Sage restaurant from Chef Shawn McClain at Las Vegas’ Aria Hotel is a gem. It was the most impressive meal of our stay. Maybe it was because I didn’t really know what to expect — what’s “new American,” anyway? — but Sage has turned into a place I highly recommend for any stay in Vegas. Everything that is placed in front of diners has been carefully considered — even the bread (crusty and fluffy) and butter (lavender, with a side of salt) are special.

We started our meal with cocktails, including a flaming absinthe demonstration. Check out the video:

My favorite drinks of the night were the Smoking Bulleit, with smoked peach-infused Bulleit bourbon, mint and lemon (the cocktail menu changes seasonally, so this one may no longer be available), and The Artful Margarita, made with Oro de Jalisco blanco tequila, Art in the Age root liqueur, Cointreau and lemon, which tastes like root beer.

The food at Sage was excellent. The Foie Gras Custard Brulée blew my mind, and the Wagyu Beef Tartare — topped with a gorgeous poached egg yolk and served with crispy chocolate chips — had made me reconsider the dish entirely. You know the food is good when something you normally don’t go for, in this case beef tartare, leaves you wanting more. The Slow-Poached Organic Farm Egg — all foamy, topped with shaved potato chips — was another delicious dish.

The Glazed Pork Belly, which is actually more sweet corn tortelloni than pork, is still a good choice; you’ll just want to know what you’re getting. The Main Dayboat Scallops were perfectly cooked, and the 48 Hour Beef Belly came so fork-tender that the meat practically fell apart just by looking at it.

We opted for the Signature Tasting Menu ($79 per person), which comes with optional wine or beer pairings ($39 each). This is a good value for four courses at this quality (by the time we got to the dessert course, I was stuffed, so please excuse me for not discussing it), so you’d be well-served making a stop here on your next trip to Vegas.

Further reading:

Las Vegas, NV: Sage is a Cocktailian’s Respite From Bottle Service by estarLA

Note: This meal was hosted.

The meals, which usually take place on the Westside, are $35 for four courses plus a couple of amuse bouches. This generous amount of food coupled with more-than-competent cooking makes this one of the best values around.

The dinner that I attended earlier this month in Santa Monica was Asian-inspired, but there was a level of inventiveness that made this better than your typical Asian fusion meal.

We started off with two amuses, or “lil bites,” as the chefs like to call them. Then we moved on to our first course of squid and konjaku noodles, which are made from yam flour, accompanied by a dashi chorizo sauce, some of which was encapsulated in little bubbles. It was a light yet flavorful dish, and the different textures were a nice element.

Squid and konjaku noodles

Our second course was another tasty gem: a shrimp and corn fritter served with asparagus in corn consomme. So simple, yet so delicious! I just were there had been more of it.

Shrimp and corn fritter with consomme

Our main course consisted of grilled bass served with Chinese pea shoots, dashi and macerated purple potatoes. The flavors were good, but I didn’t love the texture of the macerated potatoes. Though the use of dashi with the potatoes tasted good, some of the little piles were drier than others. But everything else was spot-on, including the fish, which was moist and flaky.

Grilled bass

The red bean tapioca cake for dessert was really a standout. I love red bean, and I love tapioca, so making them into a cake by topping them with a light, flaky almond pie crust that is reminiscent of a Chinese almond cookie made me infinitely happy. I could have eaten this for days.

Red bean tapioca cake

Supper Liberation Front’s menu changes all the time, so check its website for details. On Aug. 4, the chefs are presenting a special five-course, $60 dinner at Library Alehouse in Santa Monica that includes Allagash beer pairings. With items including lamb two ways and foie gras gelato, as well as the always delicious Allagash, this meal is sure to knock your socks off. Purchase prepaid tickets here.

To read about a different SLF meal, check out LAist’s post.

I had visited First & Hope once before during its preview night when the atmosphere was close to mayhem. It was very crowded, and while the servers did their best, it was hard to get a good idea of what the food and drink should have been like.

So when presented with an invitation to have dinner at the restaurant under normal circumstances, I decided I would give the place another chance. I would have a proper meal and make a better-informed decision about First & Hope’s merits.

And I’ve made my decision: I would only come back here for one, maybe two, dishes.

You see, the menu sounds good; it reads like a food blogger’s wet dream, with foie gras, bacon and pork rinds littered all over its comfort food-centric offerings. But First & Hope leaves much to be desired in execution.

First, the cocktails. Nearly every one contains some kind of bubbly, no doubt an homage to the vintage style. I get it, but I thought the drinks were just OK, which was pretty much my summation after the preview party, too. I had an Elle for Leather, made with Famous Grouse scotch, vanilla syrup, “a touch of effervescence” and garnished with a vanilla pod. It smelled amazing due to the vanilla pod but tasted light on the scotch.

Elle for Leather. There's a blue tint because of the mood lighting.

I had sips of the Russian Spring Punch, made with Grey Goose vodka, cassis, raspberry and bubbly, which was too fruity, and the Seelbach, made with Woodford Reserve bourbon, orange curaçao, bitter, bubbles and garnished with an orange peel, which was a bit too sweet.

Russian Spring Punch

Seelbach

We were served a couple of appetizers before our starters, including an amuse bouche of potato, creme fraiche, chives and I don’t remember what else. It was fine, but not outstanding. The spreadable cheese and house-made saltine crackers were palatable, though.

Potato amuse bouche

Cheese ball and house-made saltines

Next up was a round of appetizers. The standout here was the All-About-The-Cheese Mac & Cheese Flight. It came with three pots of cheesy goodness, one filled with Marin triple cream brie, elbow macaroni (the menu says baby lasagna but it was elbow macaroni) and some kind of baked puffed cake on top; another with Cypress Grove goat cheese, mini shells and crumbled popped corn; and the last with porter beer cheese, corkscrew pasta and crumbled rye croutons. And each pot came with “sides,” including more cheese, honey, mustard and even a mini pint of porter beer. Score!

Mac & cheese flight

Unfortunately the rest of the starters left a lot to be desired. The Crab Meat Justine Potpie made with crab gratin topped with a puffy, buttery french toast was boring, and the Popcorn Shrimp & Grits with jumbo shrimp, corn relish, popped corn cream sauce and creamy grits might have been OK if it had arrived at our table hot.

Crabmeat Justine Potpie

Shrimp and grits

And the Back Yard Garden Salad looked gorgeous but left me wanting, especially the fiddlehead ferns that were promised on the menu but didn’t appear on the plate. This dish is also the first time we encountered the undercooked potatoes. While the amuse’s potato was perfectly cooked, the rest of the potatoes were crunchy (and there were many of them). The green goddess dressing was good, though.

Back Yard Garden Salad

The main dish that I liked best was the Duck-Duck-Goose — a duo of a sugar-and-spice seared duck breast and duck leg confit, roasted foie gras, spring onion hoe cake and wilted baby mustard greens. Even though I got a piece of gristly fat in my bite of duck breast that I ultimately had to spit out, the meat was nice and tender. And the duck leg confit layered between green onion pancakes topped with foie gras was heavenly.

Seared duck breast

Duck leg confit with foie gras

What wasn’t so heavenly was Nenaw’s Picnic Basket, which came with juicy-yet-bland deep-fried buttermilk hen (which was also slightly over fried), a crunchy potato salad, beer-braised collard greens and cornbread sticks. The potatoes were yet again undercooked, and while the collard greens were enjoyably spicy, the cornbread was placed in the same container, making it mushy.

Nenaw's Picnic Basket

And then there was the Moonshine Meatloaf: a ground chuck, foie gras and gin meatloaf wrapped in bacon served with “blistered potato and pearl onion hash,” brown butter green bean bundles and caramelized tomato marmalade. This was quite possibly the most disappointing dish of the night for me. There was just too much going on in the meatloaf, which seemed to suffer from unbalanced proportions and a texture that, dare I say, reminded me a bit too much of canned dog food. And does that look like “hash” to you? No, it doesn’t look like hash to me, either. Oh, and the potatoes were hard again. When we finally asked about the crunchy potatoes, we were told that they were meant to be “al dente.” Really? Really.

Moonshine Meatloaf

The desserts we tried were nothing to write home about, either. The Porky Pig Banana Split with bacon and banana ice cream, jalapeno hot fudge, brandied cherries and caramel pork rinds sounded better than it was (I personally didn’t like the pork rinds but a dining companion did), and the Lemon Meringue Beehive with coconut macaroon, lemon curd, lemon-thyme ice cream and toasted marshmallow had too much thyme in large pieces to be enjoyable. And I love the lemon-thyme combination usually.

Porky Pig

Lemon Thyme Beehive

The one saving grace was the strawberry milkshake with strawberry compote and strawberry whipped cream that came with the LAPD Donut Shake Down’s Boston cream pie doughnuts and chocolate dipping sauce. I don’t remember the doughnuts at all, but the shake was really good.

LAPD Donut Shake Down

Consistency and execution are definitely problems at First & Hope. The proportions are wrong, potatoes are crunchy (literally — I thought I was eating all celery out of that potato salad), and it’s like the kitchen has never read the menu. Of course, like the rest of the restaurant, the food presentation is pretty, and the service is excellent. Good service can go a long way. But in the end, you’ll need something to back up all that style.

Further reading:

First & Hope Supper Club: Because She’s In That Part of Downtown by e*starLA

Southern Discomfort: First & Hope Supper Club by LAist

Note: This was a hosted meal.

We were served a bunch of potted meats to start. This is when I tried head cheese, trotters, rillete and beef tartare for the first time, and none were as scary as I thought they would be. I actually surprised myself by really liking the hand-cut beef tartare, which came with judion beans on the side. I also had escargot and bone marrow as starters, too, both for the first time as well. While neither were as that scary, I didn’t enjoy them as much as the beef tartare, which had a fresh taste to it, contrary to what I had imagined raw beef tasting like.

I think this is head cheese, but it could have been trotters or rillete

Beef tartare

The one appetizer that nearly the whole table went ga-ga for was the foie gras parfait with what seemed like whipped foie topped with quince confit. It was served with spiced bread, which I found to be too sweet a pairing with the quince; I opted to use some of the other more savory breads at our table to eat with this. The foie was very light and fluffy and just melted in your mouth. It seemed like the potted meats were a hit overall (read e*starLA‘s and LAist‘s takes).

Foie gras and quince parfait

My favorite main of the night turned out to be the sea bass served with orange-flavored vegetables. I normally don’t like sea bass, but this one was great. Other people loved the pork dish, which came with house-made sausage and what looked like pork belly but was really part of the short rib. Though I like pork, I don’t go crazy for it, though this was very good. I also tried a bite of veal sweetbreads, and while they weren’t my favorite, they weren’t bad, either!

Sea bass with orange flavored vegetables

Pork and sausage (at the far end)

Because I’m obsessed with brussels sprouts, I requested we have some to taste, so they showed up on the pork plate. They were cooked sous vide, as Chef Remi Lauvand informed us he did to make them tender. I’m not sure why he chose this method of cooking because the sous vide seemed to overcook the vegetables. Oh well, I guess I just prefer mine roasted.

My favorite desserts were the hazelnut cream puffs and the baba au rhum with slow poached pineapple. Once again, I’m not a big fan of desserts with cream, but both of these were wonderful, especially the baba with the pineapple. One of my fellow diners, Weezermonkey, also liked these two desserts best, and these two photos below are from her post.

Hazelnut cream puffs. From Weezermonkey.

Baba au rhum with pineapple

This meal was hosted.

I’ve been to Riva once, but it was right before the announcement was made to convert the space into Fraiche, so I didn’t blog about it. I enjoyed my meal there, though I did feel it was a bit overpriced, which may have contributed to the restaurant’s demise. No matter; the new Fraiche under Chef de Cuisine Sydney Hunter (who was also with Riva) is elegant yet accessible, a great combination.

This tasting was special; crafted by Chef Hunter, the “mini” tasting was really a seven-course, three-hour meal complete with wine pairings that was just for us. So while what we had isn’t necessarily on the menu, it definitely showcased Hunter’s abilities and offers a look into the kind of cooking you can expect while dining at Fraiche.

Since this was an epic meal that left me full for the entire next day, I’ll give you the highlights.

We started with Japanese scallops with braised pearl onion, lobster glace, lemon oil, orange and sage, which was a nice light way to start a meal. You could tell that each ingredient was put there for a reason, and I especially enjoyed the onion with the scallop.

Japanese scallop

Next up was hands-down my favorite part of the meal: foie gras terrine layered with prosciutto and fig puree served with orange gelee, Campari gastrique and arugula. Once again, each ingredient had its place and purpose, and eating a little bit of everything on pieces of toast was definitely the best way to enjoy it, just as Hunter intended. I admit I’m not a foie gras connoisseur, but this piece had so much flavor from being cured and the inclusion of prosciutto and fig that it would have been impossible not to like it.

Foie gras (bottom), orange gelee, Campari gastrique, arugula (top)

I also liked the John Dory served with baby root vegetables pearl onions, turnips and carrots, and topped with toasted brioche crumbs. The fish was cooked on low in the oven in brown butter, making it tender and juicy.

John Dory

There was another fish dish, this one halibut, also roasted in the oven in brown butter, and served with cauliflower puree with nutmeg, caviar of cauliflower (the top part of the vegetable), paddlefish caviar, almonds, parsley, chanterelles, red currants and English peas. This one was also executed well, but the currants were too sweet for my taste.

Halibut

The kurobuta pork was served two ways, one was a bone-in chop with baby turnips, brussels sprouts, butternut squash puree and pumpkin seeds, and the other was a braised loin with lentils, carrot sauce and ginger-honey emulsion that was like a stew. I preferred the braised pork in the stew, which was more flavorful, though the other plate was beautiful.

Kurobuta chop

Braised pork

There was also rabbit three ways, with a confit, saddle and rack served up with a rich sauce made with the animal’s offal. This wasn’t one of my favorites, but I’m not a big rabbit person.  The mini rack was kind of cute, though.

Rabbit confit (top), saddle (center), rack (bottom)

The milk chocolate cremeux for dessert was a dish I had when the place was still Riva; it was good then, and it was good this time around, too. Once again each ingredient was integral to the overall experience, and the combination of the chocolate, candied pecans, brown butter ganache and coconut sorbet is perfect, but the candied pecans really make this dish with its crunchy texture. I just wish the brown butter ganache wasn’t presented like silly string.

Milk chocolate cremeux

Sommelier Iain Walling needs a shout out here; his choices to go with our food were somewhat bold, I’m told, but those risks paid off. I’ve said it before, but I’m not a big wine person so I can’t expound on the qualities of the wine we had. But I can say that everything Walling chose paired very nicely with each of our dishes. He even went with a beer cocktail of Framboise and Allagash White for dessert, which I liked a lot.

Framboise and Allagash beer cocktail

Though I enjoyed this meal, I would have liked to have tried some of the pastas on the regular menu, too, as they looked very tasty on other diners’ tables. Fraiche Santa Monica’s menu isn’t online, but Fraiche Culver City‘s is, so take a look to see what you can probably expect. Also take a look at the posts of my fellow diners Kevin of Kevin Eats, Will of FoodDigger and Esther of e*starLA.

Evolving flavored iced tea (left), Cava mimosa (right)

Yes, Jose Andres’ Bazaar at the SLS Hotel has been open for a year now, but I didn’t go right away. Why? Because I don’t like being caught up in a scene, and the SLS and everything in it is definitely a scene. So I waited a year to try it, and I went for brunch, not for dinner when I’ve passed by and seen it totally poppin’ off, as it were.

When we (Sam of LAist and Lucy of Edible LA) showed up, it was kind of dead — relatively speaking, of course. By the time we left, there were more people, though most chose to eat inside, which I thought was kind of strange given the beautiful sunny day. We ate on the patio.

I’m not going to dwell on the Bazaar’s food since by now the restaurant has been thoroughly discussed across the food blogosophere and in the mainstream media, so I’ll just give you my greatest hits of this meal.

12 Tiny Eggs Sunny Side Up, or the Huevos a la Cubana “Andy Garcia” ($12): This dish is made with 12 quail eggs topped with Serrano ham shavings, tomato puree and chopped chives sitting atop a fried jasmine rice cake mixed with banana puree. The layers of flavors and textures are amazing.

Olive Oil Pancakes ($14): Oh. My. Gawd. Like I’ve said before, I’m not a big pancake person, but these fluffy disks from heaven may just change my mind. At once moist and fluffy with just the lightest of crusts to keep them from getting soggy in the bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup (an extra $8; regular syrup comes included in the original $14 price), I was so smitten with this dish that I could have easy gorged myself on all four of them and called it a day. Oh, and there’s olive oil butter on top, too. I want some more now!

We also had Air Bread with Smoked Salmon($5 per person), which was basically a puffed pocket of bread filled with tzatziki yogurt and topped with smoked salmon; Eggs Benedict “New Way” with Iberico ham ($18; $12 with Serrano ham); foie gras sandwiches ($15) with quince paste on brioche; and toast topped with tomato and Manchego cheese. All were good, but none of them stood out to me like the quail eggs and olive oil pancakes did.

Air bread with smoked salmon

Eggs Benedict New Way

Foie Gras sandwiches

Tomato toast with Manchego cheese

There was something interesting we discovered during our meal: The food we were served wasn’t prepared the same way Andres himself prepares it. Lucy had attended a press brunch earlier in the week that was attended by Andres, and she noticed a difference between our meal and the media meal. There was much more Hollandaise foam that accompanies the eggs Benedict when Andres made it, and the fruit-flavored “air” that tops the Cava mimosa was nonexistent on the ones at our table. The “Evolving” iced tea was also different; at the press meal, the iced tea was poured over the flavored part, which was a large frozen cube, while at our meal the iced tea came with regular-sized cubes and barely any flavor at all. I’m not sure if this is laziness or what, but if I were to ever go back, I’ll stick with the tried-and-true dishes.