Athena's Blog: After a long hiatus...

Today is a special day, as it marks my triumphant return to blogging.

I slacked off on this project for a while, and recently started hearing complaints about my work stoppage. I assumed that no one would really care about what happens in boring old Las Vegas, but lo and behold, the requests kept coming, so the only logical course of action was to again keep tabs on my daily grind via electronic media.

So without further ado:

This past week was restaurant week in Las Vegas, an event benefiting our local food bank, Three Square Las Vegas. Many excellent restaurants from famous chefs were participating, offering three course tasting menus at a bargain price of $50.10. The price would seem a bit high in any other city, but when you consider that the likes of Joel Robouchon, Charlie Palmer, Alain Ducasse, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and many more very famous chef's restaurants are involved, it's downright bargain-basement pricing.

We made reservations for five at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's steakhouse in Aria, a restaurant whose kitchen I had previously staged in (staging is essentially working for free, either for the experience or to apply for a job), because several in our party were desirous of steak, and I'm not one to turn down gratis beef...

Our reservations weren't until 9:30, so we had time to swing by Jean-Phillippe Patisserie and ogle sweets before dinner.

This place is essentially a hedonist's dream, a shop devoted to all things fattening and chocolaty. Above is a chocolate sculpture, my cell-phone camera does it no justice.

Around the shop are elaborately decorated cakes on rotating metal pillars, so detailed that even the bottom of each layer is hand piped and exquisitely decorated. They sell fancy desserts, gelato, coffee, candy, and $9 dollar milkshakes.

Our appetites now worked into a frenzy, we journeyed to Aria's second floor to indulge.

Jean-Georges Steakhouse is dark colored and masculine, split by glass walls stacked floor to ceiling with fine wine, leather booths, and the most comfortable bar stools in town. We had a beer at the bar before being escorted to our booth, a big half-circle number of buckskin colored leather. The restaurant's walls are ensconced with large, glowing, stylized cow-nose print designs, and the decor is a perfect intersection of classic steakhouse and modern Vegas.

I brought a special bottle of wine with us, a 2003 Donatella Cinelli Brunello di Montalcino Riserva that I had gotten from the vineyard itself whilst in Italy. The sommelier was happy to decant it for us, so that it would have time to breathe before our meal.

This restaurant was actually doing four courses for restaurant week, so it was a super bargain.

We started off our meal with a tiny cup of watermelon gaspacho, which was surprisingly savory.

There were two options for salad, above is an heirloom tomato, heart of palm, and avocado salad with a coconut vinaigrette. This was excellent, the coconut milk add just enough creaminess to cut the acid of the tomatoes, and the textures played together perfectly, with the crunchy heart of palm contrasting the smooth avocado, accented by the explosive juiciness of the tiny tomatoes. This would have been the best salad I'd ever had...

Were it not for this pickled peach and frisee salad with goat cheese and pistachios. I mean, wow. The sweetness of the peaches was complimented by just the slightest tang of vinegar, perfectly paired with the earthy crunch of pistachio and the unctuous creaminess of the goat cheese. There were two dressings, on the frisee just enough of a creamy ginger dressing to barely coat every morsel, and a peach vinaigrette that had the flavor of 10 peaches in each bite. It was fantastic, every single bite was perfect, the flavors complimentary, and the elements at the peak of freshness, not even the tiniest flaw to be found. I wish I could eat this every day.

And then there was the NY Strip, perfectly seared rare over a wood grill, with the crunchiest herbed potatoes, and a salsa verde that was like summer itself, herbaceous and brilliant green.

Still reeling from the incredible courses we'd just laid waste to, they brought us dessert.

I had a lemon meringue tart, with a quenelle of homemade vanilla ice cream, and a dollop of intensely flavored raspberry puree. Quite refreshing and immensely satisfying.

There was also an exquisite molten chocolate cake, with cinnamon ice cream and a toffee chip. Jean-Georges actually invented this dish, and it's still the finest example of this cake to be found anywhere. The cake itself is richly flavored but light and fluffy, the molten center is intense and rich.

After our meal, the waiter came to our table and said that they had comped the corkage fee on our wine (awesome, I've never heard of a restaurant doing that here) and asked if the whole party would like to go back to the kitchen to meet chef de cusine Gerald, who had remembered me from the day I staged in the kitchen a few months ago. It was pretty damn cool, we thanked him profusely for the excellent, perfect meal, and everyone was pretty thrilled to see the celebrity chef's kitchen in person.

I had previously read reviews of some other restaurant week offerings, and a major complaint from locals was that many of the restaurants treated them with less consideration, some even bordering on contempt when they ordered from the special menu. At Jean-Georges though, they treated us with the same outstanding service as the high rollers around us, perhaps better, and that's saying a lot, considering that the restaurant was taking a hit serving these ingredients at such a low cost and giving a portion of the proceeds to charity. That alone speaks volumes about the chef, and his staff, and to me really shows how passionate they are about what they do.

I can't recommend Jean-Georges Steakhouse highly enough, is is well worth the regular menu cost if ever you visit Las Vegas.

We decided to show my brother's wife the world's largest chocolate fountain, so journeyed through Crystals en route to Bellagio, Crystals has my favorite staircase in Las Vegas...