Vegas Made Easy - Las Vegas Info

Steaks vary by marbling, finish, and aging techniques. Some people can clearly taste noticeable differences but some cannot or are neutral on those differences.

Vegas Made Easy.com believes the best non-Kobe style steaks are Dry Aged, grass fed, and Prime. Our top choice is Craftsteak at MGM although it could be overtaken by Cut when it opens at the Palazzo—a new Venetian tower. Delmonico (Venetian) has some good side dishes and the best wine list of any steakhouse in Vegas. Prime (Bellagio) is a fine dining and steakhouse combo with a great view and Smith & Wollensky (Strip near MGM) is almost as good in Vegas as its New York namesake.

If you prefer Wet Aged steaks, we recommend N9ne (the Palms) which has by far, the best for people watching. Craftsteak also serves great Wet Aged steaks (actually a tad better than N9ne) as does Morton’s (off the Strip). SW at the Wynn has great side dishes and is still one of the better Wet Aged steakhouses despite their chef change.

For a more affordable (2/3 the price) Prime, Dry Aged steak, Circus Circus has a hidden jewel. The Steakhouse mesquite chars their excellent steaks. Side dishes are included in the price but their sides fall short of Craftsteak, SW, N9ne, and Delmonico offerings.

Cheaper still is Billy Bob’s at Sam’s Town—a Local’s casino on Boulder Highway. The 40 ounce steak is big enough for sumo wrestlers and they have 2 other 24 ounce steaks as well. Quality is better than what you would expect.

For a cheap steak deal, Ellis Island (Off the Strip) has a 10 ounce off-menu special for $6.99. It is a not-so-tender NY Strip but otherwise value for the money.

For breakfast, a cheap small steak and eggs at Local’s favorite Arizona Charlie’s is $2.99. The Decatur location is slightly preferred to the Arizona Charlie’s on Boulder. Although the quality is not high, you can eat there about 15-20 times for the same price as one of the high end Steak restaurants in Las Vegas.

Lunch is more limited but The Palm in the Caesars Palace Forum Shoppes has good Dry Aged offerings and a decent creamed spinach side dish. Steakhouses in Vegas are usually only open for dinner.

Some of the best Local’s Steakhouses in Vegas are found at the Local’s Station casinos with Hank’s, Austin’s, T-Bone’s, and Sonoma Cellar surprisingly good. They serve a combination Wet and Dry aged steak as does Gallagher’s at New York New York. Becker’s is a good Local’s place in the Summerlin area for Dry Aged steaks.

Downtown, choices are limited. The Vic and Anthony’s at Golden Nugget is very good—roughly similar in quality to the Capital Grille and Del Frisco type of chain steakhouses.

Have you ever had a steak that tasted slightly off to you but your friends raved about how great it tasted? Has a highly touted Steak restaurant disappointed you with lack of flavor?

The reason is different kinds of steaks appeal to different people. Every single Steak restaurant review of Las Vegas Steakhouses or anywhere else has been done incorrectly because they don’t account for this important difference.

Dry Aged steaks are slightly rotted. Aerobic bacteria tenderize the meat and a resulting crust, similar to jerky in texture, must be trimmed away. However, the flavor concentrates as the meat tenderizes.

Wet Aged steaks are sealed in cryovac and tenderize by anaerobic bacteria activity. There may be a very slightly brightened flavor but otherwise it is much more neutral in taste.

A number of restaurants use combination Wet and Dry aging which strongly tends more to Dry Aged flavor.
The Station casinos have several well-regarded steakhouses that use this method.

If you like Venison or Lamb, you might prefer Dry Aged steaks. A visitor from New York who likes Peter Luger or Keene’s mutton, are probably big fans of Dry Aged. Also, if you tried a well-regarded steak restaurant that tasted bland or flavorless, the culprit was probably Wet Aging.

Should you like milder tasting foods or have had a bad experience at a big reputation Steakhouse because the flavor seemed off, then you are probably a Wet Aged fan. This is especially true if you dislike any gaminess in meats.

Another test is filet mignon. Because there is not much to trim, filet mignons, even at Dry Aged steakhouses, are Wet Aged. If you prefer the flavor then you are probably a Wet Aged fan or maybe one of the no preference group if you prefer the filet mignon for tenderness only. It is usually the most tender cut.

If you always like steak no matter where you eat, you may be one of those who cannot tell a difference or may like both. It is also possible to be a style shifter depending on mood or maybe by side dish influences.

According to a polling by the Journal of Animal Science, click here for article
, about half of tasters prefer Wet to Dry and about a fourth either did not care or could not taste the difference. Results shown below were determined by silent auction bidding on either Prime Dry Aged or Prime Wet Aged steaks.

Although steak connoisseurs almost always prefer Dry to Wet Aged, most people prefer the more neutral Wet Aged steaks. Recommendations should be divided up into 2 separate groups, one for Dry and one for Wet.

Combination	Dry	Wet	Total
Hank's Fine Steaks	21	21	42
Austin's	21	21	42
T-bones	21	21	42
Gallagher's	19	90	109
Capital Grille	14	21	35
Palm	?	?	35

Wet Aged	Days
Cut (LA)	21
Craftsteak	21
Del Frisco's	Wet
Morton's	21
N9ne	21
Ruth Chris	28
SW	38

Until Cut opens, Craftsteak is the only steakhouse that offers a choice of grass fed beef. Almost all cattle are fattened on grains, predominantly corn until recently.

Grass fed beef tends to taste more beefy but chewier. There is much more variability because cattle can graze on clover, legumes, etc. as well as different types of grass. If the fat on grass fed beef is yellow/orange in color, it may reflect carotenoids in their diet.

Also grass fed beef vary more in live weights. Sometimes it will be 700 lbs., 1,000 lbs. etc. and maturity may be 2/3 what you normally get with grain finished cattle such as 14 months.

If you do not like Dry Aged steaks, you probably will not like grass finished beef. Even if you love Dry Aged flavor, there is more of a hit or miss taste for grass fed. Grain fed, especially corn fed is more consistent.

When ordering grass fed beef from Craftsteak and/or Cut, be sure to order it medium rare or rare. Grass fed beef has more monosaturated fat which has a lower melting point than saturated fat. This difference in kind of fat is even more pronounced in Kobe beef.

Technically, the only true Kobe beef comes from the Kobe prefecture in Japan. However, the Wagyu cattle breed of Kobe has interbred with other cattle strains in the U.S. and Australia and Wagyu genes are dominant.

On the negative side, this means Wagyu’s offspring are usually slow to bring to market but on the positive side, have incredibly marbled meat with a very buttery flavor.

Prime graded beef in the U.S. is only about 2% of the total market. Choice and Select are what shows up in grocery stores with restaurants hogging almost all of the Prime.

However, Wagyu in the U.S. will typically grade out about 95% or so U.S.D.A. Prime. Sometimes they will be graded on the Japanese scale which has higher levels of marbling than Prime.

Given the same amount of marbling, there is no discernable taste difference. If you pay for true Kobe beef, ask how marbled it is versus U.S. or Australian grown Wagyu and only pay a premium if it is at the higher Japanese levels.

True Japanese Kobe beef is between $17-$30 an ounce in Las Vegas. If you get an extremely petite 3 ounces, expect to pay a minimum of $51. A big eater who only considers 24 ounce steaks acceptable could pay up to $720 for the steak alone. If they charge less, they are selling you American or Australian Wagyu instead but are not admitting it.

Marbling in Wagyu beef can be so high as to make the meat look pinkish white instead of red. The fat is much more monosaturated fat than regular beef which means that it should not be cooked beyond medium rare or else all the richness will melt away. A medium, medium well or well done Kobe steak is a ruined steak—chewy with reduced flavor.

Almost all steakhouses in Las Vegas offer American or Australian Wagyu but there are a few that offer true Japanese Kobe (or other Japanese prefectures) beef:

Side dishes can separate a very good steakhouse like the hidden one at Circus Circus from a really great steakhouse. We think Craftsteak has an advantage because you can select Dry or Wet, grain or grass fed and with a number of good side dishes.

At Craftsteak there are good mushrooms, excellent Yukon Gold potatoes, reasonable seafood and excellent desserts. Delmonico has great chips and banana cream pie with hands down the best wine list. N9ne has Lobster potatoes and routine celebrity sightings. Prime is a very good restaurant overall that happens to offer steak.

For non-steak restaurants, Mon Ami Gabi (Paris) is quite good with decent fries and with seating outside, a great view of the Bellagio fountains. Bradley Ogden is not a steak restaurant but if you have a list of things to eat with true Japanese Kobe on it, you can get it done here.

If you would like to eat at a Celebrity Chef restaurant that happens to be a steakhouse in Las Vegas, please see our report on award winning restaurants. It is the most complete of any website about Las Vegas even including Hung’s win as Top Chef. Here is a link to that article.