é by Jose Andres - Avant Garde-ism in Brash Las Vegas

Stairway to... Jose?

Jose Andres, a name not quite as well known outside of the US as Mario Batali or Thomas Keller, but within, he's been on the scene a long time, getting people to stop and look (and taste) avant garde Spanish. He's an elBulli alum (almost everyone doing avant garde is nowadays, no?) but that's about all I knew. When I told people I was going to Vegas, gourmet traveller kindly sent me a very detailed email of everywhere they went and heard about on a similar trip (SF > Big Sur > Vegas). One that caught my eye was é by José Andrés. Many people in the US know him by his other restaurant, the super-experimental Minibar in D.C.

Bartolotta - There's an ocean in Las Vegas (for vegetarians too)

Mushroom ragout tagliatelle

Being vegetarian in the land of steakhouses and poker seems counter-intuitive, but is entirely possible. Funny that I should even be thinking about it, as (clearly) I'm not virtuous enough to be vegetarian, but best-friend-T is doing the vegetarian-on-the-1st-and-15th-of-the-lunar-month thang, so there we were, in Vegas, on the 15th of the 10th month of the lunar calendar.