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| - My dining experience at Joël Robuchon started with a ride in a gaudy-ass gold-colored limo with leather top. No joke. The limo was right on time (as opposed to being five minutes late like us), picked the four of us up in front of our hotel and whisked us to The Mansion, a part of MGM that perhaps 98% of Vegas visitors have never seen, heard, or set foot on (present company included).
So we were taken to this gated entrance, cobblestoned driveway (which was not exactly fun to navigate in 5" red soles) and lush indoor garden surrounded by balconies from the 29 plush suites (which apparently requires a line of credit of $300,000 to qualify to stay). Then we were ushered by our hostess through the corridors flanked by high roller tables and $25 slot machines, directly to the heavy doors of Joël Robuchon.
Behind the heavy doors was a small yet whimsical space dominated by purple and black velvet - opulent almost to the point of gaudy (but not quite!) - and filled with hushed conversations of other dinner patrons.
Then it turned into a French lesson. The hub, fortunately, is fluent in French (or should I say Canadian French), having born and raised in ON so it was somewhat interesting hearing him converse in French with the server and maitre'd. Thankfully, the menu contains English translation and the server does speak English with a lilting French accent, so it didn't end up being too embarrassing for the rest of the group.
We unfortunately did not have enough time for the $350 / 16-course menu so we settled for the five-course a la carte menu of l'amuse bouche - a serving of delicious, delicate black caviar which I could've had three of; appetizer (the French, just like the rest of the world outside of America, calls this part of the meal entrée. For the Americans who do not believe me - I kindly refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrà e); soup; main course; dessert; and finally moka and thé (coffee and tea) with petit fours.
As soon as we ordered, we were approached by a smiling server pushing a bread cart filled with what could've been twenty different kinds of petite carbohydrate goodness. Between the four of us, we had saffron focaccia, basil focaccia, bacon-filled bread (which we verified is not French, but rather a genius creation of the chef), and lots and lots of traditional French petit pain.
The rest of the meal was a revelation that we were oohing and aahing throughout. My appetizer consists of king crab with cauliflower cream and seasonal vegetable - an unlikely combination that turned out to be delicious and refreshing. For soup, I had the light, frothy and fluffy chestnut cream with foie gras, bacon bits, and lardons foam. Then I had the braised veal cheek with galangal-and-ginger-infused Thai broth, vegetable couscous and brocolli as the main meal and finally a banana creme caramel with yuzu ice-cream, whose tanginess went really well with the crunchy sweet honeycomb candy.
We sat back, sated and content while waiting for our server to bring out the coffee and tea. Ordinarily I would've chosen a pot of green tea to cap off the meal, however the experience was anything but ordinary so I settled for a strong, black French press coffee, hold the cream and sugar.
The bitterness of the coffee complemented the petit fours that we had a lot of trouble selecting from the 45 available on the cart. My absolute favorite was the blueberry opera cake and eclair, although the strawberry cheesecake dipped in white chocolate was pretty darn good as well.
As we were paying, the same hostess who greeted us at The Mansion came right by, advised us that the limo is ready, and off we went to our next stop: XS.
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