Haute Dining: The Most Expensive Burger in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is known as a place to indulge. In an effort to bring you the best indulgences in Sin City, Haute Living is on a quest to find the most extravagant experiences this city has to offer. This first in a periodic series looks at hamburgers and where to find the most expensive version in Las Vegas.

Our journey took us to Fleur de Lys, the nouveau French restaurant at Mandalay Bay. This restaurant by Hubert Keller, the James Beard Foundation award-winning chef who opened this outpost of his San Francisco original in 2004, creates one of the most extravagant burgers, the FleurBurger 5000, priced at $5,000.

This restaurant sits in a small room bathed in modern chocolate brown and white with tiny lights on the high ceiling and a wine cellar encompassing the second floor with a glass front for voyeurism. Curtains can be moved to make the room larger or more intimate. A simple piece of artwork composed of pink roses highlights the walls. In other words, the room lets the food do the talking.

My brother and I ventured to Fleur de Lys on a Wednesday to try out the $5,000 burger. Dinner started with cocktails like the cherry limeade, a combination of super sweet and sour with Hanger One Kaffir Lime vodka, 3 Olives cherry vodka, Rose’s lime juice, simple syrup, sour mix, black cherry coulis and Sprite, followed by an amuse bouche of watermelon gazpacho with crab wrapped in avocado. But we were waiting for the burger.

The presentation is divine and rich, rich, rich. The juicy foie gras and black truffle-stuffed Kobe burger is served on a brioche truffle bun and garnished with Keller’s special sauce, which contains more truffles. A red wine reduction sauce is poured over the creation at the table and chef’s own version of mustards served on a separate plate with an assortment of lava salt, Hawaiian pink salt, Fleur de Sel and cracked black pepper along with potato wedges and an alfalfa sprout salad round out the presentation.

The burger itself goes for $79 on the menu. It’s the wine that makes it $5,000. It comes served with a bottle of 1995 Chateau Petrus Bordeaux poured in Ichendorf Brunello stemware imported from Sweden. The menu touts this as the “ultimate burger and wine pairing.”

Wine Access describes Chateau Petrus as legendary and extravagantly priced, produced on a “prime vineyard on well-drained clay soil atop the Pomerol plateau [that] has for decades stood as the greatest example of Merlot in the world.” It uses words like creamy and thick to describe the wine. Think black raspberry, mulberry, iron, cocoa powder, truffle and new oak on your tongue. Online, you can find it for $1,300 to $1,900, which makes the $5,000 price tag understandable at a restaurant.

Should you chose to order the FleurBurger 5000, the restaurant will ship the Ichendorf Brunello glasses to your home at no additional charge.

Is the most expensive burger in Las Vegas worth it? Absolutely. I know my brother has enjoyed telling the story of trying a $5,000 burger while he was in Las Vegas. Yes, that’s one story that slipped out of Vegas.

Fleur de Lys is located at Mandalay Bay, 702.632.9400, www.mandalaybay.com/dining/fleurdelys.aspx.