Despite our jet lag, we had dinner at Michael Mina's restaurant at the Bellagio. Like most Vegas restaurants, it's an offshoot of a famous parent, this time from San Francisco. In general I don't like the concept, since it's really not going to be the same, and Vegas is a very challenging place to do fine dining. There's such a mass of people, so there's constant pressure to churn the tables, and restaurants generally feel like war zones there.



Mina was no exception, but the waiters handle the constant crunch with a very good attitude, and were surprisingly professional. It's a seafood restaurant, which I usually think means high quality but timid flavors, but if anything this food was overly rich. Somchai had the tasting menu, while I went ala carte. My starter was small but great, perfect scallops with foie gras. My main course was their signature dish of lobster pot pie (pictured here with the top cut off). It's quite a production at tableside, but was a bit too heavy and creamy for me. Somchai's favorite dish was the miso seabass, also pictured here. But that's cheating, because I think miso is the perfect way to prepare fish, so any combination of fish and miso automatically scores a home run. (don't know if you've had that stoli, but you should try it given your aversion to seafood. It tastes more like dessert than fish). Speaking of dessert, also pictured here, the highlight was the root beer float, mainly because I hadn't had a rootbeer float in 30 years. (Food-17, Decor-17, Service-18)