Bazaar Meat by Jose Andres

Since 2024 at the pass

Since 2024, the pass has belonged to Frank Medina, executive chef of Bazaar Meat by Jose Andres in Las Vegas. His station asks him to hold several kinds of heat at once: beef over fire, nitrogen at the table, rum under ice, cotton candy collapsing into foie gras, caviar set into a cone small enough to disappear in one bite.

Medina arrived with a formal base from the University of Havana and a path through kitchens where finish matters under pressure. He cooked at Somni Los Angeles, held a chef role at CUT by Wolfgang Puck, then worked in Las Vegas as executive sous chef at Zuma Las Vegas. He also knew this house before his present post, as part of the original team at Bazaar Meat by José Andrés from 2014 to 2018. That return matters. The room is built for scale, but the cooking still depends on a hand that can judge when presentation has become excess and when it has become service.

His work now covers menu development, new dishes, food preparation, hygiene standards, and the rhythm of a kitchen where a steakhouse grammar has been bent toward Spanish influence. The role is managerial, but not distant. Medina’s signature here is control at the moment a dish leaves the kitchen, especially when the dish carries smoke, cold, sweetness, salt, or fat in the same gesture.

Fire, old cattle and controlled cold

Vaca vieja sits close to the center of the program. Older-cattle steaks give the beef a deeper register, and the kitchen builds around that density rather than hiding it. Fire does the plain work first. After that, the menu can move outward into contrast: cotton candy foie gras, caviar cones, José’s Taco, Jamón Ibérico, suckling pig, and large-format cuts that make the table part of the pacing.

The technique is not only at the grill. The Magic Mojito strains rum over cotton candy, turning a familiar cocktail build into a disappearing structure. The Nitro Caipirinha freezes at the table, using cold as an active tool rather than a flourish. The Washugyu rib-eye returns as a tasting-menu centerpiece, while the Rosewood ribeye keeps the steakhouse line visible. Medina’s task is to keep those gestures exact enough that the room feels led, not distracted. Sweetness needs a boundary. Smoke needs timing. Nitrogen needs restraint. At the pass, those are kitchen decisions before they are dining-room effects.

The room around the work

The room carries the charge of a Las Vegas steakhouse without surrendering the bench-side logic of the food. Service moves through small plates, tasting-menu sequences, raw bar preparations, and meat brought forward with a sense of occasion. The dining room is dim, busy, and formal enough that the pass has to read the tempo quickly. A late course of beef cannot land like an interruption. A cone of caviar cannot feel like a joke.

That is where Medina’s earlier Las Vegas work shows. The city rewards scale, but the plate still exposes the station. At Bazaar Meat by Jose Andres, the craft lies in keeping theatrical materials in practical order: fire, fat, shell, ice, cotton candy, glass, knife. Frank Medina gets the next plate of vaca vieja to the table with its heat intact.