Author: John Curtas

ELV’s Thought for the Day

Last night, I saw a line around the block outside of Best Buy waiting to get in at midnight. If ever there was evidence of our misplaced social priorities, fetishization (sic) consumption rituals are it. What a disgrace “Black Friday” is. The complete breakdown in meaning in which we become imprinted to seek shiny happy baubles of future-dom as the means by which we deny the larger truths of mortality, friendship, love, communication and intimacy.

No, Call of Duty 3, on sale for the next 24 hours, won’t solve the gnawing crises underneath the conscious mind. You are deluded fools outside of Best Buy, worshiping at the feet of the Glitter God of Mass Market Ritual. You can try to entertain yourself out of extended reflection, but it won’t work. Consume, they tell us. Obey, and happiness awaits. – Jay Louis

Holiday Dining the LE CIRQUE and CIRCO Way

ELV note: The following article appears in the current issue of VEGAS magazine that hit newsstands and mailboxes on Friday. Click here to read it in its original format (where you’ll see more tasty snaps of the restaurants and the food), or continuing scrolling below.

Circo’s Champagne raspberry zabaione is a holiday favorite
Langoustines with osetra caviar and apple-vodka geleé at Le Cirque

When Sirio Maccioni and his sons, Mario, Marco, and Mauro, took Steve Wynn up on his offer to open at Bellagio in 1998, they chose the opposite route of other celebrity chefs.

Instead of exaggerated, overblown versions of the restaurants that made them famous, they went small. In the case of Le Cirque, they asked hospitality designer Adam Tihany to create a tranquil jewel box amidst the casino cacophony. With Circo, they wanted it to be festive and fun, but on a personal scale, and nothing like the boisterous behemoths that then and now characterize many a Strip dining room. What Tihany dialed up were two of his greatest designs ever: two restaurants that remain, 13 years later, the most convivial places in Las Vegas to celebrate the holidays… or any occasion.

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