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.
Sphere is located at the intersection of Sands Avenue and S. Koval Lane across Koval from the Venetian Expo. With the 580,000-square-foot screen, largest in the world, lighting up the exterior of the dome, trust us when we say, you can’t miss it.
There is some street parking on Manhattan Street (east) and Westchester Drive (south) of the arena, but you’d have to get there very early and be very patient to bag a spot. At six p.m. for the 7 p.m. ticket, we saw a line of cars double parked on Manhattan Street, hoping for someone to pull out. Actually, someone did and there was a mad dash from the lanes in both directions; we say you want to stay as far away from that chaos as possible.
Six on-site self-parking lots and one valet lot are all also east and south of the arena. In total, there are 307 parking spaces for an arena with a capacity of 20,000. Absurd. Worse, only two are currently available; the rest are still occupied by F1 grandstands and on the ticketing site, there’s no indication that they’ll be opening up anytime soon.
Lot S charges $75 for the movie. Ridiculous. You can also valet park in the adjacent lot $125 (plus tip, preposterous).
There are also four garages across Manhattan Street at the Howard Hughes Center with 2,000 spaces. Though they face Manhattan Street, you access them from a single entrance on Howard Hughes Parkway (one long block east). That’s where we dropped off our trusty steed. There’s a pretty good view of the exosphere from the top of Lot 1. And from there, it’s about a 10-minute walk to the building.
We bought our parking ticket in advance on Ticketmaster — and if you don’t have that app on your phone, you should; these days, many if not most tickets are QR codes on your phone. So we don’t know how it works if you don’t have the code, though we assume an attendant can assist. For us, we showed the code and flowed right in. Though the initial price you see on Ticketmaster is $40, the final price is $20 (at least at the time of this writing). Not bad for an easy into and out of a highly popular attraction.
We imagine that prices rise for self-parking at the Wynn and Venetian on Sphere concert nights, but so far at least, neither has changed the pricing structure for the movie. The Wynn is $20 for the day, but it’s a fairly long walk through that large property and across Sands Avenue to Sphere. The Venetian charges $15 for four hours and a walkway from the hotel takes you right to one the west entrance to Sphere.
If you’re walking from elsewhere on the Strip, four of the five entrances to the arena are along Sands Avenue; the fifth, the Plaza entrance, is east of the building on Manhattan Street opposite Lot A. That’s the one you enter when you park in the Howard Hughes lots.
When we eyeballed the Luxor and Excalibur brunch buffets a few months ago, both looked good enough to try, but Luxor’s was less crowded on a Saturday morning, is in a nicer room, and seemed to have a bit larger selection. So we determined to return and try it.
On a Wednesday at 1 p.m. the week before F1, we walked right in; not one person was in front of us. The cashier said there was a line from opening until around 12:30. Breakfast is served from start to finish (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.), but she said that it seemed to her that the crowds treat it as more of a breakfast buffet, so to avoid them, it’s better to get there around lunch time.
It offers plenty of breakfast fare: fruit and melons, French toast, waffles, pancakes, apple crepes, cheese blintzes, biscuits/potatoes and gravy, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage, oatmeal and grits, bread and bagel station with a toaster, donut bar, and an excellent omelet station.
The lunch menu includes a Chinese station with egg foo young, orange chicken, chicken and green beans, egg rolls, steamed and fried rice; Mexican nachos, rice and beans, paella, albondigas, chorizo and scrambled eggs, peppers and onions; five kinds of pizzas; mussels, shrimp, and crayfish; roast beef, turkey, ham, and sausage at the carvery.
For dessert, it’s pastries, croissants, cakes, muffins, torts, brownies, cream puffs, and soft-serve for dessert.
All in all, both the variety and quality are recommendable.
For the weekday brunch (Wed.-Thurs., closed Mon.-Tues.), it’s $30.99 before tax and tip. But — and it’s a big but: You have to add in $15 for parking, $20 on the weekend when the brunch is $33.99.
You could, conceivably, get in and out in an hour to avoid the parking fee, since the buffet is located close to the casino entrance from the parking lots. We kept an eye on the clock, but we were going back for thirds and hadn’t hit the dessert station when our hour was up. Besides, hurrying defeats the whole purpose of a buffet. Still, unless you’re walking in, you’ll be paying a mere $1 less for this buffet and parking than you would for the superlative seafood spread at South Point ($45.95 with a club card and free parking). Sorry, but for us, that simply doesn’t compute.
Bottom line: For a good-enough brunch buffet, we’d go to Westgate (LVA 4/23). Parking is free and Westgate also gives us a coupon.
This year’s rate check was conducted on Nov. 29 and turned up 90 casinos that have rooms available for New Year’s Eve, compared to 79 last year. The number of nights is the minimum required stay; the dollar amount is the total cost; resort fees aren’t included.
1 night: Buffalo Bill’s $110, Longhorn $188, Arizona Charlie’s Boulder $200, South Point $215, Silverton $223, Suncoast $224, Westin Lake Las Vegas $227, Arizona Charlie’s Decatur $229, Silver Sevens $239, Aliante $242, Palace Station $243, Gold Coast $248, Sunset Station $249, Sam’s Town $249, Skyline $255, Serene $256, Boulder Station $269, El Cortez $269, Gold Spike $269, Santa Fe Station $279, Binion’s $279, Hilton Lake Las Vegas $290, Downtown Grand $293, Orleans $298, Cannery $299, the D $299, Lexi $300, Rio $319, Fremont $320, Tuscany $320, OYO $323, Main Street Station $325, Four Queens $329, California $330, English $339, Circus Circus $368, Tropicana $379, Strat $399, Ellis Island $415, JW Marriott $441, Circa $459, Westin Las Vegas $484, Westgate $420, Sahara $445, Green Valley Ranch $499, Red Rock $499, Planet Hollywood $799, Four Seasons $970, Caesars Palace $1,011.
2 nights: Plaza $303, Railroad Pass $342, Palms Place $588, Casino Royale $640, Excalibur $665, TI $679, Luxor $707, Golden Nugget $708, Harrah’s $718, Horseshoe $718, LINQ $718, Flamingo $758, NY-NY $798, Mandalay Bay $807, Park MGM $808, Platinum $858, Palms $868, Mirage $868, MGM Grand $893, Cosmopolitan $898, Delano $958, Cromwell $1,058, Trump $1,086, Vdara $1,098, Resorts World $1,132, M Resort $1,198, Aria $1,238, Durango $1,298, Bellagio $1,348, Nobu $1,548, Palazzo $1,598.25, Venetian $1,598.25, Waldorf $1,651.30.
3 nights: Hotel Jefe $450, Virgin $874, MGM Signature $1,052, Elara $1,270, NoMad $1,627, Encore $1,697, Wynn $1,697, Paris $1,797.
Wynn Las Vegas – The Buffet: Breakfast Buffet was removed completely. Brunch Buffet is daily instead of only Mon-Thurs. It starts one hour earlier at 8 a.m. and the price increased from $46.99 to $54.99.
Many shows are on hiatus this month. Following is a list of dark days (no performances) for the major productions. All dates are in December and most shows are dark Dec. 31.
Alexis Park: Flashback 21, 30; King of Diamonds 21, 24, 27-29; Wonderland All except 2, 23, 25
Bellagio: O 25
Excalibur: Australian Bee Gees Show 22, 23, 29, 30; Spice Wannabe 19, 26; Thunder from Down Under 24, 25
Flamingo: Piff the Magic Dragon 19, 20; RuPaul’s Drag Race Live 25; X Burlesque 24
Four Queens: Mike Hammer Comedy Magic Show 16-25
Harrah’s: Donny Osmond All of Dec; Hyprov 12-25; Menopause the Musical 16- 25 & 31; X Country 31
LINQ: “Jimmy Kimmel’s Comedy Club” 21
Luxor: America’s Got Talent Live 1-19, 25; Carrot Top 18-25
Mandalay Bay:Michael Jackson ONE 11
MGM: “Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club” 24, 25; David Copperfield 7-16; Jabbawockeez 5, 9, 12; KA 13; Tape Face 7-15, 18-21
Miracle Mile Shops: The Mentalist Live 2, 3, 5, 9, 26
For several years, we’ve had an MRB offer for $25 off at Rosati’s Pizza. It’s an excellent deal, but not one we sought out. Rather, it was brought to us by Rosati’s owner, a long-time LVA member. Though grateful, over all this time, we never went out to try the place, for two reasons. First is the location—Rosati’s Pizza Centennial Hills is located at 8001 N. Durango Drive, which is quite a ways from the Strip. Second is we keep hearing good reports from those who’ve tried it, so we didn’t feel the need to check it out. This month we did.
Rosati’s is another good pizza joint with Chicago roots. The pizzas are round, but the slices are cut in squares. There’s a choice of crusts—crispy thin, double dough, and Chicago-style—but what really stands out are the toppings, with a big selection of meats (pepperoni, sausage, Italian beef, Canadian bacon, meatballs) and fresh veggies. Large specialty pies come in at about $30.
We can easily recommend this pizza, but we were even more impressed with some of the other items we sampled, including excellent hot wings ($10.95/6), breaded mushrooms ($9.95), and a meatball parmigiana sandwich ($13.55) that’s one of the best we’ve had in town. There are lots of seats and an outdoor patio. The kitchen is open10 am to midnight. This is a terrific play with the MRB deal.
There are nearly 200 Rosati’s restaurants in the U.S., but as you’d expect, the Las Vegas version figures to be a bit different. Along with being a good place to eat, Rosati’s Pizza Centennial is also a 24-hour bar. And a good one. The TVs are all tuned to sports and there are specials on food and drinks during football and Vegas Golden Knights games (try a Petrifier if you dare). UFC PPV events are shown for free (call for a reservation).
Join the players club and get a play-$20-get-$10 sign-up bonus. The best game is 6/5 Bonus Poker (96.87%), but when we were there, every quad got a wheel spin. That’s something we haven’t seen before; it raises the return percentage above 98%.
