Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab brings Miami tradition to Las Vegas. By Ken White

Joe Weiss and his wife, Jennie, opened Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami in 1913, serving their signature dishes with stone crab claws from the Gulf of Mexico and Key lime pie on the front porch of their house.

The location moved a few blocks down and the restaurant has continued serving its signature dishes from Oct. 15 through May 15, year-in an year-out.

The Icon restaurant company that owns Joe’s Stone Crab expanded to Chicago four years ago with an altered concept: more steaks and an expanded lineup of seafood.

Now the company brings Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab to the Forum Shops at Caesars, 3500 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

The expanded Joe’s still serves the Weiss’ signature mustard sauce with the stone crab, which is flown in daily (except Mondays) from Miami. The Las Vegas location gets some seafood items from the same purveyors as the restaurants in Miami and Chicago, while using local purveyors as well, says managing partner Michael Rotolo.

Plus the company has four fisheries of its own, including two in the Florida Keys and two on the Florida gulf coast.

“We’ve only found this species of stone crab in the Gulf of Mexico,” Rotolo says. “The sweet flavor of the meat makes it different, and the pinkish-orange hue when it’s cooked and the dark black pincers. Other types of crab are purple-brown, and without the sweetness.”

The Las Vegas location featuress a bar with four high-definition televisions; a patio; mahogany wood trim throughout; wood floors in the main dining room; the multimedia Boardroom for private dining and meetings; and an upstairs area that opens later this week for private parties.

Joe’s also has a 4,000-bottle wine storage room and an addition 3,000 stored in the kitchen.

While the wait staff is clad in tuxedos, the dress for customers is casual.

Joe’s is open daily for lunch and dinner from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until midnight Fridays and Saturdays. Reservations are suggested (792-9222).

Following are dinner menu selections:

• Starters: Stone crabs (market price); spinach-stuffed mushrooms ($9.95); steamed black mussels ($10.95); shrimp and scallop ceviche ($10.95); fried calamari ($11.95); oysters Rockefeller ($12.95); jumbo shrimp cocktail ($14.95); and jumbo lump crab cake ($13.95).

• Soups and salads: Manhattan clam chowder ($5.95); stone crab bisque ($6.95); hearts of lettuce salad ($5.95); Joe’s all-greens salad ($6.95); Caesar salad ($8.95); chopped lettuce, tomato, onion and blue cheese ($11.95); vegetable chopped salad with crumbled blue cheese and creamy vinaigrette ($12.95); and seafood chopped salad with shrimp, scallops and crab ($16.95).

• Entrees: Seafood: Sauteed garlic gulf shrimp ($21.95); Joe’s Famous Scallops ($21.95); shrimp scampi with linguini ($21.95); stone crab Bolognese with fettuccini ($22.95); jumbo lump crab cakes ($27.95); 22-ounce grilled jumbo lobs ter tail (market price); crispy halibut fish and chips ($18.95); blackened mahi mahi ($21.95); broiled salmon au poivre ($22.95); grilled Florida grouper with tomato-cucumber relish ($24.95); crab-stuffed sole with lobster sauce ($25.95); grilled swordfish with roasted tomato vinaigrette ($24.95); garlic-herb crusted red snapper ($25.95); and ahi tuna ($26.95).

Chicken: Fried chicken, teriyaki chicken and broiled lemon-herb chicken breast ($15.95).

Steaks: Twin chopped tenderloin steaks with green peppers and onions ($15.95); veal cutlets ($21.95); grilled pork chops with caramelized onions ($24.95); filet mignon (eight-ounce, $28.95; 12-ounce, $34.95); 16-ounce rib-eye ($36.95); and 16-ounce New York strip ($38.95).

• Extras: Hash browns ($7.95); baked potato ($4.95); fried green tomatoes ($7.95); steamed asparagus with lemon-butter sauce ($8.95); garlic creamed spinach ($7.95); and rice pilaf ($7.95).

• Desserts: Key lime pie, Boston creme pie, chocolate fudge pie, banana cream pie with Foster sauce, coconut cream pie, apple pie a la mode and peanut butter pie with hot fudge ($6.95 each); and gold brick sundae and peppermint ice cream with hot fudge ($5.95 each).

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Nov-10-Wed-2004/living/25184478.html

Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville By Heidi Knapp Rinella

Pages from the Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Our-Guests-Don’t-Have-a-Clue Training Manual:

When we arrived at the hostess’ podium, she told us the wait would be at least an hour and a half. I actually wasn’t surprised, because they don’t take reservations, a convention of thick-necked men was in town, and, in my experience, thick-necked men tend to love places that sell burgers and beer and play beach music. If we had had a choice, we’d have moved on. But, as I’ve told you, this job has its shortcomings. One little problem: They were out of pagers. So she gave us a piece of paper and told us to come back in an hour for one. And I’m wondering, Geez, Jimmy, this is a high-volume place, and you’re kinda raking it in. How much do pagers cost, anyway? And if you tend to lose them because people decide they don’t want to wait an hour and a half after all, maybe you should install a box for pager drop-off, like other high-volume restaurants. If you still tend to lose a lot of pagers, see sentence beginning, “And I’m wondering, Jimmy…” above.

• We decided to relax in some comfortable chairs on the other side of the sprawling, fully stocked gift shop that, for your convenience, provides a place for you to browse for that hour and a half (and that you have to pass through in order to enter the restaurant). I had a hunch the restaurant and bar didn’t exactly use Riedel crystal, but still figured maybe they, like most other non-casino-owned casino restaurants, weren’t too keen about glasses walking out the door. I try to be a nice person, so I asked the hostess if it would be OK if we got drinks at the bar and took them to the chairs to wait.

“Sure,” she chirped. “This is Vegas. You can drink anywhere.” And while I was thinking that Metro might take a little exception to that statement, I also was thinking she’d totally zoned the question. But that, of course, was before I saw that everyone at the bar was drinking out of plastic cups or beer bottles. So I’m still thinking, but at this point it went like this: “Hmmm. Jimmy Buffett equals Florida Keys equals endangered coral reefs and, right in the neighborhood, an $8 billion Everglades restoration project, which equals environmentalists.” Even if

they recycle all of those plastic cups, that doesn’t seem very environmentally friendly. (See sentence that begins “And I’m wondering” above.) And I’m also wondering why the bartender didn’t ask if I wanted it frozen or on the rocks. And while $6.50 for a weak Margarita isn’t bad by Strip standards, it is when it’s for a weak Margarita in a plastic cup. (See sentence beginning, “And I’m wondering” above.) So here’s a little piece of advice: If you do choose to wait an hour and a half, use the time to walk down to the Westward Ho, where you can get a weak Margarita in a plastic cup for 99 cents.

• Back we went in about 45 minutes for a pager, at the second hostess stand because you have to do this sort of yellow-brick-road thing before you can get a seat. This second hostess looked at our slip of paper and coolly told us only 30 minutes had passed. And while I was wondering why that mattered and again, why they didn’t have enough pagers, I also was wondering if she is a product of Clark County schools because she clearly couldn’t do the math. She did give us a pager after we promised we wouldn’t do it again.

• When our pager went off, we showed up and identified ourselves as (insert made-up name). Another hostess picked up menus, looked at us and walked away. Did she want us to follow her? Heck if we knew, although we did it anyway because we were hungry and the pager wasn’t that appetizing. Maybe she could’ve said, “Right this way, please.” Or “I’ll show you to your table.” Or even “Follow me.” Or anything but ” “. When

we arrived at our table, she said, “Here.” Not, “Will this table be all right?” Not “Is this OK?” Just “Here.” And then, “(name withheld) will be your waitress.” And I’m withholding the waitress’ name here only because she turned into a fairly OK server once things quieted down a bit, after starting out like a cur.

A cur. There’s a good word.

Yes, they were busy. Then again, they’re probably always busy, because there are a hell of a lot of people who come to this town wanting nothing so much as to waste away in Margaritaville. So they need to get used to it. And that’s not even considering that being busy is not an excuse for blowing out your service standards.

Oh, the food? I can’t seem to spell the sound-effect I’d use, but it translates to something along the lines of “OK.” The Cheeseburger in Paradise ($8.95) was nothing special — more like a Cheeseburger in an Overcommercialized Restaurant — but it was OK, and the onion rings on the side ($1 extra if you get them instead of fries) were really good — crisp-crusted and not greasy.

Volcano nachos ($8.95) was a huge pile with lots of jalapeños and some pretty spicy chili, plus guacamole, sour cream, tomatoes, scallions and a bunch of other stuff. Huge, hearty and a sure bet with the thick-necked men, I’m guessing.

Jamaica Mistaka Wings ($7.95) didn’t live up to their name, which is a good thing because it breaks every rule in the Restaurateur Common Sense Dish-Naming Guidebook. They were nice and meaty, and their habanero-honey sauce had a decent depth of flavor that belied the fact that after a couple, the fire in them would sneak up and kick us in the butt. Tricky.

Rudy’s Barbecue Ribs ($15.95 for the half-rack we chose, or $18.95 for a full) failed to deliver on the promised “secret spice blend with Dominican-inspired guava barbecue sauce.” We don’t know who Rudy is, but he needs to get out more. I wondered if the Dominicans in question were Dominican nuns.

And finally, the Mango Creme Brulee ($5.95). Considering the ubiquitousness of creme brulee these days, pretty much everybody has figured out how

to caramelize the sugar so the custard doesn’t carry the consistency of ground glass. Pretty much everybody except those who work at

Margaritaville.

So, OK, I know I’ve been mincing words; what did I really think? That the atmosphere is pretty cool, with its boat booths and airplane-fuselage

booths and amazing views of the Strip. That I don’t get why, when they had a band in the lounge being shown upstairs on closed-circuit TV, they

had different music coming out of the speakers. That it’s not a bad place for a burger and is probably a place everybody should experience once,

but no way is it worth and hour-and-a-half wait.

That I now know what a pirate does at 40 (or, actually, 57): He counts his money. reviewjournal.com — Neon ————– BOA Steakhouse takes

new look at steakhouse decor. By Ken White

BOA Steakhouse doesn’t look like the standard Las Vegas steakhouse.

The newly opened restaurant on the third level of the new addition inside the Forum Shops at Caesars skipped the dark-wood and near-dark lighting

for an open dining room with 800-year-old driftwood as the centerpiece, along with a patio off the dining room and another soon to open on the

second level of the Forum Shops, both with a view of the Strip.

Corporate executive chef Josh Thomsen says the restaurant gets all of its steaks from Kansas City and are cooked bone-in with seasonal garnishes

added.

A part of the Innovative Dining company’s lineup of restaurants, other BOA Steakhouse locations are in Hollywood and Santa Monica, Calif. The

company also owns Sushi Roku at the Forum Shops and in Hollywood, Santa Monica and Pasadena, Calif.

Most of the restaurant’s signature dishes are in all locations, Thomsen says. Differences in the menu at each location are few, but “here we can

get away with larger portions and more cream” in the dishes, notes Thomsen, who was formerly chef at Nob Hill in the MGM Grand and Simon’s at the

Hard Rock Hotel.

All dishes are made in-house, according to Thomsen, and the emphasis is on fresh and top-quality products. “With the meat, we wanted to go

all-out,” he says. “If somebody has a better rib-eye, I’ll get it from that purveyor. I like to think that when you say `steakhouse,’ we fall

into the innovative dining room category.”

BOA Steakhouse is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 11 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays.

• Starters: Steak tartare with capers, evo and toasted croutons ($14); ahi tuna and hamachi with a black radish salad, mustard oil and yuzu

vinaigrette ($16); Dungeness crab cake with shaved fennel, frisee, organic watercress and mustard aioli ($14); goat cheese beignet with

oven-roasted ratatouille and basil evo ($10); black truffle nachos made with Yukon Gold potato chips and imported truffle cheese ($13); escargot

served with garlic, butter and parsley ($13); and seared Hudson Valley foie gras with caramelized Granny Smith apples, brioche and

huckleberry-balsamic reduction ($18).

• Soups and salads: Caramelized onion soup ($8); BOA chop chop salad with artichokes, chickpeas, olives, tomatoes, toasted pine nuts and grilled

vegetables ($10); Sausalito Springs watercress salad with endive, caramelized walnuts, Pear Point Reyes blue cheese and champagne ($12); the

Wedge, featuring iceberg lettuce, vine-ripened tomato and Point Reyes blue cheese dressing ($9); and Caesar salad, made to order tableside ($11).

• Entrees: Bone-in filet mignon ($35), petite filet mignon ($27), Kobe filet mignon (market price), 35-day dry-aged New York strip ($42), bone-in

rib-eye ($35), flat iron steak ($32) and porterhouse ($40). All steak selections come with a choice of rub and crust, sauce or mustard. Among the

rubs and crusts are tri peppercorn, blackened, herbed butter, blue cheese crust and foie gras crust (add $4). Sauces include cabernet,

Worcestershire, green peppercorn, chimichurri, bearnaise, creamy horseradish, caramel soy and ginger and the chef’s special J-1 sauce. The

mustards include whole grain, Dijon, horseradish, violette or green peppercorn.

Other entrees include salmon cooked on a cedar plank with fingerling potatoes, Castroville artichokes and sweet cherry tomatoes ($27); roasted

free-range chicken breast with broccoli rabe, dried apricot and pine nuts ($26); halibut T-bone with sweet pepper confit, chorizo, rice beans and

parsley ($28); jumbo prawns, scampi style, with white wine, garlic, lemon, parsley and butter ($32); grilled ahi tuna with roasted shiitake

mushrooms, baby bok choy and wasabi potatoes ($32); fried free-range chicken with truffled macaroni and cheese ($27); and linguine with

littleneck clams steamed with white wine, roasted garlic, chili flakes and Italian parsley ($20).

• Extras: Sauteed seasonal mushrooms, grilled jumbo asparagus, balsamic grilled red onions, roasted squash and sage brown butter, bamboo steamed

vegetables, broccoli rabe with dried apricot, chili and pine nuts ($8 each); and fingerling potatoes, potato gratin, homemade crispy fries,

truffle macaroni and cheese, roasted garlic whipped potatoes and wasabi whipped potatoes ($7 each).

• Desserts: New York-style cheesecake, seasonal fruit and berry cobbler with cr?me fr‰iche ice cream, cinnamon sugar doughnut holes with warm

dipping sauce, vanilla bean cr?me brlée, warm chocolate brownie sundae, chocolate hazelnut crunch bars with raspberries, ice cream sandwiches,

warm apple tart with a cider reduction and cinnamon ice cream, and a selection of ice cream and sorbet ($9 each). reviewjournal.com — Living:

APPETIZERS ———- Mesa Grill by Heidi Knapp Rinella

So there we were at Bobby Flay’s new Mesa Grill at Caesars Palace, and these were virtually the first words to come from our waitress’ mouth –

after, maybe, “hello”:

“Would you like some bottled water for the table? We have Saratoga sparkling or flat.”

And I’m thinking, odd, that brand-new kitchen and no tap water available?

Ah, geez, Bobby. Maybe this is still the drill in New York, but high-end Las Vegas restaurants gave it up a long time ago.

Restaurant critics think of it as the great water scam, and many of us around the country railed on it for a while, until pretty much driving it

back into the ground (source of all of that water — or not, as the case may be). Much of the pique stemmed from the fact that there’s a huge

markup (up to 600 percent in some cases) on bottled water in most restaurants, and there was a time when some of them strong-armed customers to

“choose” one, the customer erroneously thinking that it would be included with dinner or acquiescing rather than to be thought cheap. Then the

server would fetch another when the first ran dry, without asking (but while charging, of course) — something they’d never do with any other

beverage that didn’t involve free refills. To quote a Texas oilman I once overheard tell a waiter: ” `Evian’ is `naive’ spelled backward.”

My own feeling is this sort of thing is an insult. I like bottled water, even have a few favorite brands (and no, Saratoga isn’t among them) and

I know that nearly all restaurants sell it. So if I wanted a bottle, I could go ahead and ask for it, now couldn’t I? But if wine is my primary

beverage with dinner, I might not want more than few sips of water. Then there’s the fact that many high-end restaurants filter their tap water

these days. (Except that, judging from the taste, Mesa Grill isn’t among them. Whoops.)

Then our waitress asked if we’d been in before. Well, no; the restaurant’s only been open since October. Well, she said, the chef is Bobby Flay,

and this is his first restaurant outside New York, and he’s in the kitchen right now!

Wow!

OK, so maybe she thought we’d just wandered in, had never heard of Flay, and didn’t know Jack — or rather, Bobby. And, maybe that we didn’t know

celebrity chefs were pretty common in Las Vegas these days. Whoops again.

It was a new experience; no server in a celebrity-chef restaurant has ever pointed out that the guy was in the kitchen at that very moment –

even when I knew for a fact that he or she was. Somehow I can’t imagine it happening in the restaurants of those who are a little more, shall we

say, low-profile. Heck, most of the staffs tend to keep quiet, I’m assuming because they want customers to think that celebrity chefs are in all

of their kitchens all the time. (And some of them do manage that, though that’s for another time.)

And then, minutes after she told a neighboring table that Flay was in the kitchen, I saw him walk out the door, at 9 o’clock, sans chef’s whites.

Whoops again.

So by this time I’m thinking this guy’s Mr. Showmanship chops would embarrass Liberace and the food’s going to put me to sleep. But then I looked

more closely at the menu, and saw the likes of jerk-spiced bluenose snapper with papaya-black-bean salsa and black-eyed pea risotto. Holey moley;

talk about creative fusion — and I could see it all working, although an aversion to the perfumy nature of papaya prompted me to move on.

How about a grilled venison chop with cranberry-cascabel pepper chile sauce and sweet potato-chipotle gratin ($37)? “Farm-raised, of course,” our

waitress said, and yes, of course (hunters not being the most reliable of purveyors), but that’s a good thing with venison, which in the wild can

be a little too lean, sometimes just a little too gamy.

This venison was moist and had just enough of the characteristic flavor, which was at once complemented by the cranberry and brightened by the

cascabel. Sweet potatoes and chipotle? Who knew? These were great flavor notes that did more for sweet potatoes than all those horrendous

“candied” versions ever could.

Elements of surprise and great flavor notes are Flay’s way, it seems. Same theme, different song in the roasted pumpkin soup ($10) with

pomegranate and pecan relish. Nice textural contrasts as well. Pumpkin soups and same-vein butternut squash soups are seasonal all-over-the-place

things, but never have I tasted one this surprising — and this good.

Nice touches in the cornmeal-crusted oysters ($16), too. I don’t know how the heck Flay manages this one, but the oysters had both a crisp,

substantial (but not overly so) crust, while inside they were plump and faintly crunchy in that only-the-freshest-oysters way, and bore the

flavor of the sea. Accenting them further was a nicely balanced sweet/hot sauce. I even liked the fact that they balanced the shells on little

beds of cornmeal instead of the classic rock salt, which can get a little messy.

We felt compelled to try a Flay classic, and so chose the coffee-spice-rubbed rotisserie filet mignon ($34), which is prepared on the big

circular grill that dominates the tiered dining room. I can’t say I detected any coffee flavor, try as I might, but the rub did create a nice

crust on the meat, which was exceptionally juicy as a result. A wild mushroom-ancho chile sauce and horseradish potato gratin rounded things out

quite well.

Ditto for a vanilla-black currant swirl parfait with spicy strawberry caramel sauce ($12), which was a little tough to access with the spoon

provided, but worth digging for.

Also rounding things out nicely: a basket that contained wonderful blue-corn muffins, an interesting (and very good) cranberry-sesame bread, and

ciabatta that was OK but could’ve been a little crustier. There was also a margarita list (margaritas going nicely with spicy, except that I want

to stress that this food is not gratuitously spicy), with around 10 specialty margaritas, 48 tequilas — even a flight of Del Maguey Single

Village Mescals.

There is a decent enough wine list as well, although the 2002 Seghesio Zinfandel ($40) we ordered from the list turned out to be a 2003 when it

was delivered.

Whoops again.

So the front of the house at Mesa Grill could use a little work — to root out those vestiges of New York state of mind and smooth out those

snags.

The back of the house, however, couldn’t be better. reviewjournal.com — Neon: RESTAURANT REVIEW: Mesa Grill ———– Palms’ Little Buddha

offers Asian-California fusion that works. By Max Jacobson

If atmosphere were the sole consideration for visiting a restaurant, Little Buddha at the Palms would never have an empty table. This is a most

wondrous place to look at, and no knock on the food here, a pan-Asian food-fest to beat the band.

If you’ve never stepped inside, Little Buddha evokes—like its prototype, Buddha Bar in Paris, and several of its predecessors, (most notably San

Francisco’s Betelnut)—the esprit de corps of ’30s Shanghai, when everything was tinged in crimson and celadon, a page from Bertolucci’s script

for The Last Emperor.

If all this sounds somewhat ersatz in the Vegas context, consider that this looks a lot more real than the façade of Manhattan at New York, New

York, or the scaled down La Tour Eiffel at Paris.

At the front podium, there are dozens of statues of the Buddha himself, silver things sitting in square red boxes. The main dining room is an

enormous rotunda, with a tented ceiling from which a giant, almost octopus-like chandelier is suspended. The entire room glows faint red, and

there are sweeping red banquettes to sit on, or seashell-shaped booths to handle a larger number of guests.

Throughout the front room, long, cylindrical, jade-green shades hang down, with gold tassels on their bottoms. Above the entrance to the larger

back dining room is a statue of Buddha, a giant, foreboding thing that looks as if it had been lifted from a Thai temple.

It’s clear that no expense has been spared. Tabletops are lacquered an onyx black, and there is a retro-looking bar with a backlit top,

embellished with portraits of Chinese children, resembling faded, sepia-hued images from a photo album. The only modern touch is a selection of

soft jazz playing constantly on the sound system. If you like the music here, you can buy it. The original Paris Buddha Bar markets a collection

of CDs.

If you are like most people who dine here, you’ll probably start things off with one of the interesting cocktails, such as the Fuji Tea, a

surprisingly refreshing drink made with gin, rum, Midori, and of all things, Sierra Mist; or a martini-like Sweet Buddha Love, which contains

everything but the kitchen wok.

When Little Buddha opened, I thought much of the food a bit sweet. But the new chef, German Edgar Theisen, has improved the kitchen considerably,

and now I like the food here more than ever.

The sushi bar is a dependable performer, even though Theisen isn’t working there. All the usual suspects are on hand: spicy tuna roll, edamame

soy beans, fatty tuna, yellowtail and fresh-water eel, to name a few, and a variety of creative specialty rolls, as well.

The appetizer menu is interesting and intelligent, and though press releases describe this place as classic Chinese with French touches, that is

more the case at Buddha Bar in Paris than here. I’d call Theisen’s food California fusion with swatches of China, Hawaii and the rest of Asia,

especially Japan, and even Korea. It’s mostly all good, anyway.

My favorite appetizers exhibit eclectic tendencies. Wok-fried calamari and shrimp, both nicely battered, come with a Vietnamese sweet-and-sour

dipping sauce. Chinese chicken salad uses Napa cabbage, a few types of fried noodles to vary the texture, lots of shredded white and dark

chicken, and perfect amounts of sesame oil and soy.

Steamed shrimp dumplings, a take on the Cantonese dim sum dish, ha gow, deviate from the program thanks to a nice lobster-miso sauce. The one

appetizer that didn’t work was the crispy chicken spring rolls with sweet chili sauce. The rolls came to the table oily and overfried.

Entrées are all over the map, too, and not quite as consistent as the appetizers or sushi. A wok-fried “kalbi”-style beef does not employ short

ribs—which kalbi means in Korean—but a lesser cut of beef, and the meat wasn’t sizzling or fragrant with sesame oil or spices as it should be in

a Korean barbecue establishment.

But kasuyaki-marinated salmon with chilled soba noodles is terrific, as is Chinese roasted half-duck with star anise-mango gastrique, a beautiful

marriage of East and West.

I’d also give high marks to a very Thai-tasting red-fire curry shrimp with rice noodles in a stir-fry, and a simple grilled pork chop with spicy

ginger pineapple relish. Chinese? Nah.

Another bonus to dining here are the good desserts, a tough hill to climb at authentic Asian restaurants. Little Buddha has wonderful sweets,

starting from the light, excellent sorbets and a wonderful caramelized lemon tart that is more like a lemon-flavored crème brûlée, to the more

substantial, a fine French-apple crumble and liquid-centered chocolate cake with good vanilla ice cream.

You get all this, and Buddha too. Oh, and don’t forget to clap your hands three times before you order, like a properly respectful Buddhist.

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2005/03/10/taste.html ——— Playing with fire There’s a rodizio rumble in the Rumjungle

BY AL MANCINI

If you’re anything like me, the first things that come to mind when you think of Rumjungle at Mandalay Bay are probably pulsating music and

scantily clad women shaking their asses on the catwalk behind the bar. But while the place may be best known to a lot of locals as a nightclub,

it’s also a restaurant open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. And while the club isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, the food is worth

the trip.

The house specialty at Rumjungle is the Fire Pit, a take on the Brazilian tradition of rodizio, where diners indulge in a variety of meat brought

to their tables on skewers. There are a handful of all-you-can-eat rodizio places here in town in various price ranges — but at $39.95 per

adult, Rumjungle’s is pretty close to the top of the food chain in both price and quality. There are a total of eight types of meat included. But

while most rodizio places offer fairly basic rotisserie versions of their various meats, every offering at Rumjungle features unique and

delicious seasonings that set it apart from the competition.

The Angus beef is prepared with a sugarcane, guava and caramelized onion glaze. The ahi tuna is marinated in mango and rum, and coated with

jalapenos, peach and passion fruit. The glaze on the turkey is made with mangos and habaneros, while one of the varieties of chicken comes coated

in pineapple-rum teriyaki sauce. There’s also jerk chicken cooked in chipotle-guava barbecue sauce and wrapped in bacon, mai-tai cured salmon and

chorizo specially made.

But my favorite course on the fire-pit menu is slow-roasted pulled pork with banana-chipotle ketchup served on sea salt-crusted tostones. If you

order the Fire Pit, you also get a nice variety of side dishes, including Peruvian salad, two types of rice, two varieties of beans and fried

plantains — but most of those only serve to divert valuable stomach space from the meats.

The Fire Pit at Rumjungle is good enough that I could eat there regularly without feeling the need to sample anything else. But the rest of the

menu has plenty of choices tempting enough to lure you away from the signature meal. Appetizers include conch fritters with banana-chipotle

ketchup ($9.75), ahi tuna spring rolls with pineapple-avocado salsa, and seared sea scallops with Thai red curry gazpacho and cucumber sweet

pepper slaw ($16). The entrée choices range from salmon served with green poblano chile cake, pineapple-mango salsa and sugarcane butter sauce

($21) to prosciutto-wrapped pork tenderloin with mango chutney, vanilla bean mashed potatoes, grain mustard and mango glaze ($25). On one of my

recent visits, a friend had a large portion of seared ahi tuna served over ratatouille and noodles in a delicious sweet chili sauce ($29) that

was just as good as anything in my all-you-can-eat deal.

The staff at Rumjungle is friendly, and the food with the Fire Pit comes fast and furious. There’s a bit of the problem with the fact that after

the first time that each course is brought to your table, it can be tough to get someone to return with a second helping of the dishes you most

enjoyed. However, I didn’t find that all that annoying.

My only real problem with eating at Rumjungle is the décor. The place has the feel of a hectic nightclub, and all of the water and fire that

might make it a fun place to dance at midnight are a little distracting when you’re trying to eat. In fact, my wife had to switch seats during

one recent visit because staring at the huge wall of water across from our table was making her nauseous.

The décor is also cheapened a bit by the two monstrous TV screens that were running ESPN’s coverage of Texas Hold ‘Em the last time I was there.

But none of that would be enough to keep me away the next time I’m craving meat.

Rumjungle 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S. In Mandalay Bay 702-632-7408 http://www.lvcitylife.com/articles/2005/03/17/dining_out/dining.txt

Posted on August 5th, 2005 by MrVegas98
Filed under: Dining Guide