What makes a dinner $500 per person? Is justifying a price like that even possible?

Consider this. The seven course shabu-shabu dinner at the new Bar Masa in Aria does cost that much. When I told a colleague in Chicago about the price, she said, “What are they putting in there, pearls?”  The components include Beluga caviar, abalone, lobster, Wagyu beef and fish found nowhere else in the United States. Bravo, and so what.

Shabu-shabu, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is one pot Japanese cooking where items are swirled around in hot broth, until they reach the desired degree of doneness. Even though Americans eat it all year, in Japan, it is strictly a winter dish.

MGM/Mirage wouldn’t spring for my shabu-shabu, here served in a room called Shaboo. They generously did comp me for two in the main restaurant, though, where the omakase, or chef’s choice dinner, came to over $400 each.

It’s apparent that this is the most expensive restaurant in Vegas or anywhere in this country save Masa in New York City’s Time Warner Center, which is also owned by chef Masa Takayama. What goes into such a stupefying price point, then?  Most ingredients are from Japan, for one thing, even the fish that make the delicate shabu-shabu broth.

And Masa is a maniac. Like many highly evolved Japanese craftsmen, he won’t compromise about anything. That makes the food costs seem almost impossible to ordinary mortal restaurateurs. For another thing, we are in Aria, the multi-billion dollar jewel in the crown at City Center, and you know this space ain’t cheap.

Before I chronicle the stupendous meal we ate, (and stupendous it was), a little background. Chef Masa first came to light in Beverly Hills, in his restaurant Ginza Sushi-ko. Imagine a place with eight counter seats that charged approximately $350 per person, IN THE EIGHTIES!!

Now at that time, I was married to a native of Tokyo, and she heard it through the grapevine that this amazing place had opened.  So I took then LA Times restaurant critic, Ruth Reichl, who pronounced it as the best Japanese food in America. The restaurant became a runaway hit.

The main thing I remember was the chef’s notebook on every guest. If you came back, allegedly, he’d never serve you the same dish twice. I imagine this is possible in at an eight-seat counter such as he had.  In a two hundred seat place like Bar Masa, though, this is just a fantasy.

 Bar Masa at Aria has a dramatic design, done in large part from a series of sketches done by the chef himself. His idea was that of a big open space, punctuated what looks like a giant awning overhead. The elements, stone, wood and glass, could be from Frank Lloyd Wright. If you want to escape the casino environment, this is the respite.

Our dinner started with a bang. Omakase are often the multi-course affairs known as kaiseki, and there is a protocol. First is sunomono, a pickled course, here smoked saba, or Spanish mackerel, wrapped in chrysanthemum leaves. The quality of the fish was unimpeachable, so we knew we were in for an extraordinary experience.

Next came toro tartare topped with caviar. Toro, or fatty tuna belly, is outrageously expensive, as soft as Danish farm butter, and wonderful. Tai, which the server called sea bream, but is, in fact, a snapper, came with black truffle, and then came agemono, “fried things”, abalone and calamari deftly fried in virgin oil, leaving a clear, clean taste.

In Japan, top class restaurants use oil only once, then bottle and sell it to second class restaurants. This technique is reflected in the price.

Yakimono, the grilled course, followed, Kobe beef skewers paired with chicken yakitori. The meats, served on a hot stone griddle, were great, meltingly tender, and a far cry from the street food you see outside the typical Japanese train station anywhere in that country.

Then came sizzling spicy octopus, and Kinki deep-sea snapper, broiled and curled up at the head and tail, the way it is at a Japanese wedding reception.  The restaurant’s young chef, Takahiro Sakaeda, grew up in New Jersey, but is totally bi-cultural. When he came out to greet us, he looked sheepish when I asked him if someone had just gotten married.

Chiba beef sashimi with garlic oroshi and snowflake-like finely grated Japanese onions were next, and then little dishes of baby shrimp fried rice and winter mushroom yakisoba, or buckwheat noodles, were next, because my Asian wife wanted a starch.

This, the chef did reluctantly, because he knew it would make us full for the sushi tasting, which it did. In traditional Japanese multi-course meals, the sushi comes at the end.

The fantastic platter of eight fish on clumps of vinegared rice, nigiri style, was as beautiful as I’ve seen anywhere, but we couldn’t properly appreciate it. These boys actually know how to pace a meal, so if you  put yourself in their hands, the meal will make perfect sense.

The only dessert was nashi, aka Asian pear, cut up and served on nice pottery. Wine and sake are served by sommelier Jeff Eichelberger, and he’s a real pro. The food servers know these dishes as well. They have to undergo rigorous training to work here, and most of them speak the Japanese language, or at least are fluent in restaurant Japanese.

Now, you can come in here and order from the a la carte menu, but it’ll take at least one hundred dollars to walk out without being hungry. I’m sure than no other place in this country charges $28 for fried rice, $34 for an appetizer sized hunk of black cod, or $240 for toro with caviar, a component of our dinner.

But if you wish to experience the very best, to Japanese cuisine what Robuchon is to French in this country, then a meal here has no peer. I would eat here on my own nickel, if I could afford it. Which I cannot.

Bar Masa
Aria
3730 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(877) 230-2742

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