November 22, 2009 - Wing Lei

Wing Lei at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, NV
http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/#dining/

We came to Vegas for the first time in November to celebrate Kuau's (30th!) birthday. We stayed at the Wynn, which was awesome in itself, as you might be able to imagine from the joy captured in this photograph.


Of course, as one might imagine from this blog, we also wanted to hit up some of the big foodie restaurants we'd been hearing about. We decided to take advantage of the Wynn by going to one of its restaurants, and somehow (I forget why) Kuau chose Wing Lei.

'Twas not a bad choice, all things considered. I might even call it ... a good choice.

More...

The restaurant itself was really pretty, although it felt a little faux Chinese to me. By that I mean, there were giant Chinese-looking urns in a Chinese-looking garden visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Nice and all, but it felt a little bit like overkill. Kuau was pretty much convinced of its Chinese-ness because of this ornamental plate, which we never ate off of. (Kuau was highly entertained by the high number of plate changes that we experienced in Hong Kong, and felt this represented it well.) I became a little more comfortable towards the end of our meal when a large group of semi-raucous Chinese people walked in talking loudly and rudely in Cantonese -- just what a real Hong Kong restaurant (serving Peking duck) might be like.


We ordered the Peking duck tasting menu, which has Peking duck served in five different ways. I also ordered the delicious green drink in a martini glass featured in this picture. There were like 5 mixed drinks that all sounded good, and this one was awesome. I don't remember what was in it (Kuau?) ... but rest assured, every mixed drink I had at the Wynn was amazing, so I'd go for them!

Back to the food ... the first course was this traditional Peking duck wrap. I was too shy/slow to catch a picture, but they did the traditional thing where they push the duck out on a little cart, carve it in front of you, and put it into wraps with Hoisin sauce and cucumber and scallions -- all with, like, a couple spoons and a knife. The wraps were really good, and I would say they were even comparable with Quanjude, the super-famous place we had Peking duck in Beijing. The only thing is I wish we had more of it (and I would've sacrificed some of the other courses for more of this one. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll go over it in excruciating detail in the paragraphs to come. That's what we do here).

This is the course I would NOT have sacrificed for ANYTHING. (Not literally.) Unfortunately, this course looks like a pile of crap. However, I can tell you that it was a salad, described on the menu as with "almonds, crisp orange truffle vinaigrette." It was also served inside a crispy shell, kind of like a taco shell you'd get in a taco salads, but way more delicious. (The waitress also broke up the shell and mixed the salad for us.) This was to me the star dish of the evening. It was modern, but still had flavors reminiscent of traditional Chinese cooking, and I felt like the chef actually had a new and awesome vision when he created this course, which is impressive when it's just ... salad. Oh, and it was FREAKING DELICIOUS.

After that the courses seemed much more blah. This, for example, is a soup. Do I remember the taste of this soup? Not particularly, though I'm sure it tasted like chicken broth (er, I mean, duck broth). Do I dream about this soup at night, and savor the memory of its crispy taco shell? Certainly not.




The next course consisted of the final two preparations of duck. The waitress again rolled out the two kinds of duck on a cart, then plated our dishes in front of us (or, behind a creepy Kuau, as this picture might attest), which makes 3 dishes that they plated or modified in front of us (the duck wraps, the salad mixing, and this one). I thought this was a nice touch that added a little formality to the dinner while also making it more fun and interesting for us.


The two preparations of duck were in black bean sauce (left) and with noodles (right). Unfortunately, I found this final course to be pretty darn lackluster. The black bean sauce was okay, but that's also because black bean sauce is always awesome. In fact, I thought it was less flavorful than the Lee Kum Kee stuff from the jar. The noodles were fine, but I didn't think there was anything interesting there. I was also disappointed because this course was so not innovative in any way that I could readily identify. :(

But, moving on to dessert. I had told them that it was Kuau's birthday, so they gave us a free dessert, the chocolate log-type thing with ice cream on the left. They also included a little "Happy Birthday" (edible) placard which you can see in the background of the picture on the right. Of course, we wouldn't have discovered the placard was edible if it weren't for Kuau's fearlessness/idiocy/unconcern with looking like a weirdo eating paper in a restaurant.

The standard dessert that came with the meal was the strawberry ... thing ... in the right picture. I really don't know how to describe the strawberry thing. I guess it was a mousse? Both desserts were fine, but neither of them made my dessert stomach perk up and tell me that I absolutely had to finish them.


The experience started out awesome, peaked to super-duper awesome, and then fell rapidly to above average. So it certainly came out at above average, perhaps even awesome. Plus, I think it's the only nice, modern Chinese restaurant I've been to here in the US, and I do think that gives it something special.