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| - We chose Mesa Grill for our last dinner in Vegas. I'd heard so much great stuff about it, but turns out it was just okay.
As you'd expect with pretty much any upscale restaurant in a large Vegas hotel, the decor is over the top and the prices match. The food, while beautiful, didn't have the flavor to match its appearance.
The complimentary bread basket they brought us looked great and included garlic jalapeƱo bread, corn muffin (made with swirled blue and yellow cornmeal), and walnut raisin bread. The muffins were dry and pretty bland. The two breads were tasty, though.
What had sold me on coming here was the dish that Flay is supposedly known for--the tiger shrimp and roasted garlic corn tamale. The shrimp and tamale were quite delicious, but the creamy sauce covering the whole dish was way salty and totally killed it for us.
The smoked chicken and black bean quesadilla was pretty dang smoky, which is not my jam (that was my own fault, though--it's right there in the name).
The cornmeal crusted chile relleno was beautiful, and had great crunch with the cornmeal coating, but some of the eggplant was undercooked and the flavors weren't really doing it for me.
The far and away highlight of the evening was the cauliflower gratin with roasted poblano. ORDER THIS! Super creamy and cheesy, with a really nice crisped top, loads of flavor, cooked to perfection. This dish is a contender for best thing I ate this Vegas trip. So good!
The service was good.
My husband would like to take this opportunity to register his complaint about the men's restroom: the urinals were ridiculously close together with no divider. "If you weren't careful, you could run into each other!" So, there's that.
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