Las Vegas Weekly

If you haven’t had this type of cuisine before, you’re going to be surprised and delighted. Raku’s menu has about 75 dishes, and there are specials written in English on a small blackboard by the counter. Unlike many Japanese restaurants in, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco, this menu doesn’t hide any of the overly ethnic fare in Japanese script. The menu here is 100 percent bilingual, and in doing this, Endo has decided to treat his customers like adults, not children.

This doesn’t mean you’ll cotton to everything here. I’ve seen local chefs cringe at the idea of eating slimy textured fare such as poached egg with sea urchin and salmon roe, or simmered meat guts in simple soup, Japanese menudo, if you will. Starch yam cake and beef tendon aren’t, let’s face it, for everyone. An adventurous eater, though, is going to have a field day here. And after three visits, I can say authoritatively that some of the dishes here are even better than their counterparts I have eaten in Japan.