Las Vegas is a weird town to me. I see why people go there, but the things most people go to don’t really attract me. I’m not much of a gambler, I hate losing money and I understand the odds so I know I’m not likely to win anything. I’m not really into clubs and bars. Both can be a lot of fun, however since I am not looking for a hookup most of their magic is lost on me. Vegas clubs are worse than regular clubs for this as many of the girls are prostitutes. Even if I had nothing morally against pre-marital sex, I would still not be interested in whores. I love the idea of the vegas show, and there are many that interest me, but the cost of tickets is a major turn off. I really wanted to see the Blue Man Group, but there is no way im paying $120+ for a ticket.
The one part of Vegas I love is all the world class restaurants. The selection and quality of restaurants in Vegas is hard to beat. Especially in such close proximity to each other. So when I go to Vegas I want to have at least one amazing meal. Cost be damned, thats what I’m looking for. On my recent trip it seemed I was the only one who had this interest and while I could go alone it just seems sorta pathetic.
Our last night in Las Vegas I convinced my best friend Manny(Sendog), and his brother Mike(Landolf) to go out to eat with me. We were staying in The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, and while I’m sure I could have talked them into hitting just about any Casino on the strip for dinner, I knew they wanted to hit the clubs so I decided to limit our choices to Mandalay. Mandalay is stuffed with good restaurants. I want to try them all… High on my list are StripSteak, Fleur De Lys, RM Seafood, and Aureole. Manny had taken one of our cocktail waitresses to RM for sushi so that was out. Steak had been mentioned all weekend so StripSteak seemed the likely choice, however, on a previous trip to Vegas I ate at Aureole and it was easily the best meal I’ve ever had so I was sorta leaning towards a return engagement.
On our way through the hotel lobby to the casino we passed the lounge entrance to Mix every trip. I had never given the place any thought since I didn’t realize it was a restaurant. However this time Manny stopped us at the door to look at the menu. He told us that he had eaten there on a previous trip and that he had enjoyed it. Looking at the menu I wasn’t impressed so I was trying to get Manny and Mike to move on down the road to the main cluster of restaurants. The Mix bouncer however had different idea. He jumped into our conversation and said you guys should eat here. This is an Alain Ducasse restaurant he is the top chef in the world. Now I think Ferran Adria and Thomas Keller among many others might have something to say about that. The bouncer had a point though, Alain Ducasse does have more Michelin stars than any other chef in the world.
Taking his recommendation we headed into the elevator. Everything else aside Mix is an impressive place to visit. Being on the 64th floor of The Hotel at Mandalay Bay the view is incredible. Since Mandalay is at the end/beginning of the strip you see the entire strip from Mix. There are two entrances to Mix a lounge entrance and a restaurant entrance. We came up through the lounge entrance and as such had to walk through the lounge to get to the restaurant. This place seemed like a great place to hang out, I will without a doubt be spending time in the lounge next time I hit Vegas. The restaurant has a very striking look. Its all done in some sort of off white, almost a gray. Which is not to say it looks dirty more of just white but not bright. This is helped by the muted lighting. The main dinning room is surrounded by thousands of hand blown clear glass bulb which serve to separate the restaurant from the lounge and kitchen. Inside the dinning room tables line the windows providing the full view of the strip there are also several “pods” that you can eat in. The “pods” remind me of a white version of the cars you ride in The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.
Since we didn’t have reservations we could not get a window seat, however there was a pod available so we took that. The table settings were nice, all white and silver, as you would expect in a restaurant of this caliber. Our server was at our table very fast after we were seated and took our cocktail order. He returned shortly after to explain the menu to us. The menu is in two parts, the first part is dishes Alain Ducasse has made famous at his restaurants around the world and the second is the menu he developed exclusively for Mix. If this restaurant falls down anywhere for me it’s in the menu. I love food and as such when I see a menu I usually have a hard time deciding, often I can’t narrow my choices down to 3-4 let alone one. At Mix nothing really stood out to me in the entree section, and only one appetizer caught my eye. I found out later that they offer a tasting menu, but it was not offered to us, perhaps because it was Sunday night.
I had decided to order the dry aged fillet, and some sides, not surprisingly the steaks were a la carte. When our waiter returned to take our order Manny asked him what he thought was best on the menu. Our server recommended the Filet Mignon Rossini. This raised my suspicion a bit as this was the most expensive item on the menu by a good amount at $69. His description of the dish however showed that he was well educated in the menu but it also showed he really did like the dish. Upon his recommendation we all ordered the Rossini. We also ordered creamed spinach, the mix mac and cheese with ham, and a wild mushroom fricasee for sides. Seeing as how the one thing that stood out to me on the menu was an appetizer we had to order that as well so we ordered the Charcuterie sampler.
Pretty much as soon as our waiter took our order the bread course arrived. This bread basket was anything but ordinary. It contained 5 different types of bread, small french rolls, sliced sourdough, black and white sesame seed rolls, a walnut and raisin bread and focaccia. This was served with a lightly salted butter and peanut butter. Peanut butter, weird I know, but this was not ordinary peanut butter. For one it was sweet, but only barely and had a depth of flavor that I was not expecting. It was also chunky but only slightly as if they had almost ground the peanuts to smooth but stopped just shy. I personally felt the regular butter was too lightly salted, but I’m a salt lover so this is probably a personal issue. The peanut butter however was amazing and complimented the walnut bread perfectly.
Charcuterie sampler:
This sampler consisted of San Daniele secolo prosciutto, Italian rosemary cotto ham, assorted dried sausages. It was accompanied by finely sliced cornichons a house made whole grain mustard and lightly grilled sourdough bread. The meats on this plate were for lack of a better word perfect. The prosciutto stunned me, I love prosciutto its salty goodness is one of my favorite tastes. This prosciutto was sliced paper thin and was etherial in taste. It almost melted on your tongue and the taste was delicate but at the same time flat out awesome. I’m not a huge cotto fan as i find it to be to strong, again what we got was clearly cotto, but somehow something more, yet another amazing meat. The dried sausage we got was a duck sausage and while the serving was not in any way skimpy it wasn’t enough! I am not a fan of either pickles or mustard but both of these condiments were well done and complimented the charcuterie perfectly. This appetizer seriously raised the bar for what I expected from the main course and thankfully I was not dissapointed.
Filet Mignon Rossini
The Filet Mignon Rossini is a dry aged Filet topped with pan seared Foie Gras and sliced black truffle. The filet is served on a wine and beef reduction and with a side of “fork smashed” potatoes. As a disclaimer I hate mushrooms, I loathe them, they are without a doubt one of my most hated things on earth. I am also not a fan of liver, though up till this point I had never tried foie gras. You might be asking yourself why would a person who hates mushrooms and liver order this dish. Well the say what happens in Vegas… Seriously though I’m trying to breakdown whats left of my food dislikes, and I figured if there was a place to try new things this was it.
This dish looked impressive, I was expecting a small filet with a tiny slice of Foie Gras and a sliver or two of truffle. As you can see from the picture this was not the case at all. The Filet was a good size and the Foie Gras was at least an inch thick and almost covered the whole filet, the angle of the pic doesn’t show this well, but I promise seen from the top only a thin slice of the beef was visible. The truffle slices where seemingly everywhere.
I ordered my steak very rare as I almost always do. If you are not ordering your steaks rare, stop, just stop. Order chicken or go to Denny’s either way stop wasting perfectly good steak by over cooking it. The steak was cooked perfectly as I would expect it to be, but it still must be stated, this steak was cooked perfectly. I made sure my first bite had a little bit of everything to give the dish a full taste. I have eaten many fine meals in my life but this first bite blew me away. I sat there for the better part of two minutes just savoring the taste of this steak. It was one of if not the best steaks I’ve ever had and then you add the Foie and truffles, this should be illegal, seriously i almost didn’t want to continue but how could I stop when there was so much more to eat. The seared Foie Gras was so good I could probably live on nothing but. I saved some till the end of the meal which was a mistake as it wasn’t as good cold as it was hot but it was still very good.
The truffles were not at all what I expected though to be honest I’m not sure what I expected. They had an earthiness about them that was reminiscent of mushrooms but so much more. I cannot say I loved them, but I do not hate them. I did find that I liked them much better when eaten with the steak and foie gras than by themselves. Their taste was overpowering and not that pleasant to my palate on their own, but with the richness of the steak and foie gras their flavor was part of the symphony and not the discordant note they were on their own.
With the Rossini came a side of “fork smashed” potatoes. I figured this was just hype and that I would be getting rough mashed potatoes. What I got was exactly what was described. Shocking I know! The texture of these potatoes was only vaguely that of mashed potatoes, overall I loved the texture and I will be trying to recreate this as home. The texture really added to the dish and each bite was a reminder that this was not an everyday meal.
Manny had ordered several sides to go with our meal. I didn’t like the mac and cheese with ham, I don’t know what the flavor was but I did not like it at all. I think it might have been the ham they used combined with the aged cheese I’m sure they used. I would not recommend this dish, however Manny and Mike loved it and almost liked the plate clean. The creamed spinach was exceptional, I ate most of this myself as my compatriots were gorging on the mac and cheese. We also had the wild mushroom fricassee but I did not try it. I had tried enough new things for one meal. Mike also avoided this dish, as well as the truffles. I learned later he like me dislikes mushrooms. Manny ate and enjoyed the fricassee.
Oddly for food of this caliber and richness I was not stuffed and uncomfortable after the entree and was looking forward to dessert. Mike wasn’t into dessert, I think he was wanted to get to the clubs, but Manny said, and I agree 100%, that you can’t not get dessert with a meal like this.
As opposed to the regular menu the dessert menu has many items that interested me. I narrowed it down to the chocolate souffle, the napoleon, or the mix candy bar. In the end I went with the souffle since it came with pistachio ice cream and I love pistachio ice cream. Mike and Manny decided to share and order of the pistachio ice cream with caramelized nuts and a peanut butter banana sauce. My ice cream came on a bed of meringue curls, I have no idea how they made this but it was good. The souffle was ok, not bad in any way just not amazing. The ice cream was the same though Manny seemed to enjoy it more than I did.
After our dessert they brought us a house made madeline with a warm Nutella dipping sauce. This was a nice touch and they madelines were excellent though the sauce didn’t seem to add much in my opinion. Then came our check. It came to $370 and while not cheap considering we each had two cocktails, appetizers, filet mignon, and dessert I do not feel it was over priced at all.
While writing this post I had to look back at the Mix menu to get a few details and oddly enough having eaten there, several things on the menu now call to me. I guess I just wasn’t in a trusting mood when we sat down. I would love to try the Rack of Colorado Lamb, the Cod Brandade and the Pressed Chicken and Foie Gras among others. I guess in the future I need to through caution to the wind and just trust the bouncer. On our way down I had to shake the bouncers hand and thank him for his recommendation. He smiled and told me never doubt a fat man when he tells you about good food. I will take this lesson to heart.
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