Las Vegas steakhouse’s Twinkie not your average treat

It came to him in a dream.

“I’m not joking,” said Chef Gerald Chin, vice president of culinary, steakhouse operations for the Mina Group, whose restaurants include Stripsteak at Mandalay Bay. “I always dream about food. I keep a pad on my nightstand.”

And that morning about three weeks ago, he wrote: “Caviar. Twinkie.”

Yup, a Caviar Twinkie, a new feature at Stripsteak.

Executive pastry chef Vivian Chang had just started working at Stripsteak when Chin told her about his idea. He asked her to come up with a lighter version of the restaurant’s corn muffin recipe. They ordered molds.

“The next thing you know, we have a Caviar Twinkie,” he said.

Which has nothing beyond appearance in common with the real thing. The Caviar Twinkie is corn-muffin batter baked into a small golden loaf, filled with creme fraiche whipped to stiff peaks and seasoned with red onion, egg yolks, chives, the condiment red yuzu kosho and yuzu juice and topped with Kaluga caviar. It’s heated slightly and served in Japanese stoneware to highlight the warm exterior and cool creaminess inside. It’s $35.

A previous version of this story incorrectly reported what kind of caviar was used with the Twinkie. It was Kaluga.