John Curtas on the Service at Poppy Den; More

John Curtas at Eating Las Vegas says he "arrived at Poppy Den at 12:33pm on Friday, hungry for a Poppy Burger. We left at 1:25, with a bad taste in our mouth and one tiny crab cake each in our gut, after being told 'one of your burgers is ready.'" Apparently a party of 20 upstairs kept the nearly empty downstairs from getting their orders.

"The point of this anecdote is: each of these new places loves to trot out their dog and pony shows of precision (both in food and service) when they first open. Six months in, you get a much better idea of what's really going on.

"What's really going on at Poppy Den is the place is being run by a bunch of unsupervised, incompetent teenagers."

Jim Begley at Las Vegas Weekly says the burgers at PoshBurger Bistro live up to their name. He calls the burgers there a "Noah's Ark, as the more common Black Angus is accompanied by lamb, wild boar and venison," although specials such as elk, ostrich and duck were "conspicuously absent during my visits." His first visit was "marred by uneven service and — particularly in consideration of the hefty price tag — pedestrian burgers." He recommends ordering minimally garnished burgers to let the meat shine through. [LVW]

Al Mancini at CityLife checks out the new Giuseppe's Italian Grille on Horizon Ridge Parkway and Eastern Avenue in Henderson. "The newest Giuseppe's isn't perfect, but it's a great step forward for a place I already loved. By going a bit more upscale, it defines itself as a restaurant first and a bar second." [CL]

Heidi Knapp Rinella at the Las Vegas Review-Journal went to Honey Salt and all she could complain about was the noise. "There was nothing to absorb sound, and on a less-than-packed weeknight it was reverberating throughout the space," she wrote. She gives the food and the service an A and the atmosphere a B for an overall B-. [LVRJ]