Roy’s Las Vegas

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Our next stop on our culinary journey through Las Vegas brought us to Roy’s Las Vegas. I often use Trip Advisor when researching hotels and restaurants to visit during our travels, and Roy’s ranks number 1 out of 1990 restaurants in Las Vegas. This fact alone had me pretty interested in checking this place out.

 

James Beard award winner Chef Roy Yamaguchi opened his first restaurant in Honolulu in 1988. Today, he has over 37 restaurants around the world, and is considered the gold standard for Hawaiian Fusion cuisine. Inspired by a love for the fusion style Roy’s is known for, Chef Quy Trinh creates the exciting array of culinary dishes as Chef Partner at Roy’s Las Vegas. Having tasted numerous Asian and Asian fusion dishes, this was our first foray into Hawaiian fusion, so we were pretty excited.

The decor and ambiance at Roy’s is cool upscale casual with a stylized Hawaiian branded theme (think classy – not tiki lamps and leis). It’s a rather large restaurant that keeps the house lights fairly dim to set a comfortable and relaxing vibe. Due to the dim lighting, pardon the slightly out of focus shot taken by my daughter included in this post. I also want to make special mention of the staff at Roy’s. Everyone was very friendly and they loved to talk about the food – both the ingredients and the preparation. This made for a great customer experience and is a big bonus for us foodies out there!

 

Roy’s features a pretty extensive menu – which always makes me agonize over my selections. They do offer a variety of prix fixe menu items along with some convenient mixed plates which allow you to sample a selection of complimentary dishes. On this visit, we started with a variety of sushi to get the ball rolling. The Aloha and Sunrise rolls are highly recommended. Super fresh melt-in-your-mouth fish with delicious ingredients and accompanying sauces. On our server’s recommendation, we also ordered the outstanding Crunchy Golden Lobster Potstickers. All the appetizers were excellent.

For our main courses, we went with Roy’s Trio – Hibachi Salmon, Macadamia Nut Crusted Mahi Mahi & Misoyaki Butterfish (the Butterfish was incredible) and some items from the prix fixe menu – Duck Confit and Roasted Mushroom Flatbread to start (very tasty), Shiso Crusted Salmon with Bacon Wilted Spinach (loved it), Caramelized Onion Polenta and Roasted Red Pepper Dashi for a main course, and then a sinfully good Melting Hot Chocolate Soufflé with Belgian Chocolate, Raspberry Coulis and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. I had to ask my daughter twice not to lick the plate – always a good sign of a great meal. This was one of those dining experiences that took almost 2.5 hours from start to finish – can’t think of a better way to spend an evening! Roy’s is ranked the #1 restaurant in Vegas by Trip Advisor for very good reason. I concur. Highly recommended! For now, back to the cage.