Tuna Chop Swap

David Middleton

In a town like Vegas, where every restaurant has an over-the-top dish and luxury is the norm, it takes a lot to stand out. Yet that’s exactly what Lakeside, a fine-dining seafood concept, has accomplished with its Dry-Aged Big Eye Tuna Chop. “To my knowledge, in our current market, there are very few chefs or restaurants doing this on a scale at which we are trying to accomplish,” says David Middleton, executive chef.

The dish is the product of an in-house dry-aging program dedicated to seafood instead of red meat, honoring the long history of dry-aging fish across cultures around the globe. For the signature Big Eye Tuna Chop, bone-in Hawaiian tuna is aged for an entire week before it’s portioned out daily. Each meaty slab is then grilled on Lakeside’s Chitwood grill and finished with a yuzu-soy sauce for a rich, nutty flavor undercut with bright acid, resulting in a final dish that recalls a beefy ribeye in flavor and texture. “We have repeat guests coming in just for this dish,” says Middleton, noting that nearly everyone who tries it is “blown away.”

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