Isabela’s
Polenta Honey Cornbread – with local honey, fresh made jam, sweet butter
Crab Benedict Mofongo – Lump crabmeat, plantain garlic mash, Romesco Hollandaise, quail eggs, roasted sweet potatoes
Brioche Flan French Toast – Powdered sugar, warm lemon, sugar glaze, whipped cream
Carne Omelet – Pancetta, Spanish chorizo, Manchego cheese
Garlic Pollo – Garlic chicken bites, pan tossed in a Spanish garlic sherry butter sauce & sauteed with our house herb mix
Latin Lobster Salad Roll – Maine Lobster, Mojo Mayo, Chives, Avocado, Watercress
Red Crab Sweet Corn Bisque – A rich, creamy soup made with fresh red crabmeat, roasted tomato, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, sweet basil, and sofrito
Latin Clam Chowder – Chef Beni’s twist on a New England favorite! Smooth chowder with Spanish chorizo, smoked paprika, sweet potatoes, sweet cream, sofrito and house blend herbs
Manchego cheese crisps
Garlic Shrimp Mofongo – Fried green plantains mashed in a wooden mortar and pestle, or “pilon,” along with citrus flavors & garlic topped with tender Garlic Shrimp
Cubano Panini – Panini style sandwich with sliced pork and Black Forest ham, Gruyere cheese with mojo mayo, mustard, and pickle
Fresh Cut Fries
Sweet Potato Fries with Blue Cheese
Yucca Fries
Chopped Chicken Salad – House combination of chopped Napa Cabbage and jicama tossed with a delicious blend of pumpkin seeds, piquillo peppers, manchego cheese, plantain chips, & avocado. Drizzled with a refreshing chimichurri honey dressing
5 Cheese Red Crab Mac
Paella Velazquez – Paella is tender fluffy saffron rice filled with an assortment of baby clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari, fish, grilled chicken, Spinach chorizo and fresh baby peas
Catalan Cream – Spanish Custard with Lemon and Cinnamon
Donut Churros – Cinnamon Sugar, Spanish Chocolate Dipping Sauce
Flan Cake – Rum Soaked Sugar Glaze
Warm White Chocolate Bread Pudding – Brioche, Madagascar Vanilla Bean Custard, Dark Rum Sauce
Originally opened in the old Garfield’s space under the name Latin Fish, but quickly rebranded as Isabela’s by Chef Beni Velazquez of Downtown’s Bar + Bistro fame, it has been a slow start for the beautiful restaurant set beside a man-made lake off Regatta Drive, and yet sitting down with four friends who know a thing (or ten) about dining around Sin City the results of a chef-selected tasting menu showed plenty of bold flavors and an adept hand for balance, though the run-amok menu and awkward servers remain in desperate need of some tweaks.
Selected as a meeting place in part due to location, but also to see if low marks amongst Yelpers and local ‘critics’ were anywhere near the truth, it was at prix-fixe with arrangements made directly through Chef Beni that the menu was set, and given plenty of room to spread out amidst a square table in large private room it was with long discussion of the city’s dining scene that the twenty-plate lunch unfolded, the opening bites of warm cornbread with three spreads followed by a crabcake atop mashed plantains each highlighting flavors sweet as well as savory, a hallmark of Velazquez culinary roots and good sign of what would come next.
Having specially requested a handful of plates from Sunday brunch, a menu that might be well served to be offered on Saturday as well considering the large restaurant sat less than 10% full at noon, plate three featured Isabela’s highly acclaimed flan French Toast, and with a caramelized exterior overlying a center wet with custard the results were every bit as decadent as might be expected, the follow-up omelet largely lost in the wake of such a delicious concept while the subsequent chicken was awash in butter and garlic, the sherry and herbs unfortunately muddled in the mix.
Regaining footing quickly, though servers tilting plates saw the first of three spills as a duo of soups were served on the heels of lobster salad stuffed inside toasty golden rolls, suffice it to say that although neither the bisque nor chowder was remotely ‘typical’ in the least, both bowls were invariably excellent as the former came across sweet and silky while the latter upgraded the New England classic by several notches through the addition of smoky paprika and spicy pork sausage, each bite compelling another until the deceptively deep vessel was completely wiped clean.
Returning to mofongo for plate nine before presenting a pressed panini alongside three styles of fries as the halfway point of our stay, Velazquez’s take on his native sandwich was on par with several of those tasted in Miami, a few more pickles potentially placing it above all but the very best, while the funky sliced sweet potatos and Jenga-style fried yucca were each locally beyond compare.
Refreshing palates with the tender chicken salad served atop chopped cabbage and jicama as plaintain chips added texture alongside creamy avocado and sliced Spanish cheese, it was to a small crock of macaroni tinged with red crab that each of us were next treated, the savories coming to a conclusion with two large skillets of paella, the notable lack of socarrat admittedly a bit of a disappointment, though the quality of the prawns and clams amidst rich wafts of saffron certainly did their best to somewhat soften the blow.
At this point verging on stuffed, the meal having stretched over two-hundred minutes as desserts were presented family style for all to share, it was with a quartet of options that the table was topped, and setting aside more service mispronunciations the question of where to invest limited stomach capacity proved quite the conundrum, the Catalan cream no doubt the lightest option though personal proclivities tilted more towards the steamy white chocolate bread pudding and delicate flan served atop a lightly toothsome base, each creamy bite slightly reminiscent of St. Louis style buttercake.
THREE AND A HALF STARS: Still an evolving concept, and one with plenty of room to grow in terms of service while a scaling back of the menu’s scope would allow the kitchen an opportunity to really dial-in flavors and textures both, one hopes that Isabela’s will soon find its audience because with a beautiful room and a truly passionate Chef it’d be a real shame to see another failure for a restaurant attempting to challenge the Summerlin status quo.
RECOMMENDED: Flan French Toast, Latin Clam Chowder, Cubano Panini, Sweet Potato Fries with Blue Cheese, Yucca Fries, Warm White Chocolate Bread Pudding, Flan Cake.
AVOID: Carne Omelet, Garlic Pollo, Fresh Cut Fries.
TIP: Open at eleven with whole menu available for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday till 9 or 10 o’clock, Sunday brunches offer a significantly different experience beginning at 10am and ending at three.
WHAT THE STARS MEAN: 5 World Class, 4 Excellent, 3 Good, 2 Fair, 1 Poor
http://isabelasvegas.com/
