My favorite casino in Vegas is the Venetian. There are all different sorts of casinos on the strip and everyone is geared towards a different type of person and the Venetian is geared towards me. It has great restuarants, it houses the Canyon Ranch Spa, where you can get a day pass for $40 and just use their hottubs and saunas and such, and it just seems over all to have a more relaxed feel to it.
So when Pat saw that Daniel Boulud had opened a new restaurant there we decided to go there for lunch on Sunday. It's called dbBRASSERIE. It's really cool looking inside. It has this old time feel about it. Everything is dark wood: the tables, the chairs, the regal wall paneling, and the lampposts with the big white globe fixtures. The fixtures complement the white tablecloths and the white tiles mixed with the dark brown in the floor. It totally spoke Parisian to me. And the best part was this small pop of green in the water glasses. They were richer than a lime green but in the lime green family. And add in the fact that EVERY SINGLE waiter or server we had came with a heavy french accent if you could block out the sounds from the casino floor you might actually forget you were in Vegas and not actually in Paris.
Pat and I went for the new three course lunch menu. I did a much better job of picking my three courses. For our first courses Pat picked the artichoke veloute, which was code for artichoke soup. It was smooth and creamy. It was served overtop of roasted mushrooms. The bowl came with the mushrooms and artichoke fricassee already in it. Then the server poured the soup into the bowl tableside. It was a good thing too because otherwise it would have looked like this gray green bowl of unappetizing soup. I on the other hand ordered the salmon rillettes. It was salmon that had been put together and cooked in a log shape. It came with dill, fennel, a tiny bit of creme fraiche, caper sauce, and some type of foam along with an incredibly thin dark rye cracker/crisp thing. And it was garnished with crispy capers. Think popcorn but made from capers. That was probably the best part. Both dishes were good. Pat's was much heavier than mine.
For the second course I had the seabass and Pat had the lamb orecchiette. Pat's orecchiette was in this rich lamb ragout. It was earthy and hearty and accented by peas, mint, and pecorino. As heavy as Pat's dish was mine was light. The seabass had the crispiest skin. And it was done perfectly: light and flaky. It sat on top of a green olive beurre blanc sauce. Sometimes green olives have that harsh taste but there was none of that in the sauce. On the side of my dish were roasted fingerling potatoes and mushrooms, and a frisee salad. The fish was definitely the star but the sides added a nice well rounded component. While both dishes were good Pat agreed that mine was the better choice.
Then came dessert. Oh french restaurants and your desserts. I ordered the black and white fondant, which was a chocolate molten cake whose top had white chocolate and dark chocolate on it made to look like and black and white cookie. It came with a small scoop of verbena ice cream, which tasted like mint to me. It wasn't until I pulled the menu back up to write this that I even realized it wasn't mint. The whole dessert was DELICIOUS! The cake was warm and really only the edge wasn't molten. It was like eating a pool of chocolate. I didn't think it was that sweet but Pat begs to differ with me. He had the cheese plate for his dessert. It came with a blue cheese and a parmesian like type cheese. Alongside the cheeses were candied walnuts, cranberry bread, and quince preserves. Cheese trays are something I never had a huge appreciation for before coming to Vegas. I;ve always like cheese but didn't know how good cheese could be. The blue cheese was outstanding. It was creamy and smooth with a real mild finish. When paired with the quince preserves it was the perfect bite.
We highly recommend dbBRASSERIE. It was a great meal complete with a good ambiance.Pat recommends you don't order the artichoke soup and the orecchiette as he felt his meal was way too heavy.
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