La Cave offers fine dining with ‘hideaway feel’
February 9, 2011 - 2:03 am
For all of the culinary riches they offer, one thing most fine dining restaurants along the Strip are not is cozy.
La Cave Wine & Food Hideaway, which opened about two months ago at Wynn Las Vegas, is. And that, managing member Michael Morton says, is wholly by design.
La Cave offers a selection of small plate dishes in surroundings that Morton describes as cozy, intimate and, even, "sexy."
In designing La Cave, the goal was both to create a "hideaway feel" for guests and, Morton says, make La Cave a "complement to everything else in the hotel, and I think we've really done that."
La Cave is made up of three roughly 1,000-square-foot rooms that convey the ambience of environments ranging from an intimate wine cellar to a garden lounge.
Its menu offers a variety of small plates, almost all of which are less than $20.
Among the menu items: Flatbreads; seafood; grilled items; a selection of meats that includes artisan salami, hot sopressata, salumi salami, coppa and jamon serrano (for $5 each); and a selection of cheeses that includes Chimay grand cru, St. Andre and petit basque (for $5 each).
La Cave's wine list includes about 250 bottles, and about 30 wines are available by the glass in 2-, 4- and 6-ounce portions. That, Morton notes, inspires some guests to order a different wine with each round of food.
Also available is a selection of about 12 draft beers and more than a dozen bottled beers.
La Cave Wine & Food Hideaway is open Sundays through Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to, Morton says, "late."
Reservations are accepted, but not required, and a DJ plays in the lounge Friday and Saturday evenings.
Starters: Bacon-wrapped dates with blue cheese fondue, $10; artichoke and roasted pepper flatbread, $12; ham, quail egg and fontina cheese flatbread, $10
Salads and vegetables: Salt-roasted beets with whipped goat cheese and pistachio, $8; Gorgonzola salad with bibb lettuce, pickled onions and crispy prosciutto, $10
Small plates: Diver sea scallops with polenta cake and shrimp sauce, $15; beef fillet with crostini and blue cheese, $16; jumbo lump crab lettuce cups with blood orange segments, $13
Extras: A charcuterie board of three meats and three cheeses, $27
Desserts: Beignets with strawberry jam and creme Anglaise, and coffee lollipop with hazelnut crunch, $8 each
Information: 770-7375