Love your pictures of JR, and your descriptions of the evening. My wife, a friend of ours, and I were recently in Las Vegas, (December 4 – 7), and planned to visit JR when we booked our flight.

We went Friday night, and we knew beforehand that we would have the 16 course taster. As you mention, the food didn’t disappoint, it was quite easily the best meal I’ve ever had in my life!

I don’t know if the food was any better than the service though. It was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night, so we took the opportunity to engage the front house staff in conversation. We learned that the head sommelier was like us, from Canada, so we had an immediate connection. In addition, I went to cooking school in France about 15 years ago, so I was able to converse with all of the staff in french, even if my wife and Don, our friend, were not. Our server was from Morocco, his assistant from Savannah, Georgia, the assistant sommelier from Montpelier, the Maitre D from Belgium, the exec. chef from France, and the sous chef from Japan.

While I don’t often cook anymore, I’ve travelled a fair amount with my past/current employer & vacation, and experienced many of the places that the gentlemen were from. We seemed to have an immediate connection with everyone in the restaurant that evening, and I don’t know if there was a minute that went by in the 5.5 hours where we didn’t have someone at our table in conversation with us. While my wife got up about 2 dozen times to stretch, make a run to the washroom, etc, as did Don, I didn’t want to miss a thing, so I managed to stay seated the entire evening.

Our only frustration with the evening was having to leave before a kitchen tour as we were running late for “O”… this was solved by returning Sunday night for a second visit in the same weekend.

We decided to do apps at L’Atelier next door, and move over to JR for a meal after. While Sunday was much busier than Friday, (a full house), the food was incredible, the service consistent, and we got our kitchen tour! Sunday had two downsides though… Exec. Chef Claude wasn’t working, so there was no visit, and the incredible bottle of wine we had Friday night was no longer in stock… appparently we had drank the only bottle of an affordable and incredible wine!

I’m leaving for France for a 3 week vacation with my 4 yr old son in 12 days, and can’t wait to get to a few of JR’s restos in Paris, and to source out that incredible wine!

Btw… we were only given candied fruits and chocolates, so I’m extremely jealous of your banana loaf! Love your website, I’ll be back!

Regards,
Mike