Enjoy gourmet delights on a budget

Ryan Sutton

Fri, Mar 5, 2010 (3 a.m.)

Las Vegas needs fewer high-end dining venues with tasting menus and white tablecloths, and more New York-style neighborhood spots like Fatty Crab or Momofuku. Ambitious fare in casual settings with reasonable prices.

Although I have no qualms about my excellent $300 plus solo meals at fancy French joints like Savoy and Joel Robuchon, I wish I had spent more time at more affordable joints like Michael Mina’s American Fish.

I look at the menu and think: Why didn’t I try Mina’s $26 abalone and Kobe hot pot? Instead, I went for the $500 tasting at Shaboo downstairs. Regrets indeed.

American Fish is hidden within the depths of the sprawling Aria, part of the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex. The restaurant is as loud as an Irish bar and as dark as a nightclub. Its decor is as drab as a shopping mall’s — some of the seats overlook a brightly lit section of Aria. But it serves a piscine dish that wouldn’t be out of place at say, Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV in Monaco.

The turbot was poached in ocean water, barely cooked through. It sat in a bowl of clear, saffron-flavored broth that tasted like a pristine bouillabaisse. Even came with a rouille-topped cracker for dipping.

One tiny issue: There’s no ocean next to Las Vegas. Mina ships the aqua from Hawaii. This has prompted some criticism about sustainability and jet-fuel usage. If that’s how you feel, don’t bother coming to Las Vegas, because not much is local in this desert town. If you’ve ever tried the horrific tap water here, you’ll know why people drink bottled water. So yes, Mina should stick with the Hawaiian water, especially for a dish this good. It’s not cheap at $42, but it’s enough meat to feed two.

Mina is probably the most famous U.S. chef New Yorkers have never heard of. He has 17 restaurants from California to New Jersey, but none in New York. My companion, a Las Vegas local who has sampled most of Mina’s West Coast venues, said American Fish ranks with his best.

Mustard-marinated cod ($43 — also enough for two) was as good as the miso version at Nobu. Raw sweet shrimp was spiced with horseradish panna cotta; don’t use too much of the cream, which can overwhelm. Scallops and foie gras? We’ve seen this pairing at Aureole (also in Las Vegas). Except here it actually worked — rare, delicate shellfish beneath rare, jiggly liver.

Mina says, somewhat pompously, that American Fish has one of the best cocktail programs in Las Vegas. And I think he might be right. So finish off with a Knickerbocker ($11), a sweet-sour mix of Curacao, rum, lemon juice and raspberry syrup. The lost libation might have been the ancestor of modern Tiki drinks. Forget tablecloths; that’s the type of old-school charm Las Vegas needs.

My second regret about Las Vegas is that I didn’t bring Bar Masa’s Kobe skewers to snack on my flight home. (My JetBlue flight didn’t have meal service.)

Aria hosts the second location of Masa Takayama’s eponymous sushi bar, which, like the original, oddly lacks a proper sushi bar. In fact, it’s not really a bar either. It’s a gorgeous, high-ceilinged restaurant that evokes an ultramodern, silent nighttime garden in Tokyo. The Michelin three-starred chef gravitates toward shopping malls (his $400 per person raw fish temple is at New York’s Time Warner Center) and now casinos.

Sit at the front counter and shell out $35 for the Kobe skewers. The addictive little sticks ooze beefy fat that yield to a stinging, salty yuzu spice. Tuna belly rolls ($68) are so wonderfully rich you wonder if these tuna died from high cholesterol. Order more. Kabayaki barbecue sauce coats about a foot’s worth of eel. Order three different mackerel sushi for a clever study in oil. But if Masa wants to preserve his ultraluxury brand, he might want to consider adding a sushi chef to prepare them piece by piece and brush them with sauce in front of you. Otherwise, Bar Masa is just a better version of the more industrial Blue Ribbon chain.