What: The Grand Wok and Sushi Bar
Website: Click here
Where: 3799 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Rating: 
Why:
Among the better casual but quality dining restaurants on offer in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, The Grand Wok and Sushi Bar exhorts the talents of its Executive Chef, Bill Chan.
Open from 11 ’til 11 on most days and 11am until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, this glossy well-lit restaurant looks part cafe and part classy restaurant thanks to the glass enclosed private dining room in the centre, surrounded by booths and tables (like Happy Days but Asian). The restaurant offers, and provides, tasty and high quality Pan-Asian cuisine at a reasonable price.
The service is casual but friendly and the food is swift. You can choose from the larger a la carte menu or from the shorter appetizer and half-serve menu if you want to move on quickly to your next gaming table or get quickly to your show.
The kitchen is open to be viewed by all at the back of the restaurant and it is a well-oiled machine, whose staff will happily beam smiles back at you if you happen to be looking in their direction when they look out at the customers, as they do frequently just to see what’s going on.
While the cuisine is a Pan-Asian mix of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean and Vietnamese, the interior of the restaurant seems Japanese inspired and provides welcome viewing relief from the flashing lights of the gaming machines section in the casino right outside. Not that those lights don’t also make for a stimulation of the senses, but the interior of the restaurant provides a serenity that is otherwise somewhat lacking in the hustle and bustle of the casino.
What casual Asian dining experience is complete without fortune cookies? These are of course freely available upon your exit, and if you expect the customary crisp cookie that immediately crumbles and half falls to the floor when you extract the small typed fortune, you won’t be disappointed – although the parts of the cookie that you manage to catch in your mouth are tasty too.
Incidentally, my fortune advised me to be more real – which for a moment made the venue seem more rap than ramen – but otherwise the experience was quintessentially Pan-Asian and the food was excellent.
