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| - Yusho? More like You-should-not-go.
Much fanfare surrounded the opening of this place a few months back, with the Weekly quickly proclaiming it the "best new strip restaurant." Hogwash. I love the concept of a Taiwanese-style night market, and maybe the flagship spot in Chicago delivers, but our experience was quite sad. We ordered the "grilled" lamb, the Logan ramen, the fried chicken, and the pork buns. The lamb was more boiled than grilled, lacking any crispy texture or smokey flavor. Such a bummer. The ramen was a travesty of thin and flavorless broth, with some weird fried pork suspended on a wire on the edge of the bowl, and an overcooked egg. The pork was tender and tasty, the best part of the dish, but it made little sense for all the fuss of the presentation. If you can't pull off a rich, complex broth, and if you can't manage to produce a soft egg, you don't deserve to have ramen on your menu, end of story. The fried chicken was dense, overly crunchy, and dry. You have to work pretty hard to mess up fried chicken, but Yusho pulled it off. The pork buns were the highlight of the meal, but everyone is doing these right now and while Yusho's are fine they don't hold a candle to the ones at Fat Choy.
No complaints about service, in fact I feel bad as I was ranting about the ramen when one of the kindly wait staff approached with our next dish. Oops, sorry buddy, nothing personal. But when you go to the strip and pay strip prices and then, once again, fall prey to soulless and overly fussy dishes meant to please the lowest common denominator of mass acceptance, you get pissed. Shame on me, a local, for ever thinking these trendy strip concepts will actually deliver the goods. Fooled again.
It was a saturday night, around 9pm, and the place was dead. I was curious to check out what's happening at Monte Carlo, since it's the first time in my ten years in Vegas that anything interesting is taking shape at this place. Signs aren't good. No one coming or going; no action, no energy. It felt like we were the only ones who missed a tornado warning. So, overall, a pretty disappointing outing. Shame on me for thinking it would be otherwise.
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