Viva Las Vegas

I've only been to Las Vegas a few times, but I have many vivid memories from those brief trips: seeing home movies of Diana Ross projected onto a screen made from the singer's stretchy white jersey dress, pulled away from her body by her dancers as she stood stock still within it (parse that, Baudrillard!); the round bed and mirrored ceiling that surprised us on entering our room at Caesar's Palace, and the talking statues in Caesar's shopping mall; the Disney-esque castle spires of the Excalibur, and the beautiful horses running around an oval ring at breakneck speed in its basement.

There are, alas, no gastronomic reminiscences accompanying these reveries (well, there was a Rock Cornish hen meant to be eaten with the hands during the horse show, but once sampled, it was easily ignored). I've never been a fan of cheap buffets, and they were all that Vegas seemed to offer (well, some casinos had swanky, Continental restaurants, of the type that Calvin Trillin calls "La Maison de la Casa House," for high rollers likely to blow hundreds of dollars on a bottle of indifferently stored vintage wine and unlikely to be too critical of tough meat under congealing sauces).

But as the casinos added high-end shops and roller coasters worthy of theme parks and replicas of famous European monumental architecture to lure people (I almost wrote "suckers") to their tables, they also enticed a number of brilliant chefs (that is, those with a certain level of celebrity) to open outposts in the desert. One approaches these collaborations with a certain amount of cynicism (just how often is Emeril Lagasse going to drop by Emeril's New Orleans Fish House in the MGM Grand?), and nods knowingly when Jean-Georges Vongerichten chooses to open a steakhouse in Las Vegas rather than an eatery featuring his signature French cuisine with Asian accents (it's so much easier to find people to man a grill than to re-create his "nearly raw" lobster with miso, mustard, and caviar).

A recent excursion under the aegis of my friend Mary, who writes a number of different guidebooks to Las Vegas, introduced me to several of the town's four-star restaurants (including a couple with San Francisco connections). I was whisked from the airport to our suite at the Hotel at Mandalay Bay, a harbinger of one of the newest trends on the Strip (big resorts annexing small, stylish boutique hotels, which are accessible through a quiet lobby rather than the usually inescapable casino). I barely had time to count the plasma TVs (a widescreen beauty in the living room, a normal-sized model in the armoire in the bedroom, and, yes, a smaller but still entirely adequate one in the bathroom) before Mary swept me off to the just-opened Burger Bar (702-632-9364) run by Fleur de Lys' Hubert Keller, in the new chichi shopping mall, Mandalay Place.

What is it about Las Vegas? It's barely been 10 minutes and I'm trying on gaudy Barry Kieselstein-Cord sunglasses with gilt wings on the earpieces, pure Showgirls, as though I actually might buy them. (And, even more unlikely, wear them.) Still, once ensconced in a booth at the Burger Bar, I don't fall for the pricey Rossini burger made from Kobe beef, with foie gras, truffles, and Madeira sauce, for $55; Kobe beef is too soft to make a good burger. There are two other name-brand meats on offer, and I'm pointed toward the Ridgefield Farm ("no antibiotics, no growth hormones, 100% vegetarian diet") over the Black Angus ("midwestern cornfed"). I choose modestly from the vast list of accompaniments (which includes seared foie gras at $16): cheddar, avocado, extra raw onion. Alas, the burger, although tasty, is still too soft for my tastes; I like a charred crust with some tooth to it. I get the impression that the Burger Bar, which was initially created by another restaurateur, was taken over by Keller because of his ongoing deal to open Fleur de Lys in the Mandalay this summer.

That night we're due to dine at Vongerichten's Prime (702-693-8484) in the Bellagio. More than meat joy! We're given a prime (pun intended) table, right by the windows, overlooking the amazing computer-generated dancing fountains; Mary frets that we can't hear the music the jets of water are choreographed to, but she mimes so effectively to "One ... singular sensation" from A Chorus Line that I get the joke. The joke at Prime is that I like everything else I eat (a dazzling salad of scoops of Dungeness crab paired with scoops of a mustardy mango purée; a big, beautiful baked potato; spinach drowned in pure cream) more than the enormous $44 porterhouse, which is still quite beautiful, and certainly as good as many fancy steakhouse steaks I've had. Our big beef day hasn't really revealed Las Vegas' new gastronomic riches.