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Best Friend Vegas
Roy Choi’s Best Friend restaurant is located in the Park MGM hotel, created to showcase his greatest hits from an incredible career and a whole host of famous food trucks and restaurants. These have been refreshed and created to be perfectly at home in his Vegas restaurant. Unsurprisingly, the interior itself is VERY cool. And I wouldn’t expect anything less from Choi! The front of the space is set up as a sort of half bodega / half diner bar kinda vivb. You can sit in this area to eat or drink, which is more casual bar-dining. It was sort of giving me cool, fun dive-bar kinda vibes! But if you want something a little more formal, you can also head through to the restaurant at the back. They do also host some resident vinyl DJs here too, so it transforms into a cool nightlife spot as well.
What We Ate
It was such a tough decision to choose what we ate. The menu has so many options, and we obviously didn’t want to miss any of the best ones! It is greatest hits after all, so basically (and naturally) we wanted everything. The dishes are divided into ‘banchan & snacks’, ‘BBQ’, ‘bowls’, ‘Vegas Sh*t’, ‘L.A. Sh*t’ and ‘Steak and Lobsta’. There are also a couple of chef menus if you want more of a set menu vibe to try a range of things, and of course, desserts.
You can take a look at the full menu here.
We did consider the chef menus to try more, but they were missing a few of the things we definitely wanted. We also knew adding more plates to the set menus would be way too much. In the end we settled on a Banchan Sampler to start and then two mains to share. Kimchi carbonara and Kogi short rib tacos.
Review
Honestly it was all SO good, and we still talk about that kimchi carbonara to this day. Robbie also bought me the Choi of Cooking cookbook for Christmas since we visited too. We just knew we would want to try to create some of his dishes from home afterwards.
The banchan sharer was a lovely way to start a meal. The veggies and pickles were all super light, and the brioche buns were next level. I am a big pickle fan so this was very much up my street. The kimchi carbonara was probably our favourite of the meal. It was macaroni pasta which we didn’t expect, with garlic, parmesan, cilantro, bacon and of course kimchi. It was just such an unusual and delicious combo – definitely one to try if you visit. And finally the short rib tacos. We had to try something from Kogi and these are a staple, would also definitely recommend these. The only issue with our experience is that they forgot them as part of our order, so once we had asked and they had cooked them, we were getting pretty full from the carbonara. BTW the serving sizes here are generous! So we were a little full and had to stop eating to make sure we could fit them in. The short rib was really delicious, and the tacos also had salsa roja, salsa verde, cilantro-onion, and chili soy slaw. Everything was just such a genius mix of flavours that you might not naturally think to put together, but all worked SO well.
Chef Movie
I also have to give a little honourable mention to the chef movie truck that was parked just nearby the restaurants in the hotel. Chef was one of the first places I discovered Roy Choi, and it went on to make me a huge fan and one of the reasons we discovered and wanted to visit Best Friend.
Overall we think it is 100% worth a visit here, especially if you are a Roy Choi fan. The whole space is really cool and the food is delicious. (Not just generic food with a chef’s name on it). For the most part in Vegas we tended to avoid the main strip, expensive hotels and chains to eat. As we wanted to find the local hidden gems, but this one just felt a little different. It is a little more expensive because of the location, but the portions are generous and the food is genuinely super tasty.
Very much ready to try another one of his ventures now!
LL & RC x
