ED209
[Purist]
7307
IGOTT2 culinary suggestions PART 1: Aureole times 3
Just over a week until IGOTT2 where a
worldwide contingent of PuristS will descend on Sin City, the
Entertainment Capital of the World.....that's right, LAS
VEGAS!
May 30th, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of
ThePuristS.com website founded by
Dr. Thomas Mao. The PuristSPro Executive Team has organized a
fun multi-day event filled with presentations by Audemars Piguet,
Bulgari, Chopard, Montblanc and several independent
watchmakers. For details on the agenda
Please click here
For those lucky PuristS
who will be flying in early for the Memorial Day weekend or staying the
following weekend will have plenty of things to do besides gambling and
shopping in Vegas. All the big name chefs from across the
U.S. and around the world have opened up restaurants in all the major
casinos over the past few years. Some of these restaurants
live up to expectations and are worthy of the name, while some other
disappoint. Since there's been so many great food posts on our
TimeOut forum, I thought I'd do a big report on some of our recent
dining experiences in Vegas.
I'll start on
the south end of the Las Vegas strip with the Mandalay Bay Resort and
Casino. This is a huge property that includes a convention
center, shopping area, lounges, aquarium and an awesome outdoor pool
named Mandalay Bay Beach with a wave machine. The
pool area even has a river running along the property where you can get
an inflatable inner tube and float around.
Within the
Mandalay dining area is a very well known restaurant transplanted from
New York City. Aureole Restaurant by chef Charlie Palmer
opened back in 1999, and since then has been awarded a Michelin star and
several Wine Spectator awards.
We've been staying
at the Mandalay Bay quite frequently over the past few months so we've
had the opportunity to dine at Aureole over several occasions.
The front entrance has a small waiting area and a
receptionist. The layout is very interesting in that the
restaurant is actually downstairs. Why is this?
Well it's
because this is Vegas and things are much more eye catching and
extravagant. For Aureole, they have their famous four story
wine tower where their 'wine angels' rappel up and down the tower to
retrieve your order of wine. The stairway down the restaurant
wraps around the wine tower and is pretty cool site to see as you enter
the main dining area:
In mid-April we tried their special tasting menu. Our appetizer was a seared foie gras with rhubarb clafoutis and mandarin orange agrodulce sherbet:
Next is a deconstructed clam chowder:
And a creamy chowder soup poured over the steamed clams:
Freshly baked pretzel bread:
American Wagyu beef skirt steak served medium rare with creamy bacon infused jalapeno corn succotash:
pan seared sole fish with a fragrant truffle mashed potatoes and cipollini onions:
Our first dessert a banana bread pudding with a banana caramel ice cream:
And a peanut butter chocolate bar with peanut butter ice cream:
and finally a small plate of sweets compliments of the kitchen:
Dinner was very good but the one thing that stood out from this first dinner at Aureole was what my dining companions and I was staring at the next table: a multi-course ice cream and sorbet tasting. It look so good that I almost ordered one to share but we were all so full so we decided to wait.
Well it turned out that the ice cream stuck in my mind for the next few days so much that we ended up heading back out to Vegas the very following week during Easter
So for our second dining experience at Aureole we tried their Easter tasting menu.
Unsalted butter and Mediterranean sea salt was served with fresh baked french bread and pretzel bread:
Our 5 course Easter tasting menu:
Our first course was a pepper crusted seared rare ahi tuna salad 'nicoise' with paddlefish caviar, a fried over easy quail egg with mixed greens and hericot verts, and a smelt fish tempura:
The foie gras dish we had the previous week was delicious so we added one to our tasting menu. This time it was served with a strawberry sorbet. In my opinion the sweet and tangy flavors of the strawberry sorbet was a better match than the mandarin orange:
Our second course on the tasting menu was a ravioli of sweet peas and Oregon morel mushrooms topped with dungeness crab, more fresh peas, in a foamy butter like sauce:
Closeup of the raviolis, I love morels and dungeness crab so this was a perfect dish:
The third course was a grilled escolar with sliced baby squash served with a kaffir lime beurre blanc. This was a very generous portion of fish:
One of my dining companions substituted the escolar for the chevril crusted Alaskan halibut. This was an interesting but tasty dish that had boiled udon noodles, pork belly, shitake mushrooms and a spring garlic and ginger broth.
Our main course was a duo of spring lamb. On the left hand side was a pistachio crusted lamb chop with a rosemary natural jus. On the right was a confit of lamb shoulder with a creamy flageolet. The lamb was perfectly grilled but I thought the pistachio crust was too heavy (and I'm a huge fan of pistachios and even this was too much for me).
Closeups of the lamb duo dish:
Dessert was a surprise with a trio of small bits. From left to right is a tangerine-scented creme caramel, in the middle was honeycomb brittle ice cream (absolutely yummy) and a honey carrot cake:
And the real reason for our return visit, the 6 scoop tasting of sorbets. 2 scoops each of raspberry, mango and pineapple:
Our waiter Orlando mentioned that the ice creams were very good too. So of course we had to order on for the table to share. Peanut butter, triple chocolate and french vanilla:
Did I mention that our waiter Orlando was awesome? He instinctively figured out that we like desserts and mentioned that we really don't have a real chocolate dessert. The chocolate ice cream doesn't count, so he treated us to a complimentary plate of the molten chocolate cake with peanut butter ice cream with pistachio nougat. Wow this was delicious:
The menu listed 2 sizes of hand crafted chocolates by Megan Romano so we ordered a box to try it out. The chocolates were very good but not nearly as good as the ones at Jean Phillipe Patisserie at Aria.
Would you believe that we were staying at the Mandalay Bay again the following week? That's right, 3 weekends in a row. We had to take advantage of this and headed back to Aureole. This time to try out their Parallel tasting menu.
On the left hand side of our first course was a North Atlantic fluke carpaccio with a sweet pina colada foam and candied macadamia nuts. On the right was a Maine lobster and green papaya salad with roasted pineapple and spicy coconut dressing:
Our second course was a giant sized pan roasted diver scallop with braised short rib, carrot emulsion and black trumpet mushrooms. On the right side was the coriander crusted tuna loin with a carrot sesame sponge cake and orange vinaigrette:
And for our third course was a duo of lamb which was similar but different from our previous week tasting menu. I was worried about eating the pistachio crusted lamb loin but this time the chefs did a much better job with a lighter crust. The lamb shoulder confit was served with a fennel and tomato fondue which gave this a rich texture:
Dessert was a duo of grape inspired sweets. On the left was a grape sorbet with pistachio biscotti with toasted walnut and golden raisin pesto sauce. On the right was a Concord grape and maple syrup baklava with a lemon sabayon. Interesting dishes but delicious:
And once again, our waiter Orlando took care of us and offered another complimentary dessert with chocolate cake
Regards,
ED-209
IGOTT2 culinary suggestions PART 1: Aureole times 3
Wow
A little bit of both
Those ribs are the best
I HATE YOU...
LOL I forgot to post a warning and disclaimer
When are you going to post about REAL dining location?
Coming up in the next few days
For some strange reason I thought
Exciting menus, Ed!