Joel Robuchon at the Mansion in Las Vegas
posted in Food |This weekend on our way back from the Grand Canyon we stopped in Vegas for two nights. Saturday night we had dinner at Robuchon’s “The Mansion” at the MGM. I’ve been to L’atelier de Joel Robuchon several times and its been pretty much my favorite dining experience in the country (or at least up in the top couple), so trying out Robuchon’s high-end place was pretty exciting.
Overall the meal was fantastic. From the excellent service, to the selection of 10 kinds of breads (including one with bacon! Bacon goes with everything…), to the candy selection at the end with like 40 different choices of little bites, it was a great, over the top experience. I wasn’t in the mood to take pictures of everything or take notes, but there were a number of highlights including some great caviar, a great combo of sea-food dishes, and a veal in herb-jus.
There are two other notes worth mentioning. The first is that I was surprised by what felt like a bit of kitsch with the meal. Maybe its an attempt to fit in with the general kitsch-nature of Vegas, or maybe it was just trying to be fancy somehow in a slightly clumsy way. One of the seafood dishes came out on a little net, with some shells. Many of the plates were beautiful, but some were just a bit over-done and distracting. Plus the music was pretty cheesy- again, we aren’t sure if it was a plan or an accident but during some of the main seafood dishes they were playing a musak version of one of the songs from the Little Mermaid.
Its kind of funny, but it makes a difference whether it was an intentional “Vegas” joke or just clumsy. When I first went to Vegas I pretty much hated it and it was years later that I came to appreciate it for all the cheese and neon and fake other-parts-of-the-world. Done in that context stuff can be really fun that would be just lame somewhere else like Seattle, Paris or New York. I’m hoping that is what was going on.
The other note is that I’m feeling pretty jaded/burned out on over the top meals. I suppose its not surprising, but a 16-course thing like this doesn’t have the same wonder that it used to. It certainly isn’t something I could do that often and 95% of the time I’d probably enjoy the Atelier more for its cool and more approachable style. We also went to Craft Steak the previous night which with its focused, more simple preparations seemed more in tune with my mood lately. Having said that the meal at the Mansion was great and I’m really glad that I finally got to experience it.