Restaurant Reviews

Thursday’s lunch was at another Colicchio restaurant, although one a tidge less fancy than Craftsteak earlier in the week.  After a much longer walk than anticipated, since distances are deceiving on The Strip, we had a lovely lunch at ‘wichcraft – Colicchio’s sandwich joint.

The restaurant is a typical fast food type of place.  You grab your drink, go to the counter and order your food, get a pager, and grab a seat.  I was thrilled that they had cane sugar soda, that in and of itself would take me back to ‘wichcraft again.  

Lance ordered a panini with chicken breast, roasted red pepper, mozzarella and pesto on country bread.  It was delicious and melty, Lance loved it.

I ordered the BLT which was bacon, Boston lettuce, tomatoes and mayo on country bread.  I hoped it would be the best BLT I’d ever had and, while it might not have been, it was pretty close!

The menu has a lot of great options and it was very difficult to pick just one.  This is another place I would revisit given the chance for a light and low-key lunch.

Total price: less than $30

‘wichcraft
MGM Grand
3799 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV

On Wednesday, we wandered over to the Mesa Grill for lunch.  Mesa Grill is one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants and I usually find his food to look very appetizing.  We opted to go there for lunch because none of the dinner items were that amazing sounding that it seemed worthy of dinner.  

I know there is a lot of controversy around Bobby Flay; many people think he’s a bit of a jerk due to his Food TV shows.  I used to feel the same way about him until Throwdown with Bobby Flay started.  My opinion of him did a complete 180 after watching him interact with his sous chefs and watching him through many food battles.  When he wins, he is kind and gracious to his opponent.  When he loses, he’s equally gracious and a good sport about things.  

The Mesa Grill site shows the restaurant fairly well.  The kitchen is open with a huge exhaust system over the grilling area.  

We started our meal with a basket of fresh bread including a blue and yellow corn muffin, two slices of sweet bread with raisins and nuts, and two slices of jalapeno bread.  Sadly, I only thought to take a picture of the corn muffin which had kernels of corn throughout and was great.

Lance ordered the Prix-Fixe Lunch menu so we started off sharing his Blue Corn Pancake.  Inside of the pancake was barbecued duck and it was plated with cilantro oil and a pepper sauce.  The flavors all worked very well together and I would have been happy with just a few of those for my lunch.

Continuing on with the Prix-Fixe menu, Lance had the Mesa Buffalo Burger.  This was served with Swiss cheese, pickles and the regular burger toppings.  The fries were crispy and spicy and the ketchup shown in the picture is spicy chipotle ketchup.  Lance also got some lime ketchup which was fantastic.

I was feeling a bit vegetable deficient, so I ordered the Barbecued Lamb Cobb Salad.  It was a mix of avocado, tomato, Cabrales blue cheese, bacon, extremely flavorful lamb, and buttermilk dressing.  I’m not usually a fan of blue cheese, but the quality of this blue cheese made quite a difference.  This was a fantastic salad.

The last course of Lance’s Prix-Fixe menu was the Banana Hazelnut Profiteroles.  Being allergic to nuts, Lance and I worked out a split and he ate the profiteroles while I ate the ice cream.  The ice cream had a very strong banana taste and the profiteroles were light tasty.

Overall, the food was delicious and we felt that this was a good choice for one of our lunch “slots.”  The service was also acceptable.  Our waitress was attentive and friendly.  

Total price, including tip with no drinks: $63.88

Mesa Grill
Caesars Palace
Las Vegas, NV

Reservations: (877) 346-4642

Lance and I just got home from spending a few days in Las Vegas.  We opted to indulge in the sin of gluttony while in Sin City, forsaking the other well-known sins.  Lance gifted me with the planning of our meals while on vacation, and it was an amazing foodie experience.  

It all started with a visit to Tom Colicchio’s Craftsteak.  We’ve become enamored with Colicchio, like so many others, thanks to Top Chef.  Craftsteak was the first restaurant to come to mind in my planning so it’s only fair that it was where we dined the first night.  

I apologize in advance for the quality of photos in these restaurant articles.  I’m still figuring out how best to take photographs in restaurants and it’s certainly a learning process!  I still wanted to show all the food, even if the photos weren’t stellar, since the food was all amazing.  

Soon after we were seated, and our servers introduced themselves, bread and butter were delivered to our table.  The bread was in a skillet and brushed with butter in such a way that the top tasted almost like a flakey layer of a croissant.  The bread also had salt sprinkled over the top.

Tom’s food theory is something along the lines of “take amazing ingredients and don’t screw them up.”  We felt that this reflected in the décor as well as the menu.  You’ll notice that the menu doesn’t have any descriptions, just the cooking method and the main ingredient of the dish.  There were no tablecloths on the tables and the walls were covered in fantastic leather panels.

For my first course I went with the Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella.  This was served with hazelnuts, a balsamic glaze, and roasted red peppers.  I’d never had buffalo mozzarella before so it was a chance I couldn’t pass up.  The cheese was quite a bit more flavorful than the regular mozzarella I can find at my local stores and the red pepper sauce was a pleasant change from the usual tomatoes that accompany fresh mozzarella.

Lance’s first course was Farmer Jones’ Mixed Lettuces.  You’ll notice a trend in Lance’s first courses during the week; I think he was on a mission to compare all of the mixed green salads in Las Vegas.  This one was very simple, just the greens, and perfectly dressed.   Each piece of lettuce glistened from the dressing but there was no residual dressing on the plate when he was finished eating.

Next we had our steak course.  I ordered the Kobe Style Wagyu Filet and Lance ordered the Japanese Kobe Wagyu.  We’ve not entirely sure if we were served the correct steaks, but they were both ridiculously tasty.

Both filets were very tender.  Mine, which is pictured first, was a bit more flavorful than Lance’s but almost tender enough to melt in my mouth.  His filet, pictured second, was a bit less “steak-y” than mine and even more tender.

Neither of us had had this quality of Kobe beef before and, I’ve got to admit, that I was a bit perplexed.  Perhaps my palate just isn’t refined enough to detect the minor differences in quality between Wagyu and “regular” filet mignon.  Perhaps the difference in the quality would have been more noticeable with a different cut of meat.  Nevertheless, it was amazingly delicious.  

To go with our steak, we ordered mushroom risotto which was served family style.  The flavors were fantastic in the risotto, but it was a bit too toothy and not as creamy as the risottos we’ve enjoyed in the past.

Our meals.

For dessert, I opted to go the chocolate route and chose the Liquid Chocolate Cake.  This was served with vanilla ice cream.  The dessert was very rich and extremely enjoyable.  I’ve got to admit that the smear of chocolate on the plate brought back some unkind words from an episode of Top Chef and I tried not to chuckle too much.

Lance is a lover of strawberries and he chose the Strawberry Shortcake which was served with strawberry sorbet.  The strawberry sorbet was definitely the winner of the dessert course, it was stellar.

Overall, this was a great dining experience.  The service was impeccable and we even developed, accidentally, a new “test” for waitstaff.  During the meal Lance blew out the candle while we were talking.  This was completely unintentional on his part but, afterward, he said “I’ll bet it’s relit within 5 minutes.”  And, sure enough, our server appeared in about 2 minutes to relight our candle.  Very impressive.  

Our water glasses were always full; every server we interacted with was extremely knowledgeable about all the dishes and ingredients.  The staff also encouraged us to ask any questions that we had and, of course, I had quite a few!  Given the chance, I would eat at Craftsteak again in a heartbeat.  

Total price, including tip with no drinks: $546

Craftsteak
MGM Grand
Las Vegas, NV

Reservations: (702) 891-7318

Update: It has come to my attention that TenPenh has closed.  :(

In late April, Art and I had the pleasure of eating at TenPenh in Washington, D.C.  It’s a restaurant we’ve been wanting to eat at for some years and had just never gotten around to.

We were extremely pleased with the entire dining experience and left questioning why we had taken so long to eat at this amazing place!

It was a hot, humid, DC day - we’d visited the Sackler and Freer earlier in the day and walked across The Mall to get to the restaurant.  We were feeling a bit wilted and the cool, damp towels brought to us after being seated were a refreshing way to start off our dining experience.

For appetizers we ordered Lamb Pot Stickers and Peking Style Duck Rolls.  The lamb was perfectly rare and flavorful.  Ingredients included pine nuts and they were served on a watercress red onion salad with sesame soy dipping sauce.  The only down side was figuring out how to split the 5th pot sticker.

The duck rolls were wrapped in moo shu pancakes and served with hoisin sauce, cucumber, and scallion.

The next offering was an unexpected treat.  We were each served an amuse-bouche of an Asian inspired gazpacho.  The perfect way to further cool down after a hot day in the city.  Sadly, I forgot to take pictures until mine was almost gone.

I am a fish lover who lives with someone who does not love fish, as a result I tend to order fish when eating out.  I was not disappointed by the Peanut-Shallot Crusted Ahi Tuna which I ordered medium rare and was served with scallion lo mein, oven cured tomato, and a beurre blanc sauce.  The composition and balance of the dish was perfect and my tuna was cooked exactly the way I wanted it.

Art ordered the Silk Road Spiced Cowboy Steak which was served with TenPenh chimichurri, saffron rice, tamarind hoisin broccoli. He was kind enough to give me bites to try.  The rice was cooked perfectly, the broccoli had a fantastic sweetness and flavor, and the steak was wonderfully tender with a kick of spiciness due to the chimichurri.

To go with our entrees, we ordered two side dishes to share.  Art’s choice was Szechuan Green Beans.  These were nice and crisp and evenly coated in Szechuan sauce.

My choice was the Tempura Vegetables which were served with a traditional soy sauce based dipping sauce.  There was one piece each of cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potato, potato, mushroom, zucchini, and yellow squash.  My only complaint of the entire meal was that the pieces of vegetable were much too large and, as there was only one of each, we had to split each one in order to share the pieces fully.  Still, the frying was great and the batter was nice and light.

Last, of course, we had desserts.  It has only been recently in my life that I’ve ordered desserts in restaurants, but I suppose that I have seen the light and now know how delicious a well crafted dessert can be.  We were not disappointed with what TenPenh had to offer.  Art ordered a dessert he’d seen on the way into the restaurant - Dark Chocolate & Caramel Torte.  This was served with sweet soy ice cream, five spice pecan caramel sauce.  Sadly he damaged the wafer disk of chocolate before I was able to get a picture.  He devoured the whole thing in short order but was kind enough to share a taste and a pecan with me.  It was definitely a good choice of dessert for him.

I had almost settled on the Brulee on the dessert menu when I noticed donuts.  Donuts?  Coated with cinnamon and sugar and fresh made?  How can someone pass that up?  These were probably the best donuts I’ve had in my life.  They came to the table almost too hot to eat and were served with a dark chocolate pudding for dipping or eating with a spoon.  These were scrumptious, warm, and steamy.  I’d go back to TenPenh just to eat donuts.

Overall, this was one of the best dining experiences I’ve yet to have in D.C.  I am sorry that we waited so long to give this restaurant a try.  The service was great, we never felt rushed during the entire meal and our drinks were kept full without having to ask.  I never reached for my water glass to find it empty which is something I appreciate, especially on a hot day.  The ambience and noise levels were both welcoming and allowed for easy conversation.  I’m already looking forward to visiting TenPenh again in the future.

Total price, including tip: $148.25

TenPenh Restaurant
1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC