Wing Lei

It's no longer necessary to get a visa in order to eat high-end Chinese food. Wing Lei, at the new Wynn Las Vegas, has finally achieved parity with elegant dining rooms in Hong Kong and Beijing. The restaurant's name is a clever phonetic play on the Wynn name, and its Chinese characters mean "eternal prosperity." Somehow, it's fitting that Wynn's Executive Chef, Grant MacPherson, a man who has an intimate relationship with Asian cooking from his long tenure in Singapore, and his colleague, Elizabeth Blau (vice president, restaurant development and marketing), took their sweet time in choosing a chef for this dazzlingly upscale venue.

Although the setting is dramatic, with 100-year-old pomegranate trees and a mammoth Botero sculpture, the restaurant would be just one more flashy Vegas take on this ancient cuisine without the expert hand of highly skilled Taiwanese chef Richard Chen. After a worldwide search that took MacPherson and Blau to Asia, the UK and various American cities, their choice of Chen turned out to be a brilliant stroke. His baby face belies the fact that he recently broke age 40, and the chef (a recent transplant from Chicago) is comfortable in a variety of the diverse idioms that characterize Chinese cuisine, from simple to complex, mundane to exotic.

One evening, he cooked o-a-jen for my table, a glutinous rice oyster pancake that is a staple of street stalls in his native Taipei. At that same dinner, we also experienced bowls of the best shark's fin soup I have ever tasted, in an intensely chicken-flavored broth that we laced with spoonfuls of pale red rice vinegar to cut the impossible richness.

Wing Lei may be Chen's show, but Mr. Wynn never seems far away. Water glasses have the Wynn signature carved into the base, and the spectacular spiral ceiling, a golden vortex alluded to subtly on the restaurant's service plates, is a touch the owner must love. Walk through the backlit "tiger" bar into the vast main dining hall and you can't help but gasp. Seating is at elegantly decorated tables whose settings include gold chopsticks and chopstick holders, and high-backed, red velvet-armed tapestry chairs which look as if they might have been designed for Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor." They are, by far, the most beautiful restaurant chairs in the city, and rumor has it they cost close to $1,500 apiece.

There are also a few booths against the walls, which look more like thrones than tables from a distance, plus an amazing private room that you should talk a manager into letting you see, provided it is not being used that evening. If you are able, procure a table by the garden, visible behind a glass wall. On my last visit in mid-September the pomegranates were in full flower.

Dining here involves many options, from seasonal tasting dinners and the chef's terrific Peking duck dinner, to humbler fare, such as Cantonese dim sum and various rice dishes. The duck, hung carefully until the fat drips off and lacquered until bronze, is brought out on a cart and carved tableside, served in five courses. No one does duck better than Chen.

First, there is the traditional crisp skin in homemade crepes, brushed gently with Hoisin sauce and stuffed with cucumber and scallion. Then comes a duck salad that may remind people of the one at London's leading Chinese restaurant, Hakkasan, where the meat gets tossed around with mesclun lettuce, almonds and just a faint whisper of truffle oil. That is followed by ethereal shredded duck bisque, the slivers of the meat sautéed with leek, asparagus and bell pepper and a platter of crispy duck noodles. Dessert is included as well, possibly a red bean crème brulee or something no more complicated than fruit.

Chinese gourmandise insists upon fresh seafood and lots of it, so it's no shock that a number of seafood delicacies are plucked from a live tank in the kitchen. But be prepared for "sticker shock." Crystal crab and coral cod, flown in live from Australia, sell for $99 a pound. Both are incredibly good, especially the cod, when steamed simply with ginger and green onion.

When ordering a la carte, best-bet appetizers include crispy shrimp cakes, which look a lot like Lebanese shrimp wrapped in kataifi, or shredded wheat, except that in this case, a delicate Chinese noodle is used to wrap the moist, minced shrimp meat. Tangy raw green papaya salad is served to balance the sweetness.

Crystal Rock shrimp dumplings are really ha gow, rice noodle-wrapped shrimps found in any respectable dim sum house, in disguise, except that Chen's Cantonese specialist is browning the bottoms, a nice touch not done in traditional restaurants. I'd like tradition to rule for the stir-fried squab in lettuce cups, but the chef prefers to leave out the pine nuts.

Go to the menu's Cantonese Specialties page for dishes you'd order in Hong Kong, like beef tendon, a jellied cold dish that looks like headcheese, chilled sliced abalone (a lucky $88), Cantonese sea treasure, a mélange of three squiggly items most of us wouldn't want to taste, sea cucumber, goose web and fish maw and similar adventures.

One dish that will appeal to both the Chinese and Western palate from that page is Spicy Sauteed, a toothsome mix of calamari, diced Chinese sausage, chili and daikon, the giant radish that pops up in so many Japanese dishes, here pickled to pungency. Also worth a try is braised Napa cabbage, which may not sound like much until you taste the vegetable, permeated with smokiness from Chinese-style ham.

For simpler fare, the menu's Noodles and Rice section is the ticket, and the Vegetarian page is close on its heels. Fu Chow beef chow fun, for example, is a favorite of many novice Chinese eaters, a mouth-watering flat rice noodle dish redolent of basil and chock-full of tender sautéed beef. Taiwanese rice noodles, one of the chef's hometown dishes, uses mai fun, a smaller and more delicate rice-based noodle, tossed gently with shrimp, cabbage and cooked egg. Braised eggplant is perfect, cut with a judicious amount of garlic and black vinegar, as are the Szechuan green beans, crisped with a hot soybean paste and Szechuan peppers. Ask for the off-menu ong choy, literally "hollow vegetable" in English, or water spinach. It's a reedy, intensely green vegetable, amazing when sautéed in nothing more than garlic and oil. Most local authentic Chinese restaurants serve it, but do not bother to take off the stems. Here, all you get are the delicate, delicious tips.

This being a high-end establishment, there is also the advantage of peerless service, performed by a multilingual staff, many of whom are clad in long, sleek Armani jackets. There is also the benefit of a nice wine list, and that most un-Chinese of dinner perks, the Western dessert, which can be anything from a chocolate pot de crème to fine ice cream. If you must have a Chinese dessert, try the bird's nest tapioca pudding.

Everyone knew Steve Wynn and his team wouldn't open just any Chinese restaurant. It seems he has left little room at the top this time.