Kase Sake and Sushi – An Amazing Omakase Value (and then an “Ube Cafe”)

I remember reading “An Economist Gets Lunch” with high interest because it combines two things I am passionate about – food and finance. One theme from the book has stuck with me: “there is a direct positive correlation between price and quality for sushi”. On a recent trip to Vegas, I may of found a counter example to this “rule”. Kase is located off the strip and offers extremely well priced and well executed omakase options. They range from $28 to $120 for the chef’s premium. We went for the 7 course “Oomori” for $49. Its very rare to see any type of omakase for less than $100.

Upon arrival we were seated at the bar with a view of the kitchen and a blackboard that had a la carte options as well.

The meal started with a seaweed salad.

Then proceeded to the first 4 nigiris:

The fish was pretty good and the rice was as well. The next dish was a salmon ponzu tataki:

Then a blue crab hand roll. The filling was good but the seaweed could use some work. It needs to be more crunchy and I like my seaweed with more seasoning. The gold standard for handrolls to me is Hello Nori. Perfect fillings (including breaking down crab and lobster from scratch) and an obsession with finding the perfect nori.

Next, another 4 nigiris. The chutoro stood out as being particularly delicious.

Followed by negi toro handroll:

The last course was the 2 piece chef’s special:

After the omakase was done, the blackboard that was starring at me the whole time tempted me to order more, and I did. Starting with the wagyu with a cherry jam topping:

Then something our server recommended – eel with coconut. He was right, the coconut was the perfect pairing with the eel. The flavors and texture of the coconut went so well with the char on the eel.

Lastly, I also had the king crab and truffle. This was probably my favorite as the butter and crab was so smooth and delicious.

Overall, service was really good. Our server gave us tons of local food recommendations and provided lots of conversation. The food was really good too. For this price point, you will not go wrong here. There is probably no where else you can get this experience for this price. I would return and recommend.

After lunch, we went to Cafe 86 a few stores down on the recommendation of our server. It was a Filipino cafe that had a lot of ube on the menu; and I LOVE ube. I got the tres leche and ube monster milkshake. Tres leche is one of my favorite cakes.

The cake was ok, but a bit disappointing because tres leches should be soaked in the sauce and this was more like a cake on top of sauce. The soaking is important so that each bite fills your mouth with cold sauce then the cake comes through at the end. Its part of the experience. The milkshake was ok, it was blended with some Oreos. I would not return.