here. We found a couple cook places recently that we like in the neighborhood. Nora’s is pretty good. We wanna go back again. Marche Bacchus also is okay. Little by little we are finding places. We’re just simple people, too. We like to go somewhere the food is cooked properly. It doesn’t have to be foo-foo. I think Summerlin is missing a great bistro place. Most of time we eat Asian, Malaysian food, Thai food. Authentic Asian things are here, and for Indian food you can find a couple places that are pretty good.


What do you think is most unique about the Hachi menu right now?
The small plates are working out pretty good. We know we have to bend a little bit with the economy, so we really worked those plates out, the cost and the presentation. It gives people more tastes. You can order vive or six different things instead of just appetizer and entree. We don’t get to go out too much but when we do, when I find a good place, I know I want to try everything. So that's why we're doing the 38 under 8 menu. And we didn’t want to call it tapas. It's just 38 under 8 right now.



Is working in a big, beautiful casino resort everything you thought it would be?
I really had no idea. I was so green. I've never worked in a corporate or casino environment in my life. And I've learned a lot along the way. It's tough to get a light bulb changed. It’s corporate. You can’t just fire people like you used to. "I got to talk to who?" But I've learned a lot about that stuff, how to manage in the corporate world. My husband says I'm good at it but I just try to treat everyone right, go through the process. If I had to do it again I would really pinpoint everything so it wouldn’t be difficult. But so far I enjoy it. I really do. When we took this opportunity in a casino, we thought a lot about taking a risk, or what happens if don’t like it. Really, we are so lucky here because of the economy. If we tried doing it on our own in Brooklyn or New York, we'd be going through hardships like a lot of people. The casino draws people in, and they definitely help with advertising and PR. We are very fortunate to be in a beautiful casino like Red Rock.