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I’ve spent the past several days in Las Vegas taking advantage of the status matching shenanigans that I wrote about here. Everything has gone as smoothly as expected thus far. On our first night, we stopped at the Wynn Rewards desk and matched from Caesars Diamond to Wynn Platinum. Then, a day or two later, we headed to Fontainebleau to match Wynn Platinum to Fontainebleau Gold. That status comes with a complimentary $150 dining credit and a $150 spa credit. I’ll cover using the spa credit in a different post, but in this post I wanted to share our experience activating Gold benefits and using the Gold dining credit. We used our credit at Mother Wolf at Fontainebleau and the food was terrific — and the service even better.
Activating Gold benefits
The match at Fontainebleau was quite easy. Fontainebleau matches Wynn Platinum members to Gold status, which comes with a $150 dining credit and $150 spa credit. As a reminder, Wynn’s match (through which you can match Caesars Diamond to Wynn Platinum only runs through 5/31/24. Without that, you’ll need higher status from MGM or Caesars than those provided through status matching without gambling.
At the Fontainebleau Rewards desk, I presented my driver’s license and Wynn Platinum card and said that I was interested in their match. Within a couple of minutes and after setting my players club card PIN, I had my Gold card (and the same was true for the rest of my party). The desk agent told me to be sure to put my card into a slot machine to activate my Gold status, which (I think) is important. Note that another family member wasn’t given that instruction, but I’m glad we were. We forgot to do that the day we matched, but when we arrived for our dinner reservation a day or two later, we stopped at a slot machine on the way to the restaurant and we each put our card in a machine. As soon as we put the card in the machine, we received a message confirming our Gold status and associated spa & dining credits.
We went directly from the slot machine to the restaurant and used our dining credits at the end of the meal a couple of hours later.
Quick review of Fontainebleau dining credit at Mother Wolf Las Vegas
Based on reader feedback and my wife’s research, we decided on using our dining credits at Mother Wolf.
We went all out since dishes are served sort of family-style for everyone to share and we ordered more than half of the menu. It was delicious. I would absolutely recommend eating there with your dining credit, particularly if you have a larger group. To be honest, I was skeptical about Italian because there is so much mediocre Italian food in the world. This was not that — it was excellent.
I should note that in discussing the use of the dining credit, my sister-in-law pointed out that maybe Mother Wolf would be less desirable if you’re dining as just a single couple because dishes are served sort of family style — portions weren’t huge, so we debated a bit how you might order if you were only two people with a single $150 dining credit. I don’t know the exact answer to that, but it’s a challenge I recommend taking up nonetheless. Part of the fun for us was certainly that we had a party of 6 adults and 2 kids (and four dining credits to use), so we ordered a lot — but I’d probably go back with just my wife for some of our favorites.
Unfortunately, none of us managed to take a picture of the menu with prices. Here’s the online version, sans prices.
Crowd favorites included the Rigatoni Alla Vaccinara, he Rigatoni Alla Carbonara, and all three of the “Secondi” dishes we ordered — the Tonno Alla Puttanesca, Saltimbocca di Vitello, and the Tagliata Di Manzo. If I were pressed to pick one of them, I guess I’d take the veal, but I’m glad I got to try all three because they were all quite good. I personally also loved the Linguine Al Limone, though my wife didn’t really care for it. The only miss for multiple people was the Tonnarelli Cacio e Pepe. We all agreed that we’ve had better Cacio e Pepe pasta before. But I’m leaving out plenty of other dishes here that we enjoyed. We didn’t order anything from Pe La Tavola and we only ordered 2 pizzas (margherita for my kids, which was excellent, and funghi for our friend, who is a mushroom forager type (which is to say that he is far more appreciative of a good fungus than I am) and he seemed quite impressed with the quality (and as I was typing this post, he messaged to tell me that he was eating the leftovers and he hadn’t realized how many different types of mushrooms were on it — including morels). We had a lot of the other items on the menu and nobody left hungry. In fact, I’m writing this post 21 hours after dinner started and I haven’t yet eaten another meal (though I certainly am getting hungry again at this point).
Cocktails were also reportedly quite good (I just had wine). My wife had some sort of lavender tequila drink that she loved. Overall, it was well worth a use of your Gold dining credit.
Using multiple Gold dining credits was no problem
My wife and I both did the match, as did her sister. We also had another friend in town with a dining credit. We ended up using all four $150 dining credits on a single check for 8 people. Our friends also had a room at the hotel and had an associated dining credit. It was no problem for us to use our four $150 dining credits for $600 off the bill, charge the right amount to his room to use his dining credit, and then put the remainder on a credit card (just remember that you’ll need to figure the original prices for the gratuity).
Using all four credits at the same time was super simple. Before placing our order, I explained to Jason, our server, that a few of us had Gold status and were looking to use our Diamond credits and he said it would be no problem to run all of those with the check at the end, and it wasn’t.
Speaking of our server, service at Mother Wolf was impressively good. My wife and I have dined at some top Michelin-starred restaurants like The French Laundry in Napa Valley, Alinea in Chicago, and Eleven Madison Park in New York. Service at Mother Wolf was as on that level of professionalism. We had a large party with a lot of food and drinks to serve and they made it seem effortless and noticed when we needed something almost before we did. The flow of service also seemed very natural. I think we all had high hopes going in and still managed to walk out impressed with both the food and service.
The one fail: It is impossible to call the restaurant
While I’ve heaped some praise on Mother Wolf above, we had one major frustration, and it was pretty annoying.
My wife had originally made a reservation for six of us. When we found out that our friends were in town and interested in joining, she tried to amend the reservation online but couldn’t. When we matched, she inquired with the Rewards desk to ask about amending the reservation and they told her to call the phone number and mention that she was calling about VIP dining reservations and they should be able to take care of it.
She called shortly thereafter (around noon the day before our 5pm reservation) and the phone rang through to the concierge at Fontainebleau. She explained what she wanted to do and they recommended that she call back during restaurant hours. She then called during restaurant hours the day before our reservation, but the phone number for Mother Wolf does not ring through to the restaurant during restaurant hours either but rather always goes to the concierge at Fontainebleau.
That wouldn’t be the end of the world except for the fact that the concierge couldn’t reach anyone at the restaurant, either. My wife spent about 40 minutes on hold with them trying to reach someone at the restaurant and eventually she was told that we were all set for 8 people and at a new time (we wanted to push the reservation from 5pm to 5:30pm if possible).
Then, on the morning of the day we were due to dine, she received a text message confirming her reservation for 6 people at the original time. She called and explained the above and the concierge asked who she had spoken with. She didn’t know who had answered the phone, nor did she think to note their name when they told her the reservation was all set. The concierge team said that they had no access to the restaurant reservations system in their own hotel and that all they could do was email the restaurant manager. They said to expect a call back.
About 20 minutes to Mother Wolf’s opening time of 5pm, the concierge team called back and said that they hadn’t heard anything back from the restaurant. He said that he could see that management had seen his message, but they hadn’t responded and he explained that there was nothing more he could do since even if he tried to call the restaurant it would just ring back to the concierge desk.
At that point, we were all on our way into the hotel, so we just showed up when the restaurant opened at 5pm. They again asked for the name of the person with whom she spoke, which was mildly annoying since it didn’t really matter who told her it was confirmed at that point.
To their credit, they told us to wait for a few minutes while they sorted it out and they did indeed get us a table for eight people. The resolution worked, but the frustration in trying to get in touch with someone at the restaurant was memorable.
I should add that if this were the only hiccup in calling Fontainebleau, it might have only been an afterthought. However, my wife needed to inquire about her spa appointment the day before and she similarly had surprising difficulty. She spent so long on hold the first two times that she called that they told her that they could email the spa on her behalf or she should just call back later because nobody at the spa was picking up (during the middle of the day!). Then when she got through to someone, she got conflicting information on two different calls.
In all, between trying to amend our dining reservation and her spa reservation, she probably spent 2+ hours on the phone and couldn’t get through to anyone at the restaurant, nor at the spa a couple of times that she called. That’s just not the experience one would expect at resort trying to position itself at this level.
Bottom line
Overall, we really enjoyed Mother Wolf at Fontainebleau. Of course we enjoyed the fact that we were able to go all out on ordering a large meal thanks to our many dining credits from the status matching. It was as easy as one would hope to match, activate benefits, and use them. And food and service within the restaurant were excellent. We would go back.
I’m not sold on Fontainebleau itself. My wife reports that the spa was very good (more on that to come), but the difficulty in calling to speak with someone at the spa and restaurant were not reflective of the experience within the restaurant. In fairness, maybe that’s the case at other Vegas restaurants — I’ve not had to amend a dining reservation elsewhere in a long time. However, calling the spa at both Wynn and Encore was far easier by comparison.
Still, I’d go back to Mother Wolf even without the credit — I’ll just be sure to get a firm headcount before I make my reservation.
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This trip I went to Mother Wolf and it was unbelievable Italian food in America… I was in Italy a couple months ago and it’s pretty darn close. The service was impeccable – my small water glass was never empty.
I charged to my room since I’m booked on a hotel stay with dining credit. No issues there.
The 3 of us didn’t have a reservation but there were no issues on a weekday evening.
The Fontainebleau tier match has been extended to September 2nd, but it looks like it will be harder to tier match to their Gold after the Wynn tier match ends.
I believe this is the case based on looking at what cards match what with them.
We did get to Sahara and I told their player’s club what competing cards we had and they said our being MGM Gold would get us their highest status, Iconic.
This is once in a lifetime tier match and I don’t know what level my other cards would have matched too.
A lady said we had six months to retain our status, but the card has an expiration date for the last day of March, 2025.
Given coming back during my birth month, or even at all this year, depends on my work, the wife and I decided to at least put her $150 Fontainebleau dining credit to use at Komodo’s tomorrow night.
Their menu has prices so we have figured out what we are having and know we will be dining on Fontainebleau’s dime for the most part.
We are looking at spa services tomorrow during the day.
Did Caesars give you the 100 dollar celebration dining credit as well?
The food was really, really good except for one dish, but the service seemed slow. First, I will detail what food we had, why I felt the service was slow, and wrap it up with whether or not we made it under the $150 dining credit.
We started off with the Pizza Bianca, which is a flatbread, and paired that with Burrata e Crudo, which is burrata and prosciutto. We thoroughly enjoyed it.
We also had Fiori di Zucca, which is tempura fried squash blossoms. To paraphrase a line from the movie Johnny Dangerously, “I had squash blossoms once. Once.” While the wife liked it, it was a miss for me as I did not like either the texture or the taste.
For our main dish, we went with Fettuccine al Burro, which is pasta, cultured butter, cheese, and topped with prosciutto. Except for the prosciutto, it was much like the pasta I make at home which consists of pasta, compound garlic butter, and cheese.
As we were there for a special occasion, they gave us a dessert which seems to be an off menu item as I cannot find a matching description on the dessert menu.
It tasted like cheesecake, but it had the light airyness of whipped yogurt. It had a couple of slices of what we think was strawberry, but neither one of us liked the taste of that component.
We got there right at 5pm as the doors opened, we were promptly seated, and service started out well as our drink orders were taken and then our food order.
Two complimentary glasses of wine were brought out which was nice, but only one of us drinks and they ended up leaving both glasses. The drinker among us, okay it was my wife, had one of the glasses so the other went to waste.
Everything, but the pasta came out and it was something of a struggle for them to find room for all the dishes.
Our waiter seemed to disappear for long stretches at that point.
Our pasta didn’t show up and didn’t show up which made me nervous as we had tickets to Beatles Love.
I finally saw our waiter go by so I flagged him down to ask where the pasta was. He said it was on the way, but it was still several minutes before it arrived.
It seemed like larger parties got better service.
Meal done, or so I thought, I asked for the check.
Before that came, we were surprised with the complimentary dessert which we finished pretty quickly.
And waited some more for the check.
Finally, the check arrived,I presented my card having previously explained we were using the $150 dining credit, and the waiter bid us goodnight.
I had to ask if he was bringing my card back and he said he was. But it took some time for that to happen and the clock was ticking.
So did we spend all the dining credit, spend more than the dining credit, or leave some money on the table?
The answer is the last. Given that the tax was removed, we spent $117. We would have been closer to $150 if we had to pay for dessert.
So if your appetite is not large and you can agree on dishes, two people can get out the door for just the tip.
As I didn’t want to wait for change, I gave the waiter a twenty and a five. Based on the service, I could have given him a twenty, but that just seemed an odd amount.
The bottom line is we would go back for the food on a night we don’t have anything planned for after.
And we still have the wife’s $150 dining credit to spend on the next trip.
If you made it to the end, I want to thank you for reading this. I hope it was as enjoyable to read as it was to write.
Thanks for sharing! Regarding the speed of service being slow, I obviously wasn’t there, but if you were seated at 5pm and managed to have enough time to get out of the restaurant, get your car, drive to Mirage, park, and get seated in time for a 7pm show, it sounds like it must have been relatively quick for a sit-down fine-dining type restaurant, no? I don’t mean quick like fast food style, but I imagine that most people expect for a dinner at a multi-course place like this to run 2-3 hours. I could obviously see that being slow for one’s taste (my kids ended up watching a phone, which is not how we prefer to operate in a restaurant), but I’d guess you presumably got out in 90 minutes or less?
Bummer on the wine. We were also celebrating a special occasion (anniversary of one of the other couples) and they brought us all complimentary champagne, but the waiter asked before they did that if anybody would be offended by them bringing it (specifically noting that he understood that we had kids at the table). Not everyone at dinner drinks alcohol, so someone else finished an extra flute (or really it was just a few sips) of champagne. If your waiter had thought to ask, I wonder if they might have brought you something different.
But good to get another perspective on the whole experience. Hope you enjoyed the show!
We are visitors with no car so it was a case of getting a taxi to the Mirage.
Regarding the wine, I thought one glass of wine went undrunk, but when I mentioned that to the wife, she said “Oh no, it didn’t.”
Thanks again for educating us on the proper tier match order.
We are on our way to tier match at Sahara. I will see if there is a brochure so I can share the details with my fellow readers. Sahara’s website is very light on details.
Tier match marathon finished and now it is near time to use the benefit of $150 dining credit.
I got my Unity card years ago during a Florida trip to Hard Rock Hollywood and haven’t played at any Unity club affiliated casino since.
Some casinos consider you the same as a new member under such a scenario. Does anyone know if Mirage will?
We have some time on Friday so we will probably go to Sahara to get details on their tier matching.
It is either their, or the Palms’, player’s club where you have talk to the rewards desk to find out casinos they match and the benefits.
Halfway through the tier match marathon.
Have gotten cards from Wynn and Fontainebleau.
After a bit of breakfast, we will go to an MGM property to get Gold then back to Wynn and Fontainebleau for the wife to get cards.
If MGM Gold will get Fontainebleau Gold and then that gets her Wynn Platinum, we might do it in that order.
I see going to Fontainebleau from MGM will not get my wife the tier she would be eligible for if we went MGM, Wynn, and then Fontainebleau.
Interesting that my son and I were in Vegas the same weekend for the match as well. We stayed at Conrad for two nights (thanks to Ocean Prime benefits).I haven’t used the $150 credits but will sure to check out Mother Wolf.
My son and I were there about a week ago and matched. We immediately had lunch at the restaurant Vida as it was walk in and we weren’t likely coming back. We each had steak and eggs, a protein shake, and split pancakes. The bill ended up being $150 exactly. No tax. So we just left a cash tip. It was pricey, but Vegas is crazy pricey now.
It blows my mind that lunch for two having what you had is a hundred and fifty dollars.
Any chance that this status match is extended to June?
Not really sure if I need the free food, though, unless Caesar’s is actually requiring tier credits to use the Celebration Dinner. Any recent reports on whether that requirement is being enforced in Vegas?
BTW, these tabs seem somewhat shocking. Normal folks should probably just buy airfare to Rome and eat.
We had 2 people who had earned the tier credits for Caesars and one who hadn’t — the one who hadn’t earned tier credits did not get the Celebration dinner for us. Someone else just recently reported getting it despite having earned 0 tier credits. YMMV I guess. In our case, we ate at the Caesars buffet and the cashier swiped my Diamond card first and it took off the $100 and then she swiped my wife’s card and it took off the $100 and then she swiped the third person’s card and she looked confused and tried it again and said she wasn’t seeing anything on it — so it’s not like we were taking someone’s word for it at the desk or something, it just didn’t have that offer loaded like ours did.
No, no chance that the Wynn match gets extended. They ran a match three years ago for a limited time and then they offered this one — this isn’t a regular thing for them. I’d give it a near 0% chance that Wynn extends it and I wouldn’t even bet money on them running a match again next year. Maybe they will, but it’s not like an annual thing at this point.
I agree that it is very doubtful Wynn extends this.
I happened to do the tier match the last time during a solo trip, but didn’t get to take advantage of the benefits due to timing.
We have plans to come back out during my birth month, but it all depends on if my work lets me off.
If we do come out, we are doing dinner at the Wynn and the wife will have a spa day at Wynn and Fontainebleau.
I did the Fontainebleau Gold run a few weeks ago and immediately used my gold credit dinner. I wasn’t told to put my card in a slot machine to activate it, so when dinner was done, I was presented with the bill. The restaurant was kind enough to actually go and do it for me so the dinner credit appeared, but I was initially thinking I was going to be stuck with a $150 bill.
Very nice of them to handle it for you!
Well, funny that Nick wonders about two people using up a single $150 dining credit at Mother Wolf because that is what the wife and I plan on doing tomorrow.
If our bill doesn’t come close to $150, we will save the dining credit for our next trip and just use cash or a card.
We are going to Beatles Love after dinner and I was worried about service being leisurely which would put our show plans in jeopardy, but based on Nick’s review, it doesn’t sound like it will be a problem.
We dined at Hell’s Kitchen using my Celebration dinner and the reward credits I still had left after paying for the room. Before tip and after most of the tax dropped off, we were left with a bill of fifteen dollars from an original after tax bill of around $230.
The new bill still showed tip recommendations based on the original total which was nice. I went slightly in between the twenty and twenty-two percent numbers and gave the waiter forty-five dollars so out the door was sixty dollars and change.
We are doing the tier match marathon tomorrow. We are going to Wynn, the Fontainebleau, and then Bellagio for me to get the high tier statuses at the first two and the wife and I to get Gold at Bellagio. We will then go back to Wynn and Fontainebleau for the wife to get the high tier statuses there.
It’s not that I wonder about two people using up a single $150 — you won’t have any trouble at all using it up. It’s a matter of what you would order. I guess maybe two pasta dishes and one entrée? You wouldn’t get 2 and 2 under the $150 I don’t think (or at least not with a glass of wine or an appetizer-type dish or dessert). The server explained that the pasta dishes weren’t French-sized portions nor American-sized portions — they were an amount that was mean to share, but more so each person could sample it. Whether 2 pasta dishes and an entrée is enough for two people probably depends on how you ordinarily eat, but I think it could be on the light side.
Did the run this weekend too. Since I did not have Caesars or MGM status, I instead matched my Hard Rock Unity Icon status to Fontainebleau Gold, then matched that to Wynn Platinum.
While the latter opportunity will go away soon, matching Hard Rock Icon to Fountain blue Gold should still keep the $150 dining and $150 spa credit in reach.
Of course attaining Hard Rock Icon is probably best done in Atlantic City, but the rise of the Unity program might also allow to do it elsewhere.
Thank you so much Nick for showing us how all of this is possible!
Were you charged tax based on the original price or tax is not charged like Caesars dining credit?
I can’t speak for Nick, but if tax is charged on what is a comped amount, then something is wrong with their system.
While I have never been to Fontainebleau, I have never paid taxes when something is comped at any other place.
The wife and I are going to Mother Wolf tomorrow and I will report back our experience.
Sorry for the slow response, I had to run the mental math on this because I only took a picture of the full bill prior to dining credits being taken off. That showed tax based on the full price, but then I know what I actually paid, so I had to take the dining credits out and figure what the tax on that price would be and sure enough, it lines up that we paid no tax on the $600 we had from four $150 dining credits. We did still pay tax on the $100 that was covered with a room dining credit (my friend had booked a rate that included a $100 dining credit, so we charged $100 to his room).
So short answer: no tax on the comped amount. We of course tipped based on the undiscounted price of the meal.