Yellowtail = douchetastic; Hyde & seek

If you’re ever tempted to envy those of us who must attend media events for restaurants: Don’t. They’re a chore — crowded, noisy and sprinkled with microbes of food that is usually grossly unrepresentative of the daily bill of fare. Although a minor on-the-job accident got me out of last night’s Golden Gate re-launch, which I’m told was a complete and interminable trainwreck, at least from the media-relations standpoint, I still had to show the flag at Yellowtail, formerly known as Yellowtail Sushi. However, taking “sushi” off the name appears to have been a change of form than substance. It’s still a Japanese restaurant that prominently hawks … sushi. That was also most of what was being handed around on trays, along with some cubes of eggplant. Oh, a couple of pizzas were spotted but they seem to have been earmarked for the Beautiful People.

For you see, Yellowtail is a restaurant that has mistaken itself for a nightclub. Pounding “house” music filled the ears and the pungent stench of Axe body spray jammed the nostrils. (It should be the official scent of Bellagio.) The prospective clientele was epitomized by a couple of exceptionally scuzzy-looking men and more Kim Kardashian klones than you could shake a Botox needle at. If you were 30 or older, you looked very out of place. Indeed, there’s a fascinating and very curmudgeonly thread on Two Way Hard Three concerning whether Strip casinos have simply written off the average American as a customer base.


Hyde and seek. Getting to and from Yellowtail also means navigating past the entrance to Hyde and all I can think is that Roger Thomas‘ thoughts on this disastrous design afterthought must be unprintable. The façade is a huge, graceless box — in MGM Resorts International‘s preferred, Cubist fashion — that protrudes into the gaming floor, forcing a couple of 90-degree turns in the traffic pattern. Also, to accommodate the backwash of clubbers waiting to get past the velvet rope, there’s a big, awkward, empty spot on the casino floor where slot machines clearly ought to be. It might pass muster in The Mirage or Aria but at Bellagio it looks maladroit and out of place … or should I say ‘pLace‘?

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