[Restaurant Review
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Bally's Sterling Brunch -- The Queen of Brunches
By ScoopLV
Mountaineers want to conquer Everest someday. Runners dream of Olympic Gold. Physicists hope for a phone call from the Nobel Committee. Restaurant reviewers spend their lives chasing the dragon for that ultimate meal.
I have finally had a meal I doubt will ever be surpassed – best of all, it was a Sunday Brunch. I live for Sundays, as long as brunch is being served somewhere.
Approaching its 20th year, Bally’s Sterling Brunch is the queen of all brunches. There are people who come to Las Vegas just to eat here on Sunday. This is the standard by which all Sundays should be judged.
Sunday Brunch is in my opinion the zenith of western civilization. Mimosas and seafood were made for Sundays. The ability to dine with loved ones at a big Sunday morning meal puts closure on the past week, and opens the new week in style.
Take my word. If you have brunch on Sunday, the following week will be better than if you didn’t.
Bally’s is consistently recognized as one of the world’s best brunches. Meticulous attention to detail and a seemingly endless food and beverage budget makes this not only one of the best meals you can have in Las Vegas, but one of the best values anywhere. I defy you to eat here and not mentally calculate how many hundreds of dollars worth of food and champagne you consume.
Let’s start with the big things:
* Champagne. All you care to drink. (Please enjoy responsibly.) And they don’t serve “sparkling wine” or “methode champenois.” Sterling Brunch serves Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut, direct from Epernay.
* Caviar. American Sturgeon. Slate-grey mini pearls of elegance, served with buckwheat blinis. This is the one and only item that must be requested. You can find it in the sushi section.
* Sushi. I consider this part of the “wow” because of the quality of the ingredients. The yellowfin tuna is as red as a bell pepper. The salmon is wild caught and exquisitely buttery. They also serve unagi nigiri (barbecued eel), octopus sashimi, and California rolls. The sushi is served with chilled saki.
* Maine Lobster roasted in butter. The chefs bring out tray after endless tray of lobsters.
* Herbed rack of lamb and beef tenderloin.
* Chilled gulf shrimp. U-16 size. Perfectly prepared. These are as good as any I’ve had in Key West.
But the devil is in the details. And Bally’s gets all the little things right.
First of all, the restaurant is classically decorated. It’s like eating inside a Burberry catalog. Green and white wallpaper with mahogany accents. Nina remarked that it’s like dining in your grandfather’s study, without the cigar smoke.
Something as simple as water is a big thing here. Take your pick, Evian or San Pelligrino. They serve Harney & Sons tea. (I drink tea from John Harney or Harrod’s, period.) They make their own ice cream to go along with the Bananas Foster (which is flambéed with Hennessey cognac) and Crepe Suzette.
Brunch is served inside Bally’s Steakhouse, which is 50 feet from their Sports Book. (Smart move on Bally’s part.) Sunday Brunch on the West Coast coincides with the NFL. This means you can pop over to the jumbo-tron occasionally – champagne in hand – to check the score.
Please take a moment and click on the link on the left to view the menu. Give it a good, long perusal. Ask yourself, “If I had any one item from this menu for breakfast, would it make me happy?”
Now ask yourself how you’ll feel having it all?
Nina and I made reservations for 11:30 and were seated by Ilario Pesco, the Matre’D and the soul of Sterling Brunch. Our waiter, Alex, made sure our glasses were never half-empty.
We picked up two menus, used them as a checklist, and got to work.
I have a system for Sunday Brunch. I rarely deviate – shellfish, then sushi, then meat, then whatever is in the chafing dishes. Nina wanders and picks up whatever catches her eye.
I like to start out with a shrimp cocktail, a half dozen oysters, and some crab legs. The shrimp was perfectly prepared (I’ve had many bad brunch cocktails. This, however, was as good as I make myself.) The shrimp were U-16, which means my six shrimp weighed in at almost half a pound.
The oysters were flown in from Washington. Be careful when selecting your oysters – some of them are brimming with delicious oyster liquor and some of them have spilled onto the ice. The snow crab was “easy eat” cut – claw tips with exposed lump meat just ready to be eaten.
Next came the salmon and sushi course. Since the caviar is kept at the sushi station, I added caviar to this course (and several others). Sterling Brunch offers both lox and gravlox. I like mine sashimi style.
The caviar is small pearl, graphite colored and not too salty. The texture was a pleasant crunch, and the buckwheat blinis held the flavors together nicely.
The sushi here is better than I’ve had at many sushi restaurants. The fish was fresh and high quality. Nina said she was impressed with the fact that Bally’s doesn’t overload the nigiri and rolls with rice. These were generous cuts of fish, with just enough rice to balance the texture. We’ve dined at sushi restaurants that serve rice the size of a snowball and you have to squint to see the fish. Not so here.
Next up, lobster. I hit the “end of the chafing dish” for my first lobster course. So I was “stuck” with all the claws. Awwwww. Claws are more work, ‘tis true. But they have a much better flavor than the tails. The lobsters are roasted and basted regularly with butter. The buttery flavor permeates the meat. It’s served with drawn butter, which is entirely unnecessary.
On to the main proteins. I tried all three of the butcher block offerings. The herbed rack of lamb was perfectly roasted, tender beyond belief and bursting with herb flavor. The chefs were able to cut me a piece of medium rare tenderloin, which I enjoyed with yet more lobster and caviar. Then I tried a little piece of peach-glazed ham.
By this time, the ham wasn’t the only thing in the restaurant that was slightly glazed. This story took dedication and about three hours. I grabbed a glass of champagne, went next door and watched the Miami Dolphins lose their eleventh straight game for a bit. I was then ready for the next course.
This time, I walked down the buffet aisle and sampled a little bit of everything. The oysters with béarnaise and caviar were rich and salty. The eggs benedict “Oscar” was one of those dishes made for the Sunday Brunch – and provided an opportunity for more béarnaise. I ended up waddling out of Bally’s. There was more steak, this time petite tenderloin with a fennel risotto.
A meal this good needs truffles, so I had a nice portion of seafood coullage (mostly lobster) in truffle sauce. That needed more champagne and another helping of caviar to complete it.
There were several more courses for each of us. Nina and I assembled our Christmas list. We alternately watched football. We talked about our new jobs and talked with a pair of nice ladies from Chicago (and a full table from Summerlin). We also talked about human nature, the meaning of life, and reminisced about our honeymoon in Epernay. In other words, this was a patient feast.
Two of my favorite desserts were on the menu that day – crepe suzette and bananas foster. Unable to decide which I wanted, I (as you probably can guess) had both. Of the two, I liked the bananas foster more. It was flamed with Hennessey cognac and searved with homemade ice cream.
Bottom line: The brunch cost of $75 is quite possibly the best value on the strip. It’s a good thing Bally’s only offers Sunday brunch but once a week, because otherwise I would never get anything done. This brunch is reason enough for a trip to Las Vegas. It’s reason enough to move to Las Vegas. Make reservations well in advance.
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