Las Vegas
Jaleo
Jaleo is a newly opened Spanish restaurant at Cosmopolitan Casino, Las Vegas. Jaleo’s owner/chef José Andrés is also the same guy behind The Bazaar @ SLS Hotel, Los Angeles.
I was highly anticipated to this dinner; wifey on the other hand, wasn’t too much into it. The dinner didn’t start out right. First, they didn’t have my most wanted dish – The Lobster paella, the chef was only making the chicken and peas paella that night, yuck. To make things worse, the lobster salad was way too salty and we had to return it for another one. I guess they had forgotten to rinse it good after soaking the veggie in salt water; although we almost finished all the lobster before returning; oops.
Overall, the remaining dishes were quite good and there’re couple dishes I like the most. The boneless chicken wings was as good as the one at Bazaar. The piquillo peppers and Dungeness Crabmeat, with the essence of the piquillo pepper, it mixed up quite well with the crabmeat. I’m not a pepper person, but I finished up the whole plate myself. It was that good!
Le Cirque
Le Cirque is a Michelin star French cuisine located inside Bellagio, Las Vegas. Their new executive chef Gregory Pugin has just joined Le Cirque in spring 2011. Gregory had spent eight years working with Joël Robuchon in France and New York. (note: Joël Robuchon has his own Michelin 3 stars restaurant at MGM, first 3 stars in Las Vegas) During a media interview, Gregory has mentioned his favorite and most enjoy cooking dish is the Paupiette of sea bass, and it just so happen the same dish wifey ordered too.
Bread looks like a mushroom.
Le Cirque butter, salted on the left and regular on the right.
Complimentary starter – Lobster Cake
Complimentary starter – Pea soup with mint.
Aburiya Raku
Aburiya Raku, a japanese izukaya restaurant located outside the strip; around the China town area in Las Vegas. Raku is famous for its widely use of charcoal, not only in their robata grill items, Raku uses activated charcoal as water filter and chopsticks stand as well.
Raku Izakaya – reservation is highly recommended. We saw the hostess turn away many walk-in customers even the restaurant was only half-full.
It was still very empty at 630pm and people started coming in around 8pm.
Charcoal chopsticks stand.
Tonight’s Special – we forgot to ask for the price. >_<
