China Poblano, The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas

Whoosh....and it's off to the west coast we go.

It was getting late and we were just wandering around and chanced upon China Poblano (2nd floor The Cosmopolitan, 3708 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109, tel : +702 698 7900) by José Andrés which I had read about. I was surprised by my initial reaction of disbelief but after a while, I thought - this is America. I suppose the accurate description for the restaurant food would be American styled Chinese and Mexican done by a Spanish guy. Makes sense?

Long story short, we decided to give it a go. Both the Chinese and Mexican food are prepared in separate kitchens apparently.

I was curious about their salt air margarita and thus ended up with one while waiting. They had replaced the usual salt rim with salt foam instead. A take on the traditional which I thought was not bad. They made a pretty stiff drink.

Next up was guacamole which was prepared table side. Sans cilantro of course. The suitable adjectives would be tasty, light and refreshing.

There were some interesting tacos which we thought was worth a shot at. That above was cow tongue with salsa pasilla.

And there was an oddly named Viva China with crispy fried beef tendon and fresh oysters. This was pretty good.

Then something called Silencio - fried duck tongue and fresh lychee. This was unusual and also quite nice. I'm pretty sure this was where Chinese and Mexican collided.

To put into perspective, these upmarket tacos were as expensive as the ones from El Mero Mero and were as tasty.

We had a pozole rojo. The menu described it as a soup of guajillo chile broth with shredded pork and hominy. It wasn't as spicy as I thought it might have been. The lime made it refreshing and it came with a plate of chicharron on the side.

The lamb pot stickers (锅贴) were the only Chinese item we ordered. These were small and had quite a bit of cumin flavour in them. Not too bad.

The finishing was some churros. They were okay.