Aureole Las Vegas

I know it’s been longer than a month, but it’s been a hectic month. I could give you the laundry list of excuses, work, baby, etc., but I will just say this… I am not perfect, but I will try to do better. I know what you are thinking, "Wow, it must be really hard to go to a fancy dinner once a month,” but surprisingly, when life happens, it is hard to find time to go. Not that that has discouraged me, I am back and ready to give you the scoop on Charlie Palmer’s second go round of Aureole in Las Vegas.


First, I will give you a little background on Charlie Palmer. Mr. Palmer was one of my favorite judges on Top Chef Las Vegas (season 6) because when he came on, it was the first time I ever saw a judge really put contestants in their place. Michael, who was so cocky last season, (for good reason, he won) was totally silenced and moody when Charlie Palmer showed up as a judge. I don’t know if it was because he was intimidated from the supposed favoritism showed to his brother, but I have never seen such arrogant people immediately silenced by intimidation. This was what first made me want to learn more about this man. I remember Googling him the night I watched the episode.

Charlie Palmer’s style is called “progressive American” which he describes as a combination of “rambunctious flavors and unexpected combinations with a deep and lasting infusion of classical French cuisine.” Palmer was influenced by his childhood experiences working in his family's vegetable garden, and since then has been an advocate of farm over factory food. In 1988, he made a landmark commitment to creating dishes featuring regional American ingredients at his restaurant Aureole open in Manhattan, New York.

Over the years, Palmer has opened thirteen restaurants across the country. He has also started opening wine shops and boutique hotels. Just from experiencing his restaurant, you can tell, Charlie Palmer is very into wine. He also hosts a charity event every year called "Pigs and Pinot," where chefs pair the two ingredients in diffrent ways.  Other accolades include: two James Beard Awards, and one Michelin Star awarded for both of his Aureole locations in New York and Las Vegas for 2007-2010.

I started out the night in a bad mood. Parking was awful. It took us twenty minutes to get from the entrance of the hotel to the parking garage. I guess they had a lot of events going on at Mandaly Bay. We ended up giving up, and parking across the way at the Luxor Hotel instead. It’s not a bad idea if you have an event to go to at Mandalay Bay. It was a short jaunt over to Mandalay, and saved us the time of searching for a spot for twenty more minutes in their enormous parking garage. Once we were inside, my mood improved slightly, except for having to dodge tourists, theatre goers, and wedding parties, to get to the entrance of the restaurant. You can see from the picture just how busy it was in front of the restaurant. The entrance of the restaurant was instantly calming. There is a hostess at the opening who directs you either to an elevator or to a set of stairs in which you descend down into the belly of the restaurant. The stair option, which we opted for, takes you on a journey around a giant glass tower filled with wine. You wind down the giant wine tower in which women dressed in black spandex outfits, (think Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible except with more cleavage) are hooked to wires and ascend and descend the tower getting various bottles of wine. The staircase wraps around the tower about three times, so you get to inspect the enormous wine collection from every angle, and the wine angels as well (wink wink).

The hosts greeted us immediately upon descending, and we had only a short wait before they lead us to our table. We were seated in the middle of a bench style seating arrangement. There were couples on either side of us. I was a little disappointed in not having a view of the wine tower,( I was on the bench facing away from the tower), but the ambiance was relaxing with light wood and opaque glass everywhere. We were greeted by our waiter and given our choice of water. We opted for Lake Mead’s finest, as we were more concerned with the wine. This is where you can tell,( if the giant wine tower didn’t tip you off before), that Charlie Palmer is really into wine. The waiter brings out an electronic tablet, and launches into a ten minute speech about how to use the thing to find the wine you want. You can search by region, type, price, bottle, glass, foot size of the women who stomped the grapes, etc. We spent the first twenty minutes just playing with the thing. The bottles ranged from $35 to $6,000, which was the most expensive one we could find, but I am sure that we missed some categories. This tablet was like the wine connoisseur’s Xbox 360.

We opted for a 1997 Wittmann Westhofner Steingrube Riesling Trocken, from Germany. It was a dry Riesling and went very well with our tasting menu. I have to admit, that the best part was picking it out. We had fun just playing with the tablet, putting several thousand dollar bottles on the list then taking them off again. Once we finally ordered our bottle, the waitress came around with several different bread rolls. I opted for the soft pretzel roll with kosher salt, and my guest picked the wheat baguette. The pretzel roll was the favorite, and he asked the waitress when she came around again for a pretzel roll as well. They were soft, salty, and crunchy at the same time, it was and very good.

For dinner, we decided to go with Charlie Palmer’s signature parallel tasting menu. This is where the chef takes an ingredient and prepares them two ways and serves them side by side. The benefit to this option is you get to try more things than you would just ordering off the regular menu. The downside is if you choose this option, everyone at your table must do it as well. Not a great selection for a large group as it is $85 per person, but for just two it was perfect. There is also a wine pairing you can choose which adds $55 more per person, and they give you a different wine with each of your four courses.

The first course the secret ingredient was Dungeness crab. They prepared it two ways; the first was a Dungeness Crab and Ahi Tuna Mille Feuillet with a coconut/lime froth. The crab and tuna were so fresh and the coconut froth was amazing, it brought out the sweetness of the crab and enhanced the Ahi perfectly. The second was a seared Dungeness crab cake with papaya salsa and Yuzu aioli. I remember commenting on how fresh it tasted the crab cake was light and not too oily. The salsa and Yuzu made a strange but tasty combination with the cake. Both my dining partner and I both agreed that the Mille Feuillet was by far our favorites.  I really liked that they served them side by side so you could try a little of one, then the other and compare the flavors. It was a very pleasurable menu.

 
The second course the special ingredient was salmon. The dish at the top was a house made salmon Angelotti with wilted pea tendrils and olive tomato emulsion. It was fresh pasta rolled with smoked salmon and a nice light tomato sauce. It was pasta was light and very fresh. The salmon flavor was present but not overpowering. The dish at the bottom was an olive oil poached wild king salmon with citrus braised fennel and sambal buerre blanc. The salmon was very nicely poached and the olive oil flavor came through agreeably. The Fennel was delicious paired with the salmon and the sauce was great, almost a curry undertone to the buerre blanc. I kept going back and forth between which one I liked best, I loved the salmon and braised fennel from the second dish, but the pasta in the first was extremely good. I think the salmon flavor came through more on the second dish.

Between the second and third course our waiter came up and asked us if we wanted coffee with our desserts? I looked at him puzzled, and asked if it was a four course menu? Yes, he replied. Well we only have had two courses…he went back to his computer puzzled, then came back to us apologized and said our third course was coming up. This is where the service starts to get really bad. Not that it was amazing from the beginning, our wine came way after our first course, and our water glasses were not getting filled, but after the second course the service deteriorated. Knowing that this restaurant has one Michelin star, and that service is part of getting the star awarded, I was a little put off at the way we were treated. I had to ask for more water several times, and after our meal was finished, we were not even asked if we wanted anything else, or given the check for probably half hour after you would expect to. I know sometimes you have to ask for the check, but they were not even around to ask for it. Regardless the food was good, but I just wanted to point that out, especially when there is two waiters per table. Maybe the waiters were having an off night.

When the third course came the secret ingredients were mushrooms and potatoes. The dish on the left was Seared diver sea scallop with Yukon gold potato gnocchi, morel mushrooms, and fava beans. (insert slurping sound). The gnocchi was amazing, salty and crunch and soft all at the same time. It paired wonderfully with the scallop which was well seared and had great flavor. I love the shape as well as the flavor of morel mushrooms so I was very happy to see them on the menu. The dish on the right was Japanese pepper- Wagyu Beef strip loin with grilled abalone mushrooms and sweet potato fries. The abalone mushrooms were the star of this dish, they actually look like abalone (hence the name). The beef was well cooked and tender but was not well seasoned. The sweet potato fries were good, not spectacular. I would defiantly say that the scallop dish was my favorite. Other things that I really liked, which most of the time are overlooked, are the plates. Each plate was separated for the pairing, but fit the shape of the food and showed off the aesthetics of the meal perfectly. The inside of the restaurant  followed the plates. It had a lot of details that really made you feel relaxed and at ease. They modern dining room had an elegant but not overly stuffy feel. The interior overall had a well thought out and tranquil quality.

Fourth course, dessert. Because we ordered the parallel menu, I did not have a choice of dessert, because you know, if I had my choice, it would have been something chocolate! I suffered through this non-chocolate pairing nonetheless. The parallel ingredients were blueberry and lemon. We started with a blueberry meyer lemon financier, this was paired with a lemon mascarpone semifreddo with a blueberry lemon verbena sorbet. Maybe it was because it was not chocolate, but this was my least favorite course of the night. The financier (which is like a flat  blueberry muffin) was a little dry and I could not taste the lemon flavor at all. The mascarpone semifreddo was my favorite on the plate, but hard to eat because it was so frozen that you could not get a fork or spoon into it, and when you did, it broke apart and went careening across the table. (We both did it, so it was not just my clumsiness). Lastly, the sorbet was way too sour, it made us both do the sour face thing. The pastry chefs also gave us a complimentary dish of deserts, which we shared and agreed that there was nothing spectacular, dry chocolate cookie, and  wafer crispy things. By this time I was getting annoyed with the lack of service, so the dinner seemed to go downhill.
 

Overall, I thought the dinner was very good, but again not what I expected from a Michelin stared restaurant. The first two courses were marvelous. The second two, while good, were not spectacular. The services would be the thing that could be improved. Especially when spending this much money on your meal, you expect to be taken care of very well. The strength of this restaurant would have to be the ambiance and decor. They went above and beyond the normal restaurant and have just the right amount of kitschy-ness (wine tablet, and wine tower) that a Vegas restaurant needs to compete with the other thousands of restaurants, but did not go so far as to be tacky (i.e. giant frog with a cowboy hat).  Still have not decided where to go next month. This will have to be a suprise, until next time...
~ Wanna-Be-Foodie...AKA Lady Foie Gras