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One of the great things about Las Vegas — hell, just about the only great thing about Vegas these days besides the weather — is how our world wide fame makes it a magnet for talented, successful people, especially in certain creative crafts. Once people have made it in popular music, comedy, film, television, and yes, food, they inevitably end up in our back yard — if only for brief visits, but regular visits just the same. Few other American cities can boast of having Jerry Seinfeld or Jay-Z dropping by all the time, but we pretty much take it for granted that such high-wattage luminaries will be hanging out in our hotels on any given weekend. (Because, let’s face it, this is where the money is.)

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ELV note: You’ll have to scroll to the 32:47 minute mark (counting backwards from the top of the show) of the Block 3 video of today’s (12.09.11) morning newscast (whew….) to see ELV highlighting some of the best Strip deals for this New Year’s Eve in the pontificating, educating, intoxicating, illuminating and resonating tones for which he is known.

ELV note: This review appears in today’s edition of the Las Vegas Weekly. Click here to read it in its original format, or continue scrolling below.

Henderson, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the foodship Herrinterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new neighborhoods; to seek out new life-enhancing foods and civilized lunches; to boldly go where no sensible restaurant has gone before!

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It’s the best pulled pork sandwich we’ve had in town in like….forever!

The barbecued baked beans are also a thing of beauty.

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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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Big Tuna Melt

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Does anyone but ELV remember when you were supposed to eat fish on Fridays?

ELV remembers, of course, because he’s always been a very devout fellow.

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Las Vegas is full of great beef these days.

In fact, next to New York we probably have the greatest collection of steakhouses in the country.

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There are two ways to shave tuber magnatum.

The regular way:

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Gregory Pugin shaves away

….or the French way:

Guy gets it done

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...with The Food Gal

…neither of which impresses this guy:

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It has not escaped ELV’s attention that whenever he posts anything about any Asian restaurant, the reader response is, at best, tepid. If we challenge any cheeseburger, pizza or pasta restaurant’s hegemony, comments fly at us like bad fish(!?). But let us proclaim some Korean or Thai restaurant to be fabulous or awful, and all we hear is crickets.

ELV has a theory* about this and it goes something like this: People are happy to judge and give opinions on food they are comfortable with, but steer them into foreign territory and they clam up for fear of being exposed as knowing too little to openly opine on what is good, bad or mediocre. And nothing is more foreign to the American palate (even after decades of assimilation) than Asian cuisines. Truth be told, most people don’t know anything more about what goes into a proper lasagna Bolognese than they do a jajangmyeon, but they feel more familiar with the language of one, so avoid trying (or opining about) the tastes of  the other.

Which is sad, really, since Asian food is the second best thing about eating in Las Vegas — the first if you consider bang for the buck. So what you ought to be doing is eating in all of these places — for health and economic reasons — enough to go toe to toe with us on what you like and why you like it. To encourage such adventurous eating, we hereby proclaim this All-Asian Sunday — where we will condense and edify about where we’ve had some of our more magnificent cheap eats over the previous week. If the response is good, maybe we’ll do it every Sunday. Regardless, after three days of turkey, ‘taters and dressing…what could be better?

First, let’s start with Bosa 1:

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