content: After weaving through the labyrinth that is the MGM Grand we finally stumbled on Emeril's just in time for our reservation.  The view from outside in unimpressive and looks more like an indoor strip mall or, dare I say, a Food Court.\n\nThe hostess was friendly and guided us to our table without issue.  We were seated near the rear of place toward the kitchen.  They have a really cool light fixture above the expo window and a see through glass to the kitchen.  The waiter comes directly to the table and laughs at me for looking toward the kitchen and says \""no he is not here\"" assuming that I was looking for Emeril. But then he adds \""in fact he is never here\"".  This is not my first trip to a restaurant run by a famous chef, and I was not looking for Emeril, but I am sure that this would be lost on this arrogant jerk, so I said \""oh, I was just looking at the kitchen\"" to which his response was \""you can do whatever you want\"".  My wife adds \""cool, can we go back and cook\"" and he replied \""I am sure you wouldn't be any worse than those guys\"".  I thought this was an odd statement but after the meal I realized it was an honest account of how bad the food really is here.\n\nMy wife got the baby spinach and blackberry salad.  The dish came out and was she just ate the berries and nectarines.  The dressing had absolutely no flavor so the spinach was ruined,  The dish just didn't seem to come together; however, it was miles better than the heirloom tomato and avocado salad that was placed in front of me.  This flop of a dish was nothing more than a poor way for the kitchen to reuse yesterday's stale cornbread, I picked through the tomatoes and avocado and left 85% of the dish in tact.  The waiter cleared the plate away without asking any questions.\n\nFor the next course, i decided to take a chance and try the trio of chilled summer soups.  I am usually not a fan of cold soup, but with Emeril's reputation of nailing flavors, I thought this might be an interesting way for the kitchen to show off some cajun flavor.  I was wrong.  The tangy tomato soup was gross.  The avocado lime was palatable but boring.  The roasted pepper soup (that had Emeril's initial on it) tasted like sink water after soaking red bell peppers.  \n\nMy main course arrived and the meat was cold, all four little strips of meat on the plate.  Of course this was no surprise because of the odd service style of this place.  The food runners take food only as far as the servers area then your food just sits and waits for you.  So we sat ten feet from our food and basically watched it get cold.  The meat sat atop a small mountain of oddly fried potatoes that were rubbery as though they had been fried yesterday and reheated.\n\nThe bread pudding was more like a bowl of day old Quaker oats that had congealed.  I took some of the chocolate shavings from the banana cream pie topping and rescued this disaster of dessert.  For a chef that is known for kicking flavors \""up a notch\""  this place was several notches below acceptable.