Talk-A-Vino

When it comes to food, Las Vegas is one of the top places in the US. There is no shortage of great restaurants in Las Vegas, no matter what cuisine you are craving.

Considering that the city of Las Vegas is located in the middle of a desert, you wouldn’t think that sushi should be one of the culinary staples there, but it is Las Vegas after all, the city of no limits.

When visiting Las Vegas, which typically happens once a year for the work conference, I always try to include sushi in the dining repertoire. This year was no exception, and while researching online, I found this highly rated place, called 888 Sushi & Robata, which had very high ratings on Yelp, so it definitely got my interest. The only challenge was the fact that the restaurant doesn’t accept reservations and offers a waiting list instead.

I conveniently joined the waiting list on Yelp, and was told that even for the solo diner (none of my colleagues arrived yet), the wait time would be between 3 and 3.5 hours (we are talking about the middle of the day on Sunday). Okay, waiting is not a problem. I decided to walk to the restaurant as it was only about a mile away from the hotel, so I left about 40 minutes prior to the earliest time I could be seated according to the wait list information. Arrived at the restaurant, let them know that I was there, and as I was happy to sit in the bar, I was seated almost instantly (my waiting list was still not complete, but it worked fine).

The restaurant offers a number of menus at different price levels and with different content. As I didn’t want the menu with Wagyu beef (carpaccio, etc.), I settled for the Sushi and Robata menu.

I was not familiar with the term Robata, so based on the menu, I figured that Robata is basically a Japanese BBQ, with food served on little skewers. The waiter explained that the restaurant is all you can eat, but you need to order as you go; this is not a buffet, and you have only 90 minutes to dine. Note that the menu is really overwhelming, but my waiter was very helpful and we were able to figure out I think an excellent program.

I fully took advantage of dining just by myself. I took a bunch of pictures and took notes for almost all the food I was having, so now all I need to do is share my notes with you. Here you go:

I started with a few Robata items:

Squid on the skewer – tasty, but a little chewy
Beef on the skewer – very good, tasty.
Kurobuta sausage, made from the famous Japanese Kurobuta pigs – superb, incredible amount of flavor. I would love to eat like 10 those little sausages at once.

The next few items were served on the small plates:
Crispy Calamari – wow! Crunchy
Tuna Poke – wow. Flavor!

And then there were sushi, many different types of sushi. What was very interesting was that generous pieces of fish were served with tiny, very tiny rice balls – I really appreciate that we were truly able to enjoy fish in the sushi.

Salmon – a huge piece of fish and a tiny amount of rice
Salmon roll – very good
Yellowtail – perfect

Seared salmon – wow. Absolute wow. A little slice of fatty salmon just very lightly seared – what a pleasure!
Mackerel – great, really good. Love mackerel!
Yuzu yellowtail – not very spicy. This was one of the few small disappointments – if you promise spicy, you better deliver 🙂
Eel – melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Love eel, this was delicious.

I asked for a few more pieces to complete the meal.
Ikura – superb. Delicious caviar, excellent quality.
Uni – good, a touch of bitterness which you can often find in the uni. I’m personally looking for a uniformly sweet profile.

As I was looking for something else to complete the meal, I noticed in the Robata section a bacon-wrapped scallop, but it was not available. Instead, the waiter suggested that I should try a bacon-wrapped oyster mushroom. OMG.
Bacon-wrapped oyster mushroom – wow. Tastes similar to scallop. This is really something. A properly chewy, slightly sweet mushroom wrapped in a delicious, salty piece of bacon. Wow.

This was an amazing finish for an amazing meal. Well, almost finish, as I couldn’t resist a soft-serve green tea ice cream, which was delicious and refreshing.

Here you go, my friends – 888 Sushi & Robata. If you are in Las Vegas, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Next time I’m in Las Vegas, this restaurant will definitely be on the list.

888 Sushi & Robata
4480 Paradise Rd #900,
Las Vegas, Nevada 89169