Liz P.
Yelp
This place was a pleasant surprise. I had status-matched my MGM Gold card to Mirage/Hard Rock's new program, Unity Rewards, and they gave me Icon status (equivalent to Gold), and also threw me 10,000 tier credits, which was equivalent to a $100 off a restaurant bill. Originally I was looking at Mirage's Italian restaurant but it's actually closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so we went to OTORO instead.
I saw they had a robata grill, which was interesting. We started off with three sticks from there: portabello mushrooms, wagyu steak, and pork belly. The mushrooms were okay but definitely tasted charred (probably intentional, but I hate charred things). The wagyu was very tasty, and the pork belly, of which I am sometimes not a fan, was super tender, and I really liked the BBQ sauce they put on it.
We also got the miso potato puree, which was interesting and very good; a tempura sweet potato roll, which was okay; and a spider roll, which I also really enjoyed.
To top that off, I had indicated on our reservation that it was my birthday (my birthday was a few days before that), and when we ordered dessert, they brought that plus two sorbets for me, with a candle, for my birthday. I think for all of our reservations on this Vegas trip I had indicated it was my birthday and no one else did anything for me, so this was a nice surprise. For dessert, we had ordered the strawberry meringue "tart," which was tasty but definitely sweet - it came with meringues, actual strawberries, some melted marshmallow, and other things.
Would definitely stop by OTORO again and hopefully they will keep this restaurant during the Mirage to Hard Rock transition.