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Mesa Grill in Caesars Palace

3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7731. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $200.

Joël Robuchon in MGM Grand

3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S. 877-880-0880. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $600.

Guy Savoy in Caesars Palace

3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S. 877-427-7243. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $600.

Flying into Las Vegas for the first time, I am stymied by a semi-emergency landing. The cabin-pressure system fails and we're "diverted" to Phoenix. I pace the Phoenix airport for several hours, worried about blowing our 8:45 table at Guy Savoy in Las Vegas. The question is: Does it matter? Having eaten at Guy Savoy in Paris and also his (short-lived) resto in Connecticut, will I find Vegas (happily) the same as Paris?

We finally limp into Vegas late that night only to discover: Paris! The Eiffel Tower! Egypt! The Sphinx, and a pyramid! New York! The Chrysler and Empire State buildings, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island! All from the window of our luxe room at the Four Seasons.

There are 180,000 hotel rooms, 15 of the world's 16 biggest hotels, and the omnipresent slogan: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Meaning not just the slots and the hookers (many, apparently, are coeds just putting themselves through college), but tourists spending wildly on food.

Owning a restaurant in Vegas is like shooting fish in a barrel. The place is sold out most of September to May. Hence the dramatic number of star chefs from elsewhere opening Vegas branch plants: Thomas Keller of The French Laundry in Napa has Bouchon. Tom Colicchio of Craft in New York has Craftsteak. Nobu Matsuhisa of New York and Los Angeles etc. has a Nobu in Vegas. Le Cirque of New York has a Vegas branch plant. Daniel Boulud of New York has a brasserie. Joël Robuchon and Guy Savoy, both three stars in Paris, are also in Vegas, as is Bobby Flay who owns Mesa Grill in New York (and was the James Beard Foundation's Rising Star Chef of the Year).

Flay has perhaps been taking lessons from Barnum & Bailey. The restaurant is huge and opens onto the indoor mall in Caesars Palace, which gives it the feel of a food court. One can hardly help watching races (horse and other) on the huge screens, and glazed gamers at the slot machines. The menu aims for high-end Mexican, a goal it achieves (marginally) by gentling chilies with oodles of cream. At first appearance, the food is good enough, but this beauty is skin-deep. Blue corn pancake with barbecued duck is gummy duck in pasty too-sweet hoisin sauce, barely ameliorated by habanero cream. Grilled shrimp with no savour of the grill, atop a cheese-rich quesadillas, are a cheap thrill not rescued by Flay's trademark variegated ribbons of creamed chilies in red, green and yellow.

Reggae music plays. A guy on the second-floor balcony of the huge open kitchen turns chickens, rabbits and pork tenderloins on the big rotisserie. All around us other diners step well into the margaritas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Maybe we're one or two margaritas short of the required amnesia, because I can't forget that the "salsa cruda" on the striped bass is ho-hum cherry tomatoes and black olives with a chili bite. And the smoked shrimp cake, though nicely smoky, comes with yet another sauce of cream and chili.

New York was not enough for Bobby Flay. He found fame and fortune on the Food Network, but he needed a place in Vegas because that's what star chefs do nowadays. If his Mesa Grill New York provided its customers with such bland remakes of the maestro's cuisine at $200 for dinner for two, such offensively negligent service, and (the final insult) espresso with no crema, they would be laughed off the isle of Manhattan in short order.

It's pathetically easy to find that same neglect of standards in the highest Vegas snack bracket. Our dinner at Joël Robuchon costs $600 for two (with a minimum of wine) -- about what it would cost to dine chez le maître in Paris. There the resemblance ends. This travesty of a dinner reminds us that we're all tourists here, there is no repeat business in Vegas, so they can treat us like dreck and still be full next week. The cheapest appetizer costs $55, my lamb main course is $80 and a minuscule lobster main costs $135. And not once does a server check on us between courses.

The amuse is a shot glass of apple en gelée atop yuzu granite under yuzu foam. The waiter pours apple-infused water onto dry ice in the sauce under the shot glass and smoke rises. Pyrotechnics! A waiter wheels over the bread trolley with several dozen different house-made breads. But the butter is warm and salted and the baguette is all crust. I have ordered a $60 starter: cream of chestnuts with celeriac custard, both ultra-light creams. But $60? And $75 buys an appetizer of truffled langoustine ravioli with chopped cabbage. The ravioli are lovely but the dish is ruined by excess salt in the sauce.

The aforementioned $135 lobster main arrives in a glass casserole. I ask the waiter whether copper wouldn't be more traditionally French. "No," he answers in a peremptory tone and turns on his heel. Here, too, the perfectly cooked lobster is ruined by too much salt in the sauce. Lamb roasted in salt crust (a classic of both France and Spain that doesn't normally result in over-salted meat) is also too salty, its accompanying vegetable "taglierini" with pesto is too banal for words -- or my $80.

Fifty bucks' worth of dessert is a nice caramel and chocolate cream, and parfait of peach with sabayon and strawberry syrup, both nice, neither rocket science.Last May, Vegas got another French heavy hitter: Guy Savoy, also a Parisian three-star chef, opened Guy Savoy in Caesars Palace. Savoy dispatched his son, Franck, to run it, and le fils has clearly been well tutored. Dinner begins with the champagne trolley -- nine different fine champagnes, all available by the glass. Then the waiter explains the butters in their sweet little coloured glass domes -- both from France, one salt, one sweet. Amuse No. 1 is an American dream -- a tiny "club sandwich" on a toothpick -- Lilliputian toasts filled with foie gras. Amuse No. 2 is one ravioli of rabbit confit on butternut squash purée.

The Savoy aims to recreate a Parisian three-star against ridiculous odds. A star chef in France enjoys an unpaid army of apprentices; in the U.S., he pays minimum wage. In France, he has centuries of tradition behind the ingredients. In America, he's fighting an uphill battle against the land of Kraft and Green Giant. Hence our delight at the grated flurry of white truffles from Italy on the perfect mascarpone risotto. The deep quiet savour of fresh artichokes puréed in soup with rounds of black truffle and squares of Parmigiano Reggiano on top.

With each course, the bread trolley and the sommelier reappear to propose new bread and wine pairings. The maître d' waxes poetic when he describes the wild partridge and mallard ducks that are hunted on their way home from the Pyrenees to Scotland. When he shows me the copper casserole with their three little breasts atop vinegared cabbage, his eyes flash with the delight of sharing real game with an enthused diner. This $95 entrée comes with the classic French desire to talk food with the diner in mutual gourmandizing communion. The three breasts, beige, pink and ruby, have more taste than any meat I've eaten outside France. Roasted Dover sole (another piece of virtual France) is crusted in baby chanterelle mushrooms and served with more wild mushrooms.

For dessert, the chef, who served for four years at Guy Savoy Paris, has sliced pineapple paper thin and wrapped it round tapioca in coconut cream, making "sushi rolls" with small spheres of mango ice punctuated by frills of deep-fried parsley. Chocoholism is served by a loaf of deep, dark chocolate with hazelnut praline. They shower us with dessert amuses: a tiny chocolate disk with pistachio, hazelnut and dried cranberry, house-made caramels and chocolate toffees in a cunning little cardboard drawer.

This dinner for two costs the same outlandish $600 as Robuchon; the difference is that while the Robuchon dinner was like a bad night at the slots, at Guy Savoy it's virtual Paris. The food is not quite as elaborate as in Paris, the sauces somewhat less sophisticated, but Savoy Vegas is channelling the mother ship.

jkates@globeandmail.com