Raku

Raku on Spring Mountain Road in Las Vegas occupies an unassuming strip mall in the city's Chinatown corridor — the kind of location that filters out everyone who doesn't know what they're looking for — and inside delivers what many food critics and restaurant industry professionals consider the best Japanese restaurant in Nevada. Chef Mitsuo Endo trained in Japan before bringing a robata grill-centered izakaya concept to Las Vegas in 2008, and the restaurant has maintained a devoted following among the city's most knowledgeable diners ever since. The robata program is the heart of the menu: a charcoal grill that imparts a specific clean smoke to skewered proteins, vegetables, and offal preparations that is impossible to replicate with conventional equipment. Individual skewers of wagyu beef, chicken hearts, quail eggs, and seasonal mushrooms arrive from the grill at a gentle, unhurried pace that rewards extended dining. Housemade tofu, prepared daily and unlike anything available at typical Japanese restaurants, demonstrates the kitchen's commitment to fundamentals often overlooked in favor of flashier preparations. Ankimo — monkfish liver prepared in the classical Japanese manner — is rarely found in Nevada and at Raku it is executed with the same precision as fine restaurants in Japan. The restaurant is famously a destination for Las Vegas's own chef community: many of the city's most accomplished restaurant professionals dine at Raku on their nights off, a form of professional endorsement that speaks more persuasively than any review. The sake selection is thoughtfully chosen and well-priced relative to what the restaurant's reputation might suggest.