Friday, December 31, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Mesa Grill

Celebrity Worship: The staff at Bobby Flay's new Mesa Grill shouldn't be quite so proud that the chef was actually in the kitchen

Mesa Grill has a tiered dining room, the better to see the large grill and rotisserie in the center. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

So there we were at Bobby Flay's new Mesa Grill at Caesars Palace, and these were virtually the first words to come from our waitress' mouth -- after, maybe, "hello":

"Would you like some bottled water for the table? We have Saratoga sparkling or flat."

And I'm thinking, odd, that brand-new kitchen and no tap water available?

Ah, geez, Bobby. Maybe this is still the drill in New York, but high-end Las Vegas restaurants gave it up a long time ago.

Restaurant critics think of it as the great water scam, and many of us around the country railed on it for a while, until pretty much driving it back into the ground (source of all of that water -- or not, as the case may be). Much of the pique stemmed from the fact that there's a huge markup (up to 600 percent in some cases) on bottled water in most restaurants, and there was a time when some of them strong-armed customers to "choose" one, the customer erroneously thinking that it would be included with dinner or acquiescing rather than to be thought cheap. Then the server would fetch another when the first ran dry, without asking (but while charging, of course) -- something they'd never do with any other beverage that didn't involve free refills. To quote a Texas oilman I once overheard tell a waiter: " `Evian' is `naive' spelled backward."

My own feeling is this sort of thing is an insult. I like bottled water, even have a few favorite brands (and no, Saratoga isn't among them) and I know that nearly all restaurants sell it. So if I wanted a bottle, I could go ahead and ask for it, now couldn't I? But if wine is my primary beverage with dinner, I might not want more than few sips of water. Then there's the fact that many high-end restaurants filter their tap water these days. (Except that, judging from the taste, Mesa Grill isn't among them. Whoops.)

Then our waitress asked if we'd been in before. Well, no; the restaurant's only been open since October. Well, she said, the chef is Bobby Flay, and this is his first restaurant outside New York, and he's in the kitchen right now!

Wow!

OK, so maybe she thought we'd just wandered in, had never heard of Flay, and didn't know Jack -- or rather, Bobby. And, maybe that we didn't know celebrity chefs were pretty common in Las Vegas these days. Whoops again.

It was a new experience; no server in a celebrity-chef restaurant has ever pointed out that the guy was in the kitchen at that very moment -- even when I knew for a fact that he or she was. Somehow I can't imagine it happening in the restaurants of those who are a little more, shall we say, low-profile. Heck, most of the staffs tend to keep quiet, I'm assuming because they want customers to think that celebrity chefs are in all of their kitchens all the time. (And some of them do manage that, though that's for another time.)

And then, minutes after she told a neighboring table that Flay was in the kitchen, I saw him walk out the door, at 9 o'clock, sans chef's whites. Whoops again.

So by this time I'm thinking this guy's Mr. Showmanship chops would embarrass Liberace and the food's going to put me to sleep. But then I looked more closely at the menu, and saw the likes of jerk-spiced bluenose snapper with papaya-black-bean salsa and black-eyed pea risotto. Holey moley; talk about creative fusion -- and I could see it all working, although an aversion to the perfumy nature of papaya prompted me to move on.

How about a grilled venison chop with cranberry-cascabel pepper chile sauce and sweet potato-chipotle gratin ($37)? "Farm-raised, of course," our waitress said, and yes, of course (hunters not being the most reliable of purveyors), but that's a good thing with venison, which in the wild can be a little too lean, sometimes just a little too gamy.

This venison was moist and had just enough of the characteristic flavor, which was at once complemented by the cranberry and brightened by the cascabel. Sweet potatoes and chipotle? Who knew? These were great flavor notes that did more for sweet potatoes than all those horrendous "candied" versions ever could.

Elements of surprise and great flavor notes are Flay's way, it seems. Same theme, different song in the roasted pumpkin soup ($10) with pomegranate and pecan relish. Nice textural contrasts as well. Pumpkin soups and same-vein butternut squash soups are seasonal all-over-the-place things, but never have I tasted one this surprising -- and this good.

Nice touches in the cornmeal-crusted oysters ($16), too. I don't know how the heck Flay manages this one, but the oysters had both a crisp, substantial (but not overly so) crust, while inside they were plump and faintly crunchy in that only-the-freshest-oysters way, and bore the flavor of the sea. Accenting them further was a nicely balanced sweet/hot sauce. I even liked the fact that they balanced the shells on little beds of cornmeal instead of the classic rock salt, which can get a little messy.

We felt compelled to try a Flay classic, and so chose the coffee-spice-rubbed rotisserie filet mignon ($34), which is prepared on the big circular grill that dominates the tiered dining room. I can't say I detected any coffee flavor, try as I might, but the rub did create a nice crust on the meat, which was exceptionally juicy as a result. A wild mushroom-ancho chile sauce and horseradish potato gratin rounded things out quite well.

Ditto for a vanilla-black currant swirl parfait with spicy strawberry caramel sauce ($12), which was a little tough to access with the spoon provided, but worth digging for.

Also rounding things out nicely: a basket that contained wonderful blue-corn muffins, an interesting (and very good) cranberry-sesame bread, and ciabatta that was OK but could've been a little crustier. There was also a margarita list (margaritas going nicely with spicy, except that I want to stress that this food is not gratuitously spicy), with around 10 specialty margaritas, 48 tequilas -- even a flight of Del Maguey Single Village Mescals.

There is a decent enough wine list as well, although the 2002 Seghesio Zinfandel ($40) we ordered from the list turned out to be a 2003 when it was delivered.

Whoops again.

So the front of the house at Mesa Grill could use a little work -- to root out those vestiges of New York state of mind and smooth out those snags.

The back of the house, however, couldn't be better.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are unannounced and done anonymously at Review-Journal expense.