Red 8 at the Wynn Hotel - Did we walk out again?

This past weekend, we stayed at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.  Unsurprisingly, we got a craving for Asian food during our visit, so we decided to give Red 8 another shot.

The first time we stayed at the Wynn (relatively shortly after they opened), we tried eating at Red 8.  That time didn't go so well.  In fact, we didn't end up eating there at all!  Our experience that time started with us queuing up for a table.  The restaurant is right next to the casino floor, and it was strange to be in a long line of people waiting for a table; it seems like a natural for them to use those little pagers that they have at Chili's, Outback, and even restaurants at the MGM so patrons can be gambling (losing) money while they're waiting for a table.  Alas, this was not the case.  So, we waited.  Finally we were seated and shown to a table.  Unfortunately, no one ever came to even take so much as a drink order.  After ten solid minutes of sitting there... we left.  I've never been so ignored in a restaurant.  And it didn't seem as if the waitstaff was overtaxed by the number of customers; it just seemed like they'd never been trained.  So, despite the intriguing southeast Asian menu, we left and went to Daniel Boulud Brasserie (which was fantastic, but that might have been the wine talking).

OK, fast forward two years.  Not being one to hold a grudge, we went to see if they'd gotten the kinks worked out.  We showed up about 11:45 am, about 15 minutes after opening.  We were seated immediately since there was no wait, and given both a regular menu and a dim sum order sheet (they do dim sum from 11:30-3:00, at least on weekends, maybe every day).  The first thing I noticed was the uncomfortable chairs.  They're wicker without cushions (hard) and the angle of the back makes leaning back awkward, so you sort of have to perch on them.  And we waited.  Uh-oh, here we go again.  Fortunately, the wait wasn't that long and our waiter ("Joe", though the waiter name on our actual bill was a Chinese name) showed up and took our drink orders; he seemed conscientious enough, and I cut him some slack since he appeared to be the only waiter on duty serving about 8-10 tables.

But then I noticed that he was not alone.  Every corner where I looked had a staff member.  Some were dressed in waiter outfits, while others simply wore black t-shirts.  The odd thing was that none of them seemed to be doing anything; they lurked in corners, chatted and laughed, and wandered into and out of sight. They did the strangest things.  One just walked a lap around the restaurant and returned to his corner without refilling a glass or talking to anyone; he was a big white guy and if I didn't know better he looked like a bouncer; maybe the dim sum crowd gets rowdy.  The same guy then came to a waiter/bus station near our table, picked up a tray, put the tray back, and walked back into the shadows.  At one point, I think I counted nine floor staff for about 20 tables, with most of them doing nothing.  The woman who seated us was taking orders and filling water glasses.  It was if everyone had some mysterious set of assignments and couldn't help anyone else.

At one point, I ran out of iced tea, and we waited to see how long it would take to refill it.  About 3-5 minutes, later, a staffer (not our waiter, but someone with the nametag "Tin") came by and offered to refill my tea.  He also asked if he could refill my wife's Diet Coke, but she said she was OK.  That was good.   Then our waiter (Joe, not Tin) came by to offer to refill my glass.  I told him that someone else was already working on it, and he looked perplexed.  I told him that the man's name was Tin, and he looked at me as if he'd never heard of him.  Joe ran off, said something to one of the other busboy/bouncers, and disappeared.  Promptly, Tin returned with my iced tea, and asked my wife again if she'd like her Diet Coke refilled; she thought that was odd since she'd told him "no" about two minutes earlier, but at least it was an attempt at service.  We were very lucky to have Joe and Tin.  Other customers waited much longer for service than we did.

OK, what about the food?  It was good, yet unsatisfying at the same time.  I'm not sure how that's possible, but that's what it seemed like to me.  A good example was the baked BBQ pork buns, one of my wife's favorites.  The pastry was fantastic, but the filling was strangely bland.  The turnip "cake" tasted good, but was lukewarm at best (not good when we're ordering from the kitchen and not carts).  The har gow and shumai were very good, as was the fried taro.  My feeling leaving the place was that it was just OK, despite being technically better than our local Memphis dim sum,  the overall effect lost something in translation.  And, being the Wynn (home of the $9 tin of Reese's Pieces), it was expensive; probably about twice as much as our usual dim sum which the locals find somewhat expensive.

Would I go back?  No.  The Grand Wok at MGM has much better food, more variety, and infinitely better service.  Red 8 seemed very representative of a lot of our experience at the Wynn -- it was nice, but not a very good value and not as nice as they seem to think it is.

But, at least we actually made it through a meal this time.