Vegas-only dishes and more on the menu at new Strip steakhouse
Let it never be said that celebrated chef Michael Mina is afraid of bright colors. Or prints. Or mixing them with feathers and gold. Plus, caviar Twinkies and things on trolleys. His new Bourbon Steak, opening Dec. 17 in the Four Seasons, fearlessly commingles these design and menu highlights.
Spray-painted murals by Las Vegas artist Cerissa Lopez depict dripping, vibrantly colored blooms. One wall is covered in leopard print. Another in gamboling cheetahs, along the lines of the famous zebra wallpaper from Scalamandré. Feathers cascade from light fixtures, like fringes on a party dress.
Five bays and a ceiling of miniature blocks, like the sections of a chocolate bar, compose a glowing golden bar. Grab a seat to nosh on yuzu crème fraîche Twinkies heaped with caviar, or before heading to the dining room, where seafood, pasta, steaks and other dishes are prepared tableside on trolleys.
The Four Seasons restaurant is the eighth Bourbon Steak in the Mina Group and the sixth restaurant in Vegas from the James Beard Award winner and Vegas resident. The new place sports a vibe like no other Bourbon Steak, and like no other Mina spot in the city. It’s moodier, lusher, more private, a little offbeat.
The restaurant feels like the next, confident step in the chef’s ongoing exploration of the possibilities of the American steakhouse.
“It’s taking some of that classic steakhouse that you love and bringing out more of that wow factor, but it’s always product- and technique-driven, with innovation behind it,” Mina said. “Wherever Bourbon Steak is, it’s designed for where it is. In Vegas, you want an experience.”
A tale of two steakhouses
Bourbon Steak occupies the former Charlie Palmer Steak just off the Four Seasons lobby. The restaurant encompasses 8,000 square feet, with about 200 seats across the bar and lounge, dining areas and private dining rooms. StripSteak, another Mina steakhouse, lies next door in Mandalay Bay.
The proximity invites a fair question, Mina acknowledged: Why open another steakhouse so close by?
“They are definitely different restaurants, and the intent is to have different types of experiences, so we felt there was enough separation having a steakhouse in Mandalay Bay and a steakhouse in Four Seasons,” he explained.
Stripsteak is open to the casino, with a “packed-in” energy, he continued, while Bourbon Steak is fully enclosed, with columns and arches fashioning more intimate spaces.
“This is really designed to be a place where you can have dinner for five hours if you want to, or be in the lounge and listen to whatever music is there at the time, or have a nighttime experience that’s more than just dinner,” Mina said.
Stripsteak is bright. At Bourbon Steak, the architecture cups the low lighting, creating areas of gentle chiaroscuro. “In Vegas,” Mina said, “you look good and feel good because of the lighting.”
Dishes just for this Bourbon Steak
Consider the caviar Twinkie once more. It started as a special at StripSteak before finding a home on the regular menu at the new restaurant. What is essentially a buttery cornbread forms the Twinkie cake; the yuzu crème fraîche stands in for vanilla cream filling. The caviar, of course, is wholly Vegas.
“We try to put as much as we can on the top,” the chef said, knowing that just a dab certainly won’t do ya.
Among all the Bourbon Steaks, caviar Twinkies are served only in Vegas. It’s one of several dishes specific to the city.
Such as persimmon skins that become the wrappers for persimmon ravioli with stretchy stracciatella cheese, pistachio and pomegranate.
“It’s really nice and refreshing,” Mina said. “We need that mix of lighter dishes and heavier dishes we’ve found, even in the steakhouses.”
More Vegas-only dishes
Black truffle agnolotti are plumped with burrata and finished with white truffle butter on a tableside trolley. The trolleys are new to Bourbon Steak and are fitted with different toppers for chilling, sautéing, carving and other preparations. The debut seafood trolley features seasonal stone crab claws nestled in ice.
For a tomahawk steak serving two, another Vegas-only dish, the steak is seared, wrapped in hay, then set alight for smokiness before being baked in a salt crust. When the steak is finished, it’s placed on a trolley, flambéed in bourbon while still in the salt crust, and wheeled tableside.
“We crack it open at the table — the meat juices, everything that’s slow cooked in there, and the nice smokiness of the hay all coming out,” the chef said.
The hay nods to Mina’s childhood in Ellensburg, Washington, which famously exports timothy hay to Japan to feed high-end cattle.
Mina classics
Bourbon Steak standards haven’t been forgotten at the new outpost.
Tuna tartare comes with an oozy quail egg. A5 wagyu tartare might be spread across a crisp potato pavé. Lobster-brandy emulsion swaddles lobster meat, russet potatoes and seasonal vegetables in Maine lobster pot pie. Chilean sea bass arrives poached in olive oil. Prime steaks age in duck fat.
Big-eye tuna foie-poivre riffs on tournedos Rossini by swapping tuna for the beef, omitting the black truffles but keeping the foie gras, and spooning on black pepper poivre sauce. “The pepper, the tuna and the foie gras are great together,” the chef said.
A root beer float convenes Sassafras ice cream, root beer sorbet and warm chocolate chip cookies. All these dishes, plus sides like beer-battered onion rings, black truffle mac and cheese, and spinach soufflé instead of traditional creamed spinach, receive the Mina treatment.
“It’s taking the classic and elevating them with our years of experience, product and technique,” the chef said. “Anything we can do a little differently, we’ll do.”
Member perks; test kitchen
The old Charlie Palmer Steak enjoyed a substantial local following, something Mina said he kept top of mind.
“The main reason we were bullish on the space and taking our time with the remodel and not opening before we were ready is because of that fact.”
Cocktails like a Moondance with rye, pear liqueur, pomegranate, hibiscus and lemon issue from the bar; just beyond are the piano and stage for live music performances.
“This bar and this lounge — this is the space we really wanted to bring together,” Mina said. “It evolves as the night goes on.”
A membership program is in the works, with about 1oo to 125 members to start. Perks might include a monthly cocktail, to-go food, digital recipes, holiday gatherings and members-only dinners.
The kitchen at Bourbon Steak, Mina said, would be the test kitchen for the entire Mina Group. What else will the team create to stuff inside a Twinkie or showcase on a trolley or cook within a robe of salt?
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.