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.

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.