04.20.08
Review of Little Buddha, Las Vegas, Saturday February 2008
in the Palms Casino Resort, 702-942-7777
Great for: people-watching, chocolate cake, getting drunk on sophisticated cocktails, scoping out high rollers
February is not only my birthday month, it’s my friend S’s as well. She decided we needed to celebrate in style, so we planned a Vegas trip with our boyfriends and two other friends L and K. This place is the giant Vegas sister of Buddha Bar Paris. We definitely liked the music and the drinks.
My shrimp and scallop dumplings with spicy dipping sauce were pretty good. The Boyfriend’s jalapeño yellowtail with tosazu sauce and yellow tobiko was better. He let me chase the last few bits of tobiko around in the delicious sauce. S’s spicy lettuce wrap had spicy tuna, crab, salmon and yellowtail with fresh endive, which was tasty. Basically it’s a hobby kit of fish plus leaves you can spread them on; a good dish for sharing.
My entrée of crispy skin-on opakapaka came in sizzled chile pepper tosazu over bok choy with Chinese broccoli and an enormous baby carrot. It was too salty, the fish was a bit chewy, and the carrot was raw. It was the strangest thing – clearly a baby carrot by the shape of the leaves and the smoothness of the carrot, it looked and tasted disconcerting. Other than that the dish was OK. The Boyfriend’s Maui onion-crusted mahi mahi in lobster red miso cream with another giant baby carrot, a potato and Chinese broccoli was not very good. I am sorry to report that the onions were the best part. The fish was eh. L and K shared the special of Kobe steak with shiitake mushroom & gai-lan, which tasted all right but was way too chewy for something calling itself Kobe. In fact, it was too chewy for any medium-cooked steak.
Discouraged by the quality of the other food, I opted to drink dessert instead. My Little Buddha coffee with Stoli Razberi, crème de cacao, Bailey’s and cream on top was delicious. And the Boyfriend’s liquid center chocolate cake with Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream was probably the best food we had all night
The drinks, on the other hand, were uniformly recommendable. I tried the China Girl, Sweet Buddha Love, and Mighty Joe Yang, which were all good, though perhaps too sweet for male tastes. At least that’s what the boyfriends complained. This is the kind of place you’d come with a big group of raucous partygoers who are less concerned with quality of cuisine and more with getting wasted on good cocktails without spending too much money. The décor is classic faux-Asian, with giant Buddhas everywhere and a lot of different cultural artifacts all happily coexisting. The service was not bad. If I ever come back here it will be for drinks at the bar before a party upstairs in one of the crazy luxury suites.
Rating: 4 / 10
Our cost: $430 for 6 people (2 cocktails per person)
Noise level: high
Chance of walking in: low.
The bars upstairs: Moon, Ghostbar and the Playboy Club are OK. Not really worth waiting in line with a bunch of yobs from Jersey (or losers who look like them), and the Playboy “Bunnies” are nothing special. I’ve seen much hotter girls dancing at the other, better clubs on the Strip. In fact, even the regular waitresses at the Wynn are better-looking. The good thing about Rain and Moon, though, is that you can go out on the balconies and get a panoramic view of the Strip, with all the lights and everything.
