I recently sent a holiday e-mail to one of the titans of American gastronomy (not the fellow pictured above – more on him later). The dude I was sending season’s greetings to has major food chops. He’s what I call a restaurant intellectual, as well as being a noted cookbook author and food writer of great renown. My holiday greeting was filled with the usual “2014 was a wonderful year as we discovered the joys of making compost”  blather, but in the midst of all the trite, yuletide good cheer I strangely found myself typing these words:

 It’s funny that I choose this year to do it, because unlike the last twenty, this one has been a fairly dull one when it comes to our dining scene. Of course the party had to end sometime, but after the restaurant revolution of 1998-2010, these past few years have witnessed little, if any, interesting work being done by chefs and hoteliers, save for the occasional Japanese joint tucked away in places most gringos fear to tread.

 In fact, the biggest revolution of all has taken place in my head, where I have become increasingly disenchanted with the tourist-trap pricing of our major hotels. It seems after almost two decades of entreating people to embrace the Strip and its celebrity-chef wonders, I find myself choking on the prices, and deploring the inorganic, top-down nature of our food culture. In this sense I’ve also come around to understanding certain journalist’s (and the James Beard Foundation’s) lack of respect for our casino-driven food “culture” – which has warped and stunted any real growth in our neighborhood food scene.

 So basically I’ve become 1984 in reverse – I’ve learned to hate Big Brother (after once being his biggest fan).

Continue reading “Facing Reality: The Strip Has Lost Its Luster”