Bazaar Mar in Vegas is an Excitingly Great Meal

Bazaar Mar is a new seafood focused restaurant in the Crystal Mall in Las Vegas by chef Jose Andres. He has other restaurants I have been to in Vegas and most that I have tried have been outstanding including e, and the similarly named Bazaar Meat which focuses on, surprise, meat! At Bazaar Mar there are two tasting menu options and you can also do a la carte. I went for Jose’s Creative Experience.

The meal started with olives two ways including traditional and spherified which was made famous by Ferran Adria. I was surprised to see this on the menu as for a long time, it was over done by many Spanish chefs. If you have never had them before, it will be entertaining, but for me, it was a blah way to start the meal.

Fortunately, things went uphill from here starting with Iberico ham and tomato toast. The bread, I was told, was flown in from Barcelona. The ham was not the best I’ve had, but paired with the bread, was very delicious. The quality of the bread and tomato was excellent.

Next came a delicious “Asian Taco” of hamachi, and caviar. I really liked the presentation of the dishes at this restaurant. They highlighted the luxurious seafood they were serving very well.

After this came two servings of uni. One in a cone and second was with oysters and more caviar (I opted for no raw oysters). The cone was especially delicious and just packed with umami and great texture from the crunchy cone.

The meal then moved to some crudos. First, blue fin tuna and a fried quail egg. It was good, but the dashi broth “sauce” was overseasoned.

The blue fin was followed by an interesting presentation of salmon carpaccio. It was ok.

The next section of the meal involved seafood and bread. First was the chef’s take on bagel and lox. This was fantastic. The “bagel” was crunchy. The Anchoas Don Bocarte was probably my favorite bite of the meal. An anchovy with smoked butter on that amazing bread from Barcelona (I think).

This section of the meal came to a close with a mini lobster roll which was very good. Perfect bread.

For the main course, they prepared an oyster mushroom with an anchovy aaioli. The sauce paired with the mushroom was like umami on umami and I devoured all of it!

The main was a whole John Dory which was first presented tableside, then taken away, deboned, and sauced.

The fish was meaty and very good. For dessert, a chocolate souffle and banana ice cream. The souffle was perfectly cooked but I thought the flavors could of been bolder.

Overall, this was a fantastic meal. The food, even with the couple of misses, was exciting and delicious. Service was good though with some faults. The service could of been friendlier. It was not bad, but many of the servers seemed robotic. They also forgot some drink orders. However, I really liked the food and would definitely return when the menu changes. I would highly recommend.