If atmosphere were the sole consideration for visiting a restaurant, Little Buddha at the Palms would never have an empty table. This is a most wondrous place to look at, and no knock on the food here, a pan-Asian food-fest to beat the band.
If you've never stepped inside, Little Buddha evokes—like its prototype, Buddha Bar in Paris, and several of its predecessors, (most notably San Francisco's Betelnut)—the esprit de corps of '30s Shanghai, when everything was tinged in crimson and celadon, a page from Bertolucci's script for The Last Emperor.
If all this sounds somewhat ersatz in the Vegas context, consider that this looks a lot more real than the façade of Manhattan at New York, New York, or the scaled down La Tour Eiffel at Paris.
At the front podium, there are dozens of statues of the Buddha himself, silver things sitting in square red boxes. The main dining room is an enormous rotunda, with a tented ceiling from which a giant, almost octopus-like chandelier is suspended. The entire room glows faint red, and there are sweeping red banquettes to sit on, or seashell-shaped booths to handle a larger number of guests.
Throughout the front room, long, cylindrical, jade-green shades hang down, with gold tassels on their bottoms. Above the entrance to the larger back dining room is a statue of Buddha, a giant, foreboding thing that looks as if it had been lifted from a Thai temple.
It's clear that no expense has been spared. Tabletops are lacquered an onyx black, and there is a retro-looking bar with a backlit top, embellished with portraits of Chinese children, resembling faded, sepia-hued images from a photo album. The only modern touch is a selection of soft jazz playing constantly on the sound system. If you like the music here, you can buy it. The original Paris Buddha Bar markets a collection of CDs.
If you are like most people who dine here, you'll probably start things off with one of the interesting cocktails, such as the Fuji Tea, a surprisingly refreshing drink made with gin, rum, Midori, and of all things, Sierra Mist; or a martini-like Sweet Buddha Love, which contains everything but the kitchen wok.
When Little Buddha opened, I thought much of the food a bit sweet. But the new chef, German Edgar Theisen, has improved the kitchen considerably, and now I like the food here more than ever.
The sushi bar is a dependable performer, even though Theisen isn't working there. All the usual suspects are on hand: spicy tuna roll, edamame soy beans, fatty tuna, yellowtail and fresh-water eel, to name a few, and a variety of creative specialty rolls, as well.
The appetizer menu is interesting and intelligent, and though press releases describe this place as classic Chinese with French touches, that is more the case at Buddha Bar in Paris than here. I'd call Theisen's food California fusion with swatches of China, Hawaii and the rest of Asia, especially Japan, and even Korea. It's mostly all good, anyway.
My favorite appetizers exhibit eclectic tendencies. Wok-fried calamari and shrimp, both nicely battered, come with a Vietnamese sweet-and-sour dipping sauce. Chinese chicken salad uses Napa cabbage, a few types of fried noodles to vary the texture, lots of shredded white and dark chicken, and perfect amounts of sesame oil and soy.
Steamed shrimp dumplings, a take on the Cantonese dim sum dish, ha gow, deviate from the program thanks to a nice lobster-miso sauce. The one appetizer that didn't work was the crispy chicken spring rolls with sweet chili sauce. The rolls came to the table oily and overfried.
Entrées are all over the map, too, and not quite as consistent as the appetizers or sushi. A wok-fried "kalbi"-style beef does not employ short ribs—which kalbi means in Korean—but a lesser cut of beef, and the meat wasn't sizzling or fragrant with sesame oil or spices as it should be in a Korean barbecue establishment.
But kasuyaki-marinated salmon with chilled soba noodles is terrific, as is Chinese roasted half-duck with star anise-mango gastrique, a beautiful marriage of East and West.
I'd also give high marks to a very Thai-tasting red-fire curry shrimp with rice noodles in a stir-fry, and a simple grilled pork chop with spicy ginger pineapple relish. Chinese? Nah.
Another bonus to dining here are the good desserts, a tough hill to climb at authentic Asian restaurants. Little Buddha has wonderful sweets, starting from the light, excellent sorbets and a wonderful caramelized lemon tart that is more like a lemon-flavored crème brûlée, to the more substantial, a fine French-apple crumble and liquid-centered chocolate cake with good vanilla ice cream.
You get all this, and Buddha too. Oh, and don't forget to clap your hands three times before you order, like a properly respectful Buddhist.