
Summer 2016 is over. It officially ends at midnight tonight, but for all practical purposes in Vegas, it ends when temperatures stop hitting 100+ degrees.
Are we sad to see it go? Not really. 100 straight days of brutal heat will wither even the staunchest of souls. And if you walk everywhere, like I do, it takes the starch out that staunch soul on a daily basis.
Amazingly, it even kills your appetite. Sometimes.
Sometimes, you just want a bright greens, maybe a slice of protein, and some fruit to get you through the evening.
Which was our mindset a couple of weeks ago when we walked into Andiron Steak & Sea. Steak and salad. The Atkins diet. No carbs. Clean living. Healthy liver.
Yeah right.
That resolve lasted about 3 minutes, or about the time it took them to place those diabolical loaves of sweet cornbread in front of us. Still warm from the oven, they were the goddamned devil in carbohydrate form. Butter-slathered Lucifers of craven food lust. Beelzebubs of busted diets.
Yeah, they were that good.
You couldn’t eat just one. It was hard to keep from eating a dozen. Especially when the ever-ready waitron-enablers kept refilling the basket. They were as corn-y and moist and sweet as a bread can be, and would be right at home in Charleston or Atlanta. Not since Bradley Ogden left town have we tasted something so sweet.
As bad (good) as they were, what came at the end of the meal was even worse (better):

Like the prow of a great chocolate ship, it was, plowing into the feeble, fractured iceberg of resolve that was my willpower.
And plow it did. Or rather, plow through it I did.
Was it the greatest chocolate cake I’ve ever had? Hard to say, but it was damn close. So dense, so moist, so friggin’ riven with bittersweet chocolate that it could bring a grown man to his knees. The fudge layers may have been a tad sweet for us, and chocolate frosting and sauce might be accused of coming from the belt-with-suspenders school of baking, but why argue with something so unctuously decadent?
It is not a cake to be argued with. It is a cake to be demolished…preferably by 2-4 people.
So, with this post we say a fond farewell to Summer 2016. Goodbye to 110 degree days, laps in our pool and working on our killer tan. Goodbye to sweating through our clothes every morning, and torturing our air conditioning every night.
But most of all, with these dishes, we say goodbye, au revoir, adieu and adios to our hopes of ever again having a 38″ waistline.
ANDIRON STEAK & SEA