at the sign of The Pink Pig

Do Fish Live in Houses? Emeril's At MGM Grand

[Pigging by Wilfrid: July 31, 2018]

You have to love the disciplined upsell. Emeril's New Orleans Fish House beckons guests by prominently offering a $65 tasting menu. Good value for the Strip.  Once seated, you're told, "Oh it will take at least two hours to serve..."

And when you hear the next table being told the same thing, you know the staff have been trained in the bait and switch -- the carte being that much more expensive. I persisted and of course I was on the entrée 35 minutes in.

Frenchette: No Luncheonette

[Pigging by Wilfrid: July 26, 2018]

Everyone has pronounced on Frenchette already, the four month-old entrant in the city's...bistro? brasserie? canteen? stakes by McNally veterans Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson.

 

What do I have to add?  Well don't worry about whether it's a super-luxurious brasserie or a boomingly loud cafeteria, as various critics have opined. It's a New York restaurant.  It's two steps from Bâtard, which once was that classic New York bistro Montrachet. It has a bar room with tables packed crazily tight, and a dining room in the rear. The decor in the former is less art deco, as Pete Wells suggested, than the kind of curvy wood paneling you might have found around a home bar in a suburban house, circa-Revolutionary Road.