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| - Mundo is a new Rick Bayless restaurant in Las Vegas. I've been making annual pilgrimages to Rick Bayless's Chicago restaurants, Fronterra Grill/Topolobombo, since a coworker turned me onto them eight or nine years ago.
Rick Bayless is the man who has elevated Mexican food to a religious experience for foodies. When I asked my partner who is the chef de cuisine at home where he wanted to eat during our week in Vegas, he said "See if Rick Bayless has opened a restaurant in Vegas."
The restaurant, Mundo, is located in a Frank Gerry inspired complex of buildings near downtown Las Vegas called the "World Market Center". The development is huge and unfortunately has white elephant written all over it. I half-expected to see tumbleweeds blowing past the windows. I did a web search this morning and learned that the building owners had just defaulted on a half billion dollar loan.
Mundo itself is unpretentious, a welcome contrast to the overblown ghost town it sits in. We were there on a Monday night and the place was barely half full. We were seated and the chips arrive promptly with a red salsa. Up to this point, anybody unfamiliar with Rick Bayless would have been lulled into thinking "this reminds me of Chevy's" and "maybe I should be a little wild and order the Cadillac margarita".
Then you eat your first chip with the salsa and your taste buds search the salsa database in your head and you realize you haven't had this variation. It's a thin sauce that coats your chip and imparts this smoky, roasted tomato/chili flavor. That Cadillac margarita comes and goes down easily. There is none of the aftertaste you get with high fructose corn syrup.
What Rick Bayless does as well as any chef that I've experienced is that he plays "flavor notes". This is my own terminology for how I experience food. A good chef can register a flavor note or two per dish. Bayless hits several. It's the difference between hearing "Chopsticks" and a Bach sonata.
I skipped an appetizer so I could relax and enjoy the cocktail, chips, and guacamole. My partner had the Mundo Chopped Salad. There's probably ten ingredients with a chipotle molasses vinaigrette. I take a bite and hear music.
My entree is a chile relleno stuffed with filet mignon, potatoes, wild mushrooms, and goat cheese covered with a smoked chili sauce. Our waiter warns me that the dish can be too spicy for American tastes. Well into my Cadillac margarita, I throw caution to the window and tell him to bring it on. The chili packs a punch but it is a couple of steps in back of my threshold. The filet mignon is tender and favorable. I eat everything except for the stem of the chili. My partner has the Sarape de Pollo. It looks like a quesidilla but is anything but. It is a piece of chicken pounded to look like a tortilla then it's topped with black beans, manchego, mint chimichurri, guacamole, and pico de gallo. He raves about the dish.
We have banana empanadas and tres leche cake for dessert. I barely get a bite of the empanads from my partner but the tres leche cake holds its own in comparison. Our server, Jose, has been gracious and attentive throughout the meal. There is nothing rote about the service. He makes suggestions during the meal to heighten our experience - like adding a bite of the unused guacamole with the chile relleno or going for the Cadillac.
We leave thinking that regular Mexican food will never taste the same again. Until Bayless opens a restaurant in San Francisco, we will have to make pilgrimages to Chicago and Las Vegas.
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