A Meal at the Original Lotus of Siam

It took a year and a half (and one missed opportunity) before I got to finally try the "real" Lotus of Siam. LOS chef Saipin Chutima had briefly flirted with Manhattan last year, opening a branch on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Steve went (and posted) when the chef was still in the house, but she swiftly returned to Las Vegas, leaving her newest franchise to fend for itself before pulling out entirely earlier this year. When we went at the end of December, it was a dim, half empty place. We liked our meal, but it was not worth the markup (although we did have a fantastic Reisling with our meal).

Luckily, I got a taste of the real Lotus of Siam only hours before flying back to New York City from Las Vegas (which turned into a two-legged, fourteen hour Spirit Airlines adventure). The practical effect of having to catch the flight was that we were limited to what we could fit in our stomachs (and no leftovers!).

However, obsessive research had led me to the following four absolutely necessary dishes.

Jaleo From Las Vegas

How does a restaurant succeed when the chef isn't looking over every cook's shoulder? We all like to think that in NYC a famous executive chef spends every day in the kitchen, but as most people realize, wrestling is fake and Emeril is not cooking your dinner. Nowhere is this hard truth more apparent than in Las Vegas, where world famous chefs, enticed by piles of cash, have sought to expand their brand for the last few decades.

José Andrés may have hardly set foot in his new tapas restaurant Jaleo, located in the ultra-shiny, ultramodern Cosmopolitan hotel, but that doesn't mean the food suffers for it. The restaurant has a hyper, bustling energy, much like our dinner companions for the evening, who couldn't seem to sit still or focus on one thing for too long (so maybe tapas was good for them). This format also helped the two people in our group who don't eat pork (and a few more picky eaters), since we could all pick and choose.

We started with a pitcher of sangria while taking in the scene and listening to our waitress rattle off specials and recommendations. I wouldn't want to put up with us, as at least four different people simultaneously shouted dishes at her, but somehow it worked, and our waitress managed to steer us to some of the more obscure dishes on the massive menu while also ordering a whole bunch of crowd pleasers.