We’ve written on many occasions about the Longhorn on Boulder Highway, but not often about the Bighorn on E. Lake Mead Blvd. in North Las Vegas. They have the same owners and are similar, including both having restaurants with good deals that are a big part of their success. However, we pay more attention to Longhorn, which is bigger and more accessible for most. Both have a camarones special. Bighorn caters to a predominantly Hispanic customer base; hence, the coctel de camarones probably started there, then replaced the shrimp cocktail at Longhorn. It’s available 24/7 in the restaurants for $7. We tried it at Bighorn.
Served in a big glass bowl, it’s made the traditional Mexican way with cucumbers, tomatoes, lime juice, and chips on the side. There are about 10 medium-sized shrimp and you can drink the broth when you’re done. Same as the Longhorn, the food in this restaurant is good and just about everything on the menu qualifies as a bargain.
The dinner show. It was a big deal in casino showrooms a few decades back. You bought tickets to see a headliner and dinner came off a prix fixe menu and was served during the performance. With a few exceptions — Tournament of Kings at Excalibur, for example — that version of the dinner show is long past. Supper clubs with live music were also a thing. Those, too, are rare these days, though more easily found in some non-casino restaurants. Recently, two casino venues have headed back down the dinner-and-show road: Mayfair at Bellagio and Delilah at Wynn Las Vegas. We tried Delilah. Note that photos and video aren’t allowed there. We snuck in a couple, but had to go with mostly stock photos from Wynn for this review.
Room
The room is a big part of the overall experience. It’s designed as a 1950s’ Vegas showroom, but it also has a speakeasy feel, with a bar in front and a big dining area and show stage. We’ve heard complaints about it being too dark inside, but we didn’t find that to be the case. Cool place.
Dinner
Fancy. Expensive. Good. What else would you expect? We were on a comp with a big group that opted to order for the table, so we were able to try several dishes. The seafood tower was ridiculous, featuring lobster, king crab, shrimp, and oysters. It cost $299, but easily served seven, so really a $43-per-person appetizer. The big deal here is Delilah Beef Wellington. We weren’t blown away and at $189 (serves two), you can go a less-expensive route, e.g., grilled branzino ($59), ora king salmon ($53), or roasted heritage chicken ($47). Steaks start at $79 for an eight-ounce filet. Sides run $19-$37 for dishes such as carrot soufflé, broccoli di ciccio, black-truffle mashed potatoes, buttermilk-ranch chicken tenders, and a decadent mac & cheese — excuse us, macaroni gratinée made with mimolette cheese fondue & black truffle béchamel. Fancy. Expensive. Good. Here’s the menu. There’s late-night dining with a small less-expensive menu (nothing more than $49) Thurs.-Sun. from 11 pm till close.
Show
“Dinner show” is a misnomer here. You won’t see a show. The entertainment consists of a main stage with a live jazz band and singer doing classics. There’s a raised platform in the center of the room where female dancers perform, along with dancers near the stage. The performances by the singer and dancers are low-key and non-interruptive, with neither hindering conversation at our table. It makes for a pleasant dining atmosphere.
Reservations
Make them as far in advance as you can As mentioned, we were with a comped party, so we don’t know how difficult it is to get a seat off the street. However, Delilah was included on a list from Vegas Luxury magazine of the “8 Most Sought-After Reservations in Las Vegas.”
Summary
Delilah isn’t for everyone, but it’s certainly an option for something different and if the prices don’t bother you, it’s a worthwhile experience. The food wasn’t on a level of Vegas’ best, but neither was it disappointing. The whole thing seems to go best with a group rather than just two on a date. The weekend late-night option might be a good way to check it out on the “cheap.”
Bar Oysterette and Center Bar in the Sundry Food Hall at the UnCommons complex (I-215 and Durango Rd.) has a happy hour Mon.-Thurs. from 4 to 6 pm, with $3 beer, $8 wine and cocktails, and $3-$5 appetizers, including $2 oysters.
Two-dollar oysters is something we always review, so we did. Guess what? The oysters are $3, not $2. That’s not a good happy-hour special, although the bartender thought it was, because they’re $4 non-happy hour.
The one good part of the experience was the oysters. They’re served six for $18 and the presentation is beautiful: Three Blue Points and three Arcadians, accompanied by cocktail sauce, a mignonette, fresh horseradish, and lemon.
It’s a good plate, but $3 per isn’t a deal. On top of that, the whole UnCommons/Sundry thing is just plain odd. Despite a trainload of hype and what seemed like a compelling dining program, our experience at UnCommons was uncommonly more bad than good.
Way Out There
UnCommons is located directly across Durango Rd. from Durango Casino about 10 miles west of the Strip. You can get there relatively quickly taking the I-215 freeway or going west on surface streets, but it’s a trek.
Hard To Find
Yes, it’s directly across from Durango Casino, but it’s still almost hidden. Look for a small street off Durango called Maule to access.
Hard To Get In
Bar Oysterette is in the Sundry Food Hall. There’s only one sign outside over the main entrance that’s not on the main street, but faces the parking garage, but it’s fairly obvious which building it is. The problem is getting in. We walked to three apparent entrances (not the main) that were locked, then finally found a small unmarked door that was open. Are they trying to keep people out of there?
Cafeteria-esque
The space looks like a big warehouse. But not a chic New York-style industrial space. More like a big cafeteria.
Not Cool
Maybe we were expecting too much, but for whatever reason, we thought there’d be kind of a hip vibe, with the cool upper-crust of the southwest valley hanging out. No. We were there during happy hour and nothing could be described as cool going on. The bar itself is underwhelming.
Mediocre HH
In addition to the dollar bump on the oysters, the rest of the happy hour is nothing special—$3 sliders, $5 tacos, $4 beer, plus PBR and a shot of Jameson for $11! At Downtown Grand, a PBR and a shot of Evan Williams (the “Joe Special” at Furnace Bar) is $3.50.
New-Age Menu/Ordering
This is another no-paper-menu QR code ordering system. If you’re over 40, you probably don’t like it. Get the whole story on that in this earlier review.
Parking
There’s a garage with two hours free. So that’s good. After that, it’s $3-per-hour up to a 24-hour max of $15. There’s also some street parking, but with 30-minute time limits.
Summary
We’re not sayjng don’t go, we’re simply pointing out what you’re in for if you do. Heck, you could parlay with a visit to Durango Casino, which is worth at least a one-time visit. Park at Durango and walk across the street. But there’s not much reason to go just for UnCommons.
Or maybe there is, at least according to that hype train. The latest buzz is all about the “world’s greatest sandwich shop” from Italy, All’Antico Vinaio, coming to Vegas. It opened yesterday at … UnCommons.
Shin Lim is a 32-year-old Canadian-American magician. At age 24, he won the prestigious Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques award for close-up card magic. He’s also the only contestant ever to win the “America’s Got Talent” competition twice, the first for Season 13 and the second for AGT’s first “The Champions” tournament, beating out 50 winners and notable acts from a number of previous seasons.
So we’re not exaggerating when we say that Shin Lim might be the best card magician of all time. His show at the Mirage demonstrates his skills so well that you can hardly believe that what you’re seeing isn’t actual magic.
But it’s not just Lim’s show. He shares the stage with a Scottish magician-comic, Colin Cloud, a fast-talking young Scot with a lilting brogue. He opens the show and immediately launches into his interactive shtick. His first trick with audience members’ cell phones alerts you to the fact that Cloud might be to mentalism what Lim is to sleight of hand.
When Lim does his first card trick, you know what the “AGT” hullaballoo was all about. He rips a card in two and puts it back together, right before your lyin’ eyes.
Three big screens broadcast Lim’s handiwork, a giant one toward the back of the stage and two smaller ones, though plenty big, on either side. We were sitting four rows up from the stage in the far-right corner, directly under the screen, and we watched in awe as Lim’s delicate fingers manipulated the playing cards, making them appear and disappear as if he had his own personal vacuum cleaner into oblivion.
Early in the show, Lim provides some backstory; he trained to be a concert pianist until he was diagnosed with a bad case of carpal tunnel at age 20, then determined to pursue his magic career. He plays “Fur Elise” on an onstage grand piano for a bit. He talks very little, allowing the magic and the ever-dramatic soundtrack to speak for themselves. The backs of cards change suits. A joker turns into a $100 bill. He turns all the cards in a deck into a single card of an audience-member’s choice, then thousands of that card drop from the ceiling. Smoking cards emerge from his mouth. Cards magically change places in a plastic bag. And those are just the ordinary tricks!
Meanwhile, Colin Cloud is reading people’s minds, complete with props: a word guessing game from a book about Sherlock Holmes, his idol; the celebrity-photo installment (Elvis, of course); an elaborate act with four audience members and a receipt; random numbers that when turned upside down spell out—well, we don’t want to spoil it. The combination of the two performers keeps the show lively and provides some welcome variety.
For these performances, you do want to sit close to the stage; the seats toward the back of the 1,100-seat Mirage Theater will present a challenge, even with the big screens. But the prices of tickets are certainly reasonable; for our seats in the far corner, we paid $52.29, plus a $12.82 service fee and $9.95 for order processing, a total of $81.06. Get as close to the screens as you can.
Considering the excellence and differences of the performances, the soaring production values, and this day and age of through-the-roof ticket prices, Shin Lim’s Limitless can, in our opinion, be considered a bargain.
Cosmopolitan – Wicked Spoon: Brunch prices went up by $2. Weekday Brunch, Mon-Fri, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. is now $47 and weekend Brunch, Sat & Sun, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. is now $54.
Excalibur – The Buffet at Excalibur: Brunch prices went by $1. Weekday Brunch, Mon-Thurs, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. is now $29.99 and weekend Brunch, Fri-Sun, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. is now $32.99.
Luxor – The Buffet at Luxor: Brunch prices went up by $2. Weekday Brunch, Wed & Thurs, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. is now $30.99 and weekend Brunch, Fri-Sun, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. is now $33.99.
Mandalay Bay – House of Blues Gospel Brunch: Brunch price went up by $6. Used to be $64.50 but is now $70.50. Only dates from January to April are currently available.
MGM Grand – MGM Grand Buffet: Brunch prices went up by $1. Weekday Brunch, Mon-Thurs, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. is now $28.99 and weekend Brunch, Fri-Sun, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. is now $37.99.
The first Rachel’s Kitchen opened in Las Vegas in 2006 at Town Center in Summerlin. Its formula was an order-at-the-counter café serving fresh, wholesome, high-quality breakfast and lunch food, plus juices and smoothies, “with a gourmet touch” at affordable prices.
It was such a successful concept that today, Rachel’s (named for the owner’s daughter) has eight locations around Las Vegas. It’s won a number of Best of Vegas awards: for juice bar/smoothies, chain restaurant, downtown restaurant, power lunches, and catering. The company is also expanding out of state; the first franchise is opening soon in Frisco, Texas, in the Star District, the entertainment, shopping, and dining center around the headquarters of the Dallas Cowboys.
When we heard about the Lone Star expansion, we figured it was about time to try the place — after 17 years of watching it grow. We went to the location at Town Square (Las Vegas Blvd. and Sunset), closest to our office. It’s an airy, bright, and welcoming space; you order, pay, and pick up at the counter and you can eat inside or out. The tables in front of the cafe look over at the central common, with greenery and sizable palm trees. Parking in a nearby garage or surface lot is easy and free.
The menu consists of breakfast burritos and wraps, bacon and eggs, omelets and scrambles, and huevos rancheros ($10-$12.50), plus oatmeal, pancakes, and French toast ($6-$9). Ten salads, from Cobb and Caesars to Chinese and curry chicken, come with a choice of six dressings ($10-$15). Such sandwiches and wraps as smoked turkey and avocado, grilled cheese, chicken salad, and vegetarian come on a choice of four breads with lettuce; soup of the day is $6 or $14 accompanied by half-salad or half-sandwich. Six pastas with marinara, pesto, or alfredo are $12-$15.50. Fresh vegetables juices and fruit smoothies are $5.50-$9. Everything is made to order and you can specify gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan.
We went for the grilled vegetable salad and chicken ($15) and a berry-mania smoothie ($8) and we can say that the formula works: Both the food and drink were wholesome, tasty, and not too dear. The tab after tax came to just under $25 and though we finished the smoothie on the spot, we got two meals out of the salad.
It’s no accident that this brand has been around for nearly two decades, has expanded throughout the valley, and is about to spread some interstate wings.
Inspired by our experience at La Popular at the Palms, we checked out the happy hour at Toca Madera (literally “Touch Wood,” the Spanish way of saying “knock on wood”) at the Shops at Crystals. The original Toca opened in West Hollywood in 2015 and quickly made a name for itself for dishing up food from the “highest quality, sustainable, and organic ingredients.” A second location opened in Scottsdale; this one in Vegas dates back to late last year.
It’s a little hard to find, one of the reasons that the previous restaurant in this space, Eva Longoria’s Beso (renamed SHe by Morton’s), lasted less than two years. It’s located “at” the Shops at Crystals, but you have to exit through the back door on the way to Aria; from Aria, you also have to go out a side door. Then the sign is unobtrusive and the unmarked front door gives you pause. But once you’ve found your way inside, it’s a whole other world.
The interior is as classy and understated as the food is top-notch. The regular menu prices range from $18 for guacamole and $28 for ceviche to $48 for a truffle burger and $325 for a 40-ounce tomahawk with bone marrow. That’s why happy hours are the best way, hands down, to try these ultra-exclusive Strip restaurants.
The HH menu is much more manageable. Guacamole is $10, three short rib tostaditas $12, Caesar salad and sea bass tacos $14 each, and ceviche $18. Mexican bottled beer is $5, house wine $8, and margaritas $13. We weren’t drinking, so we had a pineapple juice for $5.
The quality of food was noticeable as soon as we dipped a chip into the salsa, just diced tomatoes and cilantro, but impeccable.
The sea bass tacos were so good, we almost couldn’t believe what we were tasting. And the short rib tostaditas were so plentiful and rich, we couldn’t finish them. The bill, with tax before tip, came to $33, not a bargain, but not bad either for what turned out to be dinner at the highest-end Mexican steakhouse in town.
The Toca Madera happy hour is Mon.-Fri. 4-6 p.m. It was wide open when we got there at 5, but pretty crowded by the time we left around six, with people filling up the bar stools and tables. And that was on a Tuesday evening. We’d bet that this place will make it in one of Vegas’ least accessible Strip locations.
Back in January 2018 after spending a weekend there, we wrote, “Though it’s often overlooked and under-reviewed, the TI is a fine place to stay and play and relatively inexpensive for a Steve Wynn-built hotel-casino right in the heart of the action.”
It’s still true, especially considering that parking is, and always has been, free. So when we heard that a new seafood restaurant opened there, we looked into it. And something about it — not exactly sure what; call it the vibe, maybe — intrigued us, so we gave it a try.
We’re glad we did.
Called the Yacht Club, it occupies the space that used to be the Seafood Shack. When we got there, we still couldn’t figure out what we saw in the place. It’s easy to find, right off the parking garage escalator and past the sports book on the way to the food court, but the entrance is marked by a couple of oversized bathtub-toy-type boats.
Inside, there’s not much atmosphere; trophy fish on the wall are about it.
The prices are reasonable, not notably expensive like most Strip seafood eateries, but not a bargain either. Appetizers start at $20 for crispy calamari and the mussels and go up to $25-$26 for crab cakes, tuna poke, Littleneck clams, and ceviche. Pastas run from $30 for linguine and clams to $41 for lobster mac ’n’ cheese. Chilled oysters, shrimp, crab, scallops, and lobster are market price; the seafood tower is $80/small, $130/large. Pan roasts are $53, the clam bake for two $95, fish and chips $27, salmon and snapper $45, chicken $29, and steaks $55. Catches of the day, specialty entrees (cioppino, seafood risotto, shrimp and grits), burgers, and sandwiches round out the menu. Sides, such as carrots, broccolini, fries, and potatoes, are $13.
When the food started coming, we finally realized why we were there. We tried an oyster shooter, Littleneck clams, cioppino, grilled trout, and broccolini and everything was excellent. The clams were plentiful and fresh.
The trout was moist and grilled perfectly and the cioppino chock full of big chunks of fish with a broth among the best we’ve ever tasted. We got happier with each bite.
The bill came to $??? and we didn’t feel gouged.
Best of all, we got in the car and drove away — no ticket, no gate, no credit-card charge. The free and easy feeling of that on the Strip cannot be overstated.
Since the first digital displays started illuminating the outside dome on July 4 and especially after it opened on September 29 for the first U2 concert and October 5 for the premiere of the movie Postcard from Earth, Sphere has garnered international acclaim as the future of entertainment. We checked out the “Sphere Experience,” as the whole movie-going adventure is called, as soon as we could.
We attended the 7 p.m. show and parked in the Howard Hughes garage (see below for a link to the parking details). It’s a 10-minute walk to the arena, but the exosphere displays build the excitement every step of the way.
The world’s largest exterior screen, it comprises 580,000 square feet of fully programmable LED bulbs, 1.2 million of them, each about the size of a hockey puck and holding 48 diodes that can accommodate 256 million colors. (This screen has more than four times the surface area of the Fremont Street Experience.) The closer you get, the more the display dissolves as the individual bulbs gain definition; it’s amazing each combines with the rest to produce such high resolution.
Since the 7 p.m. show was the first of the day (there are also 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. shows on some days), the doors were open before the start time on the ticket; we don’t know exactly when. Inside, the eight-story Atrium offers a number of attractions and concessions. Overhead is a massive mobile of metallic hoops. Five humanoid robots, dubbed Aura, hold court and gather large crowds; each focuses on an aspect of human development (connection, innovation, creativity, longevity, and productivity).
The lobby also boasts two 360-degree “avatar scanners”; these scan your entire body, then email you a video of your avatar in a virtual world in 3D (very long lines by the time we got there). Plaques scattered around the walls display some of the equations used by engineers in Sphere’s construction.
The most attention-grabbing display was a 50-foot-tall hanging holographic structure that changed continually into bright and unusual images.
You get an hour (or more) in the Atrium before the movie starts, exactly an hour after the ticket time. If you want to eat or drink, the concessions consist of several bars, three cuisines, and snack bar. Everything, as you can easily imagine, is pricey. The Atrium Kitchen offers hot dogs for $8, waffle fries for $7, and burgers, bulgogi, poke rice bowl, chicken tenders, and andouille sausage $14-$20. The Cantina serves chicharrones with lobster guac tacos, and steak torta $16-$19. The Taphouse’s tri tip, fish and chips, and tenders and fries are $17-$20. Peanuts, popcorn, and snacks are $6-$10, while beer is $18-$19, cocktails $15-$16), margaritas $20, Red Bull $8, and water and soda $7.
When the time comes, you head up the dizzying escalators, find your seat (and find another link for the seating details below), and get ready to watch the most immense, immersive, and impressive movie the world has ever seen.
Postcard from Earth starts with a spaceship taking off from Earth, one male and one female sleeping deeply. We won’t give away the plot, but the “postcard from Earth” is a way for them to remember where they come from. We also won’t give away the first effects, other to say that they are, in a word, astounding. The ultra-high 16K resolution (meaning 16,000 vertical and horizontal LED lights) on a curving 270-degree 160,000-square-foot, screen, almost four acres and 20 times larger than the largest IMAX screen, largest in the world) is an experience you won’t soon forget.
The “postcard” returns to Earth with helicopter-eye views of panoramic land and seascapes—mountains, forests, plains, the Grand Canyon, underwater—as the movie delves into the history of the planet and starts to develop the theme of “life inventing itself.”
Every frame of footage was shot via a lens that combined 11 individual cameras to create a one-foot-diameter wide-angle fish eye for the massive super-clear views at 170 million pixels of resolution. In addition, thanks to the haptic effects (vibrating seats and 167,000 speaker drivers, amplifiers and processing channels for the audio), you can actually feel the footsteps 100-foot-tall elephants and the stampede of a herd of humongous horses.
After the idyllic naturescapes, the scenery turns decidedly human, culminating with cars, planes, and pedestrians accelerating to hyperspeeds to illustrate the pollution and destruction of Earth, “mankind ignoring every warning.”
From there it’s ruins, cemeteries, floods, deserts, and storms, with more special effects enhancing the action on the screen, then it’s back into space to rejoin the intergalactic travelers, waking up, heading out onto their new planet, doing the Garden of Eden, reinventing life. The inevitable conclusion is, to us anyway, a bit melodramatic, but it’s certainly life-affirming and green! The movie is 50 minutes long, though it’s so riveting, it feels like 15.
The future of entertainment? Postcard from Earth is certainly the biggest and highest-resolution movie anyone’s ever seen. You’ll also see in our seating post, however, that the prices are nothing if not prohibitive. That didn’t stop thousands from attending the movie with us or the horde who lined up in the hallway all the way back to the Venetian we all passed by as we were herded out.
One detail we’ve seen is especially intriguing: live action. The Sphere’s creative team has confirmed that they’ve placed cameras in Antarctica, with plans to install another on the International Space Station. A real-time surround-view live hookup to a working space station 250 miles above the Earth? If that movie shows up at Sphere, we’ll be there to experience it—prohibitive prices and all.
We went to Sphere and saw the movie Postcard from Earth a couple of weeks ago and here are our observations and a recommendation about choosing seats.
You can an escalator from the lobby up a long way to the 200-level seats, then another up to the 3090- and 400-level seats.
We read about an overhang problem, in which the three balconies obstruct views of the screen overhead, but we didn’t really see one over the seats available for the movie. In the corners of the 100-level seats, there’s a bit of an overhang, but seats for the movies are only on the second (200), third (300), and fourth (400) levels. The 100 seats are for the concerts, on the floor and closest to the stage.
The bigger issue for us was with the 200-level seats. They seemed a bit low in relationship to how much of the dome the screen covers, two-thirds of it in total. In other words, it’s like any movie you see in a theater: The closer you are to the screen, the more you have to look up at it. And this particular screen stretches over four acres of dome surface! The screen towering over the 200 seats might not be an issue, but to us, it seemed like it could be.
Also, those seats cost $249. Each. True, the entire “Sphere Experience” is two hours, but the movie, definitely the main attraction, is only 50 minutes.
We paid $68 for our 300-level seats, the lowest price available at the time, but a check for this post showed that prices have gone up considerably since early November. Our 300-level seats now cost $99, while the lowest price for a seat is $89 in the 400-level nosebleed section. We did find $68 seats still available, but it looks to us like those are outside of the 10,000-seat section where you get the haptic effects (vibrating seats, wafting scents, and breezes) in conjunction with the action on the screen.
Needless to say, we weren’t prepared to pay $500 for two to see a movie, spectacular though it may be (and it is; it’s the most unbelievable movie experience we’ve ever had), and we sincerely hope you’re not either. So we say buy the least expensive seats you can get; you’ll see the screen just fine from the 400 level.
We do need to add one other note of caution. Getting to the upper-level seats in this arena requires a fairly steep climb. The landing is between the 300- and 400-level seats; you climb down to the 300 seats (and up on the way out) and up to the 400 seats (and down on the way out).
Either way, if you have trouble on stairs, this will be a challenge for you. We watched unsteady moviegoers gripping the handrails for dear life. But breaks in the rails allow passage between seating sections and those were scary for a number of spectators. More than one asked for help from people seated near them, which proved a bit hazardous for both parties.
We do recommend the movie and you can see our review here (as well as our recommendations for parking), but it presents a couple of tests: financial and physical.
