Come with me to find out if the $300 ultimate tasting menu at Bazaar Meat by José Andrés in Las Vegas is worth it. If you don’t want to read it all, watch my video review!
Bazaar Meat recently reopened in the Palazzo after calling the Sahara home for many years. First off, I have to say that it is difficult to find just about any restaurant in Vegas among the labyrinthian casino resorts.
To get to Bazaar Meat, you want to be dropped off at the Palazzo side of the Venetian. If you get dropped off at The Venetian, you will have a long walk. Enter on Las Vegas Blvd and you should already be on the lower level, which is where you’ll find Bazaar Meat.
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The Vibe and Decor
The vibe is Golden Age 1920s, with lots of pink and red velvet, soft lines, and creative lighting. A massive wraparound bar dominates the main dining room. There’s a second dining room closer to the grill adorned in yellow and cream, and a private dining room that seats about 15.
Guests are encouraged to visit the open kitchen and walk past the glass-front refrigerators stocked with huge cuts of meat. The chefs will interact with you as you observe them working, which is fun, and the steaks themselves are so thick it will blow your mind.
Dining Options
At Bazaar Meat, you have a few options for how to approach the menu. You can order a la carte, just as you would at any restaurant. If you want the famous suckling pig, be sure to contact the restaurant more than 24 hours in advance. It is a great option for a larger group. They no longer have it available without pre-ordering because doing so led to too much waste – can’t argue with that!
In addition to the main menu, Bazaar Meat offers two versions of their tasting menu – the normal tasting menu for $215 and the ultimate tasting menu for $295. The ultimate tasting menu also offers an upgrade possibility with Japanese a5 wagyu beef.
Drinks cost between $20 and $30 and while I thought the “salt air” on the margarita was going to be pretentious, it was a salty foam that was honestly delicious.
The Martini Service
The martini service is worth a post on its own – you pick your liquor, add-ons and “expressions” to add to your drink. Your options are gin or vodka for the liquor. Add-ons are castelvetrano olives, blue cheese stuffed castelvetrano olives, pearl onions, and/or lemon peel.
The “expressions” are spritzes added at the end and the options included rosemary, dill, and black peppercorn. The waiter wheels a cart tableside, fills a martini glass with liquid nitrogen to quickly cool it, and goes about building a martini to your specifications. You can mix and match as you like, but beware that the martini service costs $28 so you don’t want to steer too far off course and end up with a very expensive cocktail that you don’t like.
We liked the blue cheese olive rosemary version best, and also tried a blue cheese olive dill version, both with vodka.
The Ultimate Tasting Menu
Ok back to the food. This menu has around 11 courses depending on what you consider to be a course, but most are very small. The whole thing is meant to feel like a modern tapas restaurant with many small plates. It becomes an absolute bacchanalian feast by the end, and yes I did wake up in the night feeling sick from eating too much. This is a long meal and I recommend starting early. Our dinner for 5 people lasted over 3 hours.
We started with tomato bread, which is just toasty bread with smashed tomatoes but somehow it was stupidly good and a great alternative to traditional bread service. My husband, who is gluten free, checked with our waiter ahead of time and they indicated they would bring him something different later on in the meal.
Next was the caviar cone, which was so good. It is a single bite crispy cone with creme fraiche, ossetra caviar, and chives, topped with gold leaf. I loved this one and would have ordered several more. We then moved on to olives served 2 ways, one stuffed and one liquified. It was some molecular gastronomy stuff that was intriguingly good and like nothing I’ve had before…a bit smoky and delicious.
We then moved to scallop ceviche, which was fine but one of our least favorite dishes. I was worried that the “leche de tigre” sauce would be super spicy, as my understanding of leche de tigre is usually very hot, but this was not spicy at all, just citrusy and flavorful. This dish would have been great with something else from the raw bar, but I’m just not a huge fan of scallops prepared ceviche style.
Smoked oysters with a smoky foam on them was next. I love oysters but I did not love these. There was so much foam that I couldn’t find the oyster, and it was interesting but just not my favorite.
The star of the evening is the Ibérico ham, the most expensive ham in the world. It comes from black footed pigs from the Iberian peninsula in Spain, and it took Chef Jose Andres 6 years to get a license to import them. Bazaar Meat’s jámon ibérico comes from a family farm in Jabugo, Spain.
The pigs are babied on the farm, enjoying free range access and eating primarily acorns, which gives the jam a sweet, nutty flavor and all its natural oils. Each person gets 2 small slices and – hot take – most people love iberico but honestly I don’t, certainly not enough to justify the price tag. Jamón Ibérico costs more than $100/lb.
It’s quite an interesting show, though, with the ham leg wheeled tableside and sliced to order.
Members of our group remembered loving the Jose’s tacos, which is jamón ibérico topped with ossetra caviar and gold leaf, served on a nori sheet. We added these to our order, but if we hadn’t, they were going to offer one to my husband as a replacement for the caviar cone that contained gluten. If you’re doing the ultimate tasting menu, you definitely don’t need to add the José’s tacos – you’re already getting all the ingredients in the meal.
A shot of gazpacho was next and this was one of my favorite dishes. I would order a bowl of that in a heartbeat. They brought patatas bravas to make up for the missed tomato bread for my husband and brought enough for all of us which was super nice. They were delicious and came with a beautiful tomato dipping sauce.
We also added the cotton candy foie gras for $12 / person which I thought I would hate, because I don’t like foie gras. It’s foie gras on a stick wrapped in cotton candy. You shove the whole thing in your mouth at once and pull out the stick, which was challenging with as much cotton candy as there was! The sweetness of the cotton candy made the richness of the foie gras manageable for me, but I still wasn’t a big fan. Everyone else loved it.
On to the next course, which was bison in a buffalo sauce – not too spicy, but I didn’t love this one. I was completely full already and we hadn’t even gotten close to the main dishes yet. Stick with me. Wear stretchy pants.
My least favorite dish was the “organized” caesar salad with a parmesan ice cream. It was bland and confusing.
Then we were on to beef tartar which I usually don’t love but this was excellent. It was prepared tableside and served with delicious rolls and lettuce cups as a gluten free option.
We are crazy people so we added 3 portions of Japanese a5 waygu, cooked tableside. They brought over a small bincho grill and grilled 3 ounces of beef slices, which were served with freshly grated wasabi. The attention to detail here was impressive; the chef said he prefers to cook the meat only on one side to prevent it from overheating. Because the slices are so thin, the heat permeates the meat and gets it to the desired temperature. It was truly great steak.
We finally got to the main dishes and it was enough steak for the neighborhood. We took most of it with us and if you think I didn’t fly home with a to-go bag of steak in my suitcase, then you don’t know me.
The steaks are served with a mushroom side dish coated in egg yolk and a garlic chicken sauce as well as Bazaar Meat’s version of Robuchon mashed potatoes, which is more butter than potato. You also get fire roasted king crab legs with a miso butter sauce. Amazing but honestly just so much food.
We ended with desserts, 2 of the 3 of which were gluten free and my husband got a coconut ice cream to compensate for the missed dessert. None of the desserts wow’ed me, though I enjoyed the alfajores the best.
The Service
Service at Bazaar Meat was excellent, with an engaged, helpful waiter, a theatrical element to the dining service, and lots of interaction with various staff members. It was entertaining and enjoyable to walk by the cuts of meat, watch them grill the waygu, slice the ham, and prepare the martinis all in front of us.
Is Bazaar Meat Worth the Price?
All in with drinks and the add-ons, our total came to $524 per person. Did I wake up in the middle of the night feeling gross from the overindulgence? Yes I did. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. Top notch experience, exceptional ingredients, great allergy support, and a truly unique dining experience. I can’t wait to go back.
Wondering what else to do and eat in Las Vegas? Check out out guide to Las Vegas with kids. See our comparison of the Waldorf Astoria vs Four Seasons and don’t miss these 7 speakeasies in Vegas.
