Dinner @ RETRO by the Voltaggio Brothers – Mandalay Bay, Vegas
My bestie and I have seen the Voltaggio brothers on various Top Chef and Food Network shows, and their food has always looked so good. I’ve seen Michael Voltaggio on TV more often because of Bobby’s Triple Threat, and his creative interpretation of food has looked so darn interesting. When we heard the Voltaggio brothers opened up RETRO at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, we were contemplating on whether we should try. Yes because of the Voltaggio brothers, but TBH, the menu and look just based on photos online didn’t seem appealing to me. Anyways, we got to Vegas and passed by RETRO, and it looked pretty fun so we decided to give it a try, making this our first Voltaggio restaurant.
Early Dinner
We had a show to catch so we did an early dinner at RETRO. There were a couple other parties seated and there didn’t seem to be much of a wait. The hostess and others were really friendly. We were taken down the stairs to our table, and the view was pretty nice. Definitely brought back memories seeing 80s / 90s games and such! Oh, childhood.
Ordering and Menu
RETRO has a la carte menu and also a pre fixe menu. The a la carte menu had some good options and it would be interesting to see the Voltaggio brothers’ take on these classics. However, we were told that the pre fixe menu would give us tastes of the more well known items on the menu, so we opt’d for that. $99 a person, not too bad for Vegas!
Trying Each Item
There were 3 of us, so we decided to try a bit of everything. Each of us chose a different entree course so that we could try the entire pre fixe menu. We got 2 orders of the pizza rolls, of the deviled eggs, 2 Caesar salads, a shrimp cocktail, one of each main entree, 2 cookies and crème, and one cheesecake crème brûlée.
Thoughts on Food
Decent. We weren’t really impressed and expected a bit more, but I suppose this is what it is at this price point. I enjoyed the seafood – the shrimp cocktail and the sole/fish the most, and of course, the marinara sauce.
Time to Go
That was an alright meal, but didn’t really end well as the dessert wasn’t really great in our opinions. A lot of places with pre fixe menus’ desserts haven’t been that great.. the most memorable one was probably Nobu’s whiskey cappuccino. That was a good dessert after the tasting menu experience!
Worth It / Will we Return?
For us, no. It was a fun spot seeing things that trigger our memories, and there was a game at each of the table (ours had trivia cards), which was a nice touch to keep up with the theme. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t super great either. I’m sure the majority would find this place to be amazing, but our expectations were higher after seeing what the Voltaggio brothers did on TV.
