Unique Japanese street food on the Vegas Strip
The scene: There is no shortage of Japanese food in Las Vegas, where every casino resort has at least one such eatery, along with plenty of options off the Strip. But there is nothing quite like Yusho, a spin-off of a Chicago-based restaurant group. The concept is claimed to be a celebration of Asian street food, and while this gets a bit lost in translation, Yusho does offer an innovative small-plate sampling approach, serving many unique and traditional Japanese dishes less common in this country, albeit with a fair amount of creative license. It boasts a very different menu from its Japanese neighbors, done in a welcoming atmosphere without any of the pretense that typically accompanies such attempts at more authentic and less discovered specialties. This is a fun, lively and casual way to explore an entirely new side of Japanese dining.
The location is vital to this vibrant sensibility. Yusho is part of the recent redevelopment of the front of the Monte Carlo casino resort into a lively urban streetscape. This is turn is part of a bigger trend sweeping Las Vegas, which is suddenly embracing the outside with an al fresco sidewalk aesthetic. Up and down the Strip, open-air developments like LINQ, Grand Bazaar Shops and the under-construction The Park are inviting visitors to leave the dark vastness of the casinos, and Yusho is part of this movement. Parent MGM Resorts blew out the front of its adjacent New York New York and Monte Carlo hotels to add bars and restaurants right on Las Vegas Boulevard, and Yusho is one of several surrounding the new Monte Carlo Plaza in front of the casino, complete with fountains and used for everything from outdoor live music at night to morning public yoga classes. Yusho has outdoor seating and a portable bar, with entrances from both outside and inside the casino, making it an inviting destination for all visitors, not just Monte Carlo guests, a place to rest your feet and fill your belly during a Strip crawl.
Inside there are two main dining rooms separated by a bustling bar and semi-open kitchen. It has a modern industrial feel, with high ceilings, concrete floors and caged light bulbs you'd expect to see in a coal mine. Tables are heavy wood, chairs metal, walls brick, art whimsical, and one wall gets Japanese anime cartoon figures projected onto it. The fast casual service gives it a pub feel, especially when coupled with the extensive drink side of the operation. The jeans and T-shirt-clad staff seems to be trying too hard to be hipster, but are surprisingly well informed about the complex food and very helpful in making decisions from the vast menu. Yusho has been quickly embraced since it opened last year and won a slate of accolades including Best Ramen in Vegas from 7 Days and Best New Strip Restaurant 2014 from Las Vegas Weekly.
Reason to visit: Pork ramen, assorted buns, crispy chicken, cocktails and sake
The food: The menu can be described in one word: ambitious. It's also a bit all over the place, but there are some real gems waiting to be discovered. The focus is on small plates, but not entirely, and the menu is divided into sub-categories like "buns," ranging from standbys like pork shoulder to oddities such as crispy cod (with cucumber, watercress and sesame), panko fried oysters (with curry and fennel) and charred eggplant (with peanuts, plum and Japanese mint). Buns are served "taco style" on a folded oval shell of soft, fluffy warm dough, and these are illustrative of the gourmet take on comfort food Yusho employs: Even the most straightforward-sounding dishes are prepared with a lot of attention to detail in terms of the layering of tastes and textures, while most sauces and garnishes are made from scratch in-house. For example, the crispy chicken bun is especially good, fried, marinated, and then fried again with a breading recipe that includes crushed corn flakes. It's untraditional but a great crispy, tasty exterior perfectly accented with a spicy aioli and thin sliced cucumber.
In a street-food homage to the back-alley yakitori stands found throughout Tokyo, the menu has a lot of things that are skewered and grilled, including exceptional marinated grilled lamb skewers served with a pile of spice powder for dipping and a side of yogurt dill cucumbers, a combination that tastes much better than it sounds. The skewering even carries over into the ramen section of the menu, another modernized take which has become a fan favorite here, seven distinct varieties of noodle soup containing everything from chicken meatballs to lump crab meat, plus a dozen "add it" options to customize any of the ramens. The pork ramen has become the Yusho signature, topping a large bowl of noodles, broth and vegetables with a unique fried stuffed pork shoulder croquette skewer. The broth is extremely flavorful and deep, with dried bonito flakes adding a seafood layer to a pronounced meaty pork taste, made even richer by the addition of a soft cooked egg in it, which you burst and mix in – this is a really good dish, and quite substantial by "small plates" standards.
Other sections of the menu include Snacks & Sides, with things like assorted Japanese pickles, miso soup and a kimchi medley; and Crispy, with chicken drumettes, fried crispy chicken skin and vegetable tempura. The Grilled section is more a slate of main courses, with everything from a steak to a plate of grilled shishito peppers, more like something you'd find at a Spanish eatery, but done in a Japanese style with ponzu sauce, lemon and shallots. Even the desserts are elaborate and inventive. Most Japanese restaurants serve mochi (ice cream-stuffed balls of rice dough) that they buy frozen, but Yoshu makes theirs from scratch and the flavors are intense, like the passion fruit. The soft-serve Thai curry ice cream with pistachios and melon won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it is different and well-made.
Not everything on the menu is perfect or authentic, and I didn't care for the crispy chicken skin, which sounded better than it tasted and looked like a plate of greasy nachos. I could also have skipped Yusho's take on okonomiyaki, a pancake of flour batter and shredded cabbage topped pizza style, a very popular and tasty comfort food in Japan that is rarely seen anywhere in this country, even in the most Japanese urban enclaves. Their take was smaller, thicker and topped with too many bean sprouts, salmon and bonito flakes – but at least they serve it. This sort of sums up Yusho, which sometimes tries too hard to do too many things, but does most of them well and certainly differently.
In this vein, it's worth noting that a big part of the theme revolves around drinks, with a similarly unique take. In Japan, just about every bar and restaurant has whisky highballs, a mix of whisky and soda water, on tap, wildly popular but unheard of in this country. Yusho lacks this classic, but in a similar vein offers half a dozen bizarre cocktails on draught, including a gin and sake blend with lemon and a citrus, or a Jasmine tea and sochu (Japanese spirit distilled from rice) combo. There are tons of sakes by the glass and bottle, Japanese beers, and all in all the beverage program is as eclectic and semi-authentic as the food menu. Between these, the chief appeal of Yusho is experimentation with lots of things you just won't see at other Japanese restaurants, in Vegas or anyplace else.
Pilgrimage-worthy?: No, but a good, fun and very different place to eat on the Strip, especially if you want to eat outside.
Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: 3770 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas; 702-730-6888; yusholv.com
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.