We wandered back into the Grand via the side door on Las Vegas Blvd. It leads you in near the Rainforest Cafe. Now, the Grand was built when the trend was to have casinos be an impossible maze, so that you'd be more tempted to stop along the way and gamble. From this point, it took nearly 15 minutes for us to find the Ka ticket counter, despite the signs along the way, and there was a good sized line there. Luckily, the line was the standby line. I walked up and grabbed our will call tickets, with the clerk clearly excited about the fact that they were front row seats.
We then wandered another 15 minutes or so until we found Pearl, the restaurant where we had reservations. We still had about 40 minutes before dinner time, so we continued walking back into the shopping area. They had a Krispy Kreme store with production line, but it was shut off until later in the evening. We also found the monorail access. I can see why people complain about the thing…it is way in the back.
Pearl is right next to Emeril's Fish House. I tried to get us in there this morning (Kathy loves banana desserts, and Emeril's is known for their take on Bananas Foster), but their earliest opening was 10:30! So, high end Chinese cuisine it was.
One question you'll get while dining in Vegas is whether you want ice water or bottled water to accompany your meal. It's an unusual question, at least for an Indiana boy, and even stranger coming from someone who barely speaks English, but we got what we needed. The restaurant was modern asian elegance: simple reds and grays, with a glass wall waved to make it look like a waterfall.
We started with the Spider Prawn Dumplings. Four prawns, wrapped into the end of a light wrapper and seasoned. The wrapper was then fried to golden, and the end without the prawn was sliced so that when presented on end, they looked like little crowns. These were perfectly cooked and accompanied by a sweet and sour sauce.
For the main course, I had the Salt and Pepper Beef Tenderloin. Bite sized pieces of buttery, medium-rare beef in a tasty sauce, with Jasmine rice. Kathy had the Tempura Shrimp with Mushrooms. The shrimp were each laid on their side, and the Enoki mushrooms were placed upright in the center ring. Once battered and fried, they looked like little trees. Kathy thought the shrimp was wonderful, but that the batter and frying overwhelmed the mushrooms. As a side, we got some stir fried string beans in an XO sauce. These were probably the best part of the meal.
We finished with their take on pineapple upside-down cake. A mini-pineapple was used for the bowl, with a wonderful little pineapple cake melted inside. This was served with a scoop of orange ice cream on a thin green tea cookie, arranged to look like an orange flower.
This was not a cheap meal. Even without wine or soft drinks, our bill was $110 + tip. It was a wonderful break in atmosphere, with some great food that I'd love to recreate. Next time, perhaps we can take enough people to try the tasting meals.
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In the Tarpit 