Author: LVA

The area code and universal identifier of all things Hawaii is also the name of one of Las Vegas’ best new restaurants. The 808 Café, run by Hawaiian transplant Dennis Lin, is located in a nondescript storefront in a strip mall at Flamingo and Buffalo. Don’t be deterred; the major menu includes authentic Hawaiian and Asian dishes served in big portions and nothing is priced above $20.

Hawaiian

We asked a bartender we know from the Islands if she was familiar with 808 and she raved about the selection. Indeed, just about everything associated with Hawaiian cuisine is on this menu—loco moco, mochiko chicken, spam, teriyaki beef, Hawaiian beef stew, Portuguese sausage and eggs. We didn’t go that route, except to try the gau gee (fried wontons), which we’re told aren’t easy to find outside of Hawaii. You get eight for $8.95 and they’re excellent.

Asian

Described as Asian-Fusion, the rest of the menu is a mix that’s primarily Chinese. Well over 100 selections include noodles, rice, pastries, soups, meat, seafood, and vegetables. We had garlic edamame ($4.95), Szechuan dumplings ($6.95), siu mai ($7.95), salt & pepper fish ($14.95), shrimp chow fun ($15.95), and the house special rice ($16.95). Different spices, mustard, and hot sauces accompanied. One of our favorites was the siu mai that comes five to an order and they’re huge, but despite the size, still delicate. The star of the show was the salt & pepper fish. This is a gotta-get. Spice it up however you fancy and eat it there (they’re not as good for take-out).

MRO Deal

Making everything better, we have two Member Rewards offers for 808 Café, both downloadable. One is a modest offer for non-LVA members: 5% off $25 or 10% off $100—a discount of $2.50 to $10+. The second is more substantial and available to LVA members only: an order of the house special rice for $5 when you spend at least $40. That’s an easy spend for two people and it works out to a $12 saving on the dish. It comes with your choice of beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp and is a meal in itself. Take it out and you have a $5 lunch for two.

The Verdict

You’d expect this place to be in the heart of Chinatown, but it’s about five miles farther west up Flamingo. It’s worth the drive for the good food, not to mention the LVA deal. It’s not fancy, but the owner is usually there to make suggestions and the diners tend to talk with one another, likely due to familiarity from frequenting the place.

This is one of those restaurants you’ll have to go back to several times to even begin to dent the menu and we’re sure we’ll come up with other recommendations (our bartender friend raves about the crab Rangoon), but the S&P fish, another entrée, and orders of siu mai and gau gee will get you there for the rice deal. It’s open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (11:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat.).

The iconic and beloved Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge on the north Strip celebrated its 50th anniversary the day after Christmas 2022. It was one of six restaurants in the U.S. singled out earlier this year by the James Beard Foundation for an America’s Classics Award. The Foundation cited the Peppermill’s “welcoming atmosphere” and the long-time waitresses who know customers’ names. Indeed, the general manager started as a waitress in her teens and has been there for nearly the whole five decades of the restaurant’s history and her son is executive chef.

It’s a pilgrimage site for visiting old-timers who remember when it was one of the in places on the Boulevard and it garnered the number-one spot in two of our recent polls: the best restaurant for first-timers and the best breakfasts in the resort corridor.

Several items remain from the offerings on opening day 51-plus years ago, such as the fabulous fresh fruit salad (that comes with ice cream, house-baked banana-nut bread, and marshmallow sauce), the sinful French toast ambrosia, and of course the half-pound Peppermill burger. The adjoining Fireside Lounge is as cozy as it gets and that 64-ounce Scorpion starts or ends your Vegas party with a sting.

The Vegas Peppermill is one of six in Nevada; the other five are hotel-casinos: the flagship in Reno, Western Village in Sparks, and three in Wendover. They’re unmistakable for their design and décor, including big video screens with scenes from around the world, myriad concrete tree trunks and lush plastic foliage, Tiffany-style lamps, and pink and purple border tubing above the counters and along the walls. This restaurant also has big windows looking out to the Strip.

Even seating 232, it’s unbelievably busy. There are 32 parking spaces in front and 50 in back and they’re almost always full.

We hadn’t eaten there in a while and though we’ve done so countless times, we’d never reviewed it! In honor of the America’s Classics award, we went back for a late breakfast at noon on a Thursday.

It was an hour wait for a table, so we immediately seated ourselves at the 18-seat counter. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing meal, with 10 cooks bustling around the kitchen, eight waitresses rushing to and fro, loading up their hands and arms with a dozen huge heavy plates of food, clanking dishes and scraping silverware, but it sure beat waiting an hour for bacon and eggs.

Prices have crept up over the years, of course, but shrinkflation hasn’t come anywhere near the place; you either take half your meal back to your hotel room or finish for your one splurge of the day. These meals aren’t cheap, and note that the prices on the restaurant menu are different than the ones on the online menu, but if you want huge portions, the Peppermill is the place to get them.

We had the basic breakfast: three eggs, bacon, hash browns, and bagel ($23) and an a la carte raspberry-lemon muffin ($4.95), which came to $29.15 after tax and before tip. Hefty for breakfast for one, but It was also and lunch and dinner was necessarily light.

In 2015 in conjunction with the next-door Riviera closing and imploding, rumors swirled that the Peppermill might be in jeopardy from the LVCVA’s expansion juggernaut. But it was learned that the lease runs through 2027. So it’s not going anywhere anytime soon and there’s plenty of time to experience it anew.

This place opened in Chinatown (4275 Spring Mountain Rd.) in late 2021 with a ton of hype and high expectations, given that the restaurant’s name is its purported specialty, xiao long bao soup dumplings. We were impressed at the start — big room, plenty of customers, interesting menu — and it was looking like another good play in Chinatown. But it didn’t hold up. We tried several items—wonton in chili sauce, scallion pancake, beef chow fun, sauteed green beans, and, of course, the soup dumplings. Odd as it may sound, the best dish was the green beans. Price isn’t a problem; most of the dishes we had were $10 and under, with the chow fun most expensive at $14.95. A tall Asahi beer was $12. Our bill for two with two beers was $97 and we had a lot to take out.

Peanut Butter Wontons?

One dish did stand out, but not in a good way. The spicy wontons are served in a peanut sauce that tastes a lot like peanut butter (the wontons are at the bottom). It’s a strange mix of flavors that we found interesting at first, but then too strange to keep eating. Think wontons mashed in with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

The Soup Dumplings

The dumplings were good. The pastry is very delicate, so you have to eat them with a spoon. It was a minor annoyance that they stuck to the paper they were served on, so some were punctured in the process of getting them out of the basket. Overall, we’d rank them below others we’ve sampled, e.g., China Mama or Shanghai Taste.

The Verdict

Hours are 11:30 am to 10 pm daily. Located in the Chinatown Plaza, Xiao Long Dumpling is easy to find and and get to, but there are too many other good options in the area to make it a priority, unless you just gotta try those Reese’s wontons. Click here to check out the full menu.