Category: Commercial

Shameless Plug – ELV Smells Class Action

ELV note: Yours truly is not in the habit of suing restaurants. We love restaurants, chefs, cooks and restaurateurs. We also know that anyone can get food poisoning any time at any place (you could, conceivably, get a bad clam at Joel Robuchon), and a single incident of illness would not be actionable, as we say in the law. But over three dozen incidents from a single establishment in one week is beyond the pale. So many illnesses in so short of time manifests practiced negligence on the part of management. Therefore, as a public health service, we hereby offer the following commercial.

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ELV has become so well known as a restaurant critic that some people (including the Food Gal®, his long suffering assistant, and his accountant) forget that he is also a lawyer, as in: he practices law.

For money.

He’s pretty damn good at it too — having accumulated decades of experience in numerous facets of the profession (civil, injury, business, litigation, criminal, domestic, corporate,  and real estate).

He is also well-versed in the nuances of divorce law and will happily help those who need to unwind the knot with a significant other.

And by “unwind the knot with a significant other” he means he will happily refer you to an attorney who specializes in human behavior at its worst. (High powered business executives and incarcerated felons are pieces of cake next to a housewife who caught her husband boinking the au pair.)

With this in mind, he is using this space, at his accountant’s suggestion to remind his loyal readers that there could be gold in them thar hills against the business that made them very sick. Any who were injured should feel free to contact him at:

John A. Curtas

Attorney-at-Law

3275 South Jones Blvd. Suite 105

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.307.9500

john@curtaslaw.com (see our classy ad – with Greek columns and everything! –  in the box on the right below)

….where he will happily refer you to competent legal representation.

But wait there’s more!

As a further public service, any who retain him will be happily steered to a tapas restaurant that won’t send them to the hospital.

For Example…

ELV just saw a Budweiser commercial which claims that Anheuser-Busch “….might be America’s best known local* brewer.”

Which might might be the biggest crock of shit — from an industry that specializes in crocks of shit — we’ve ever heard.

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* Anheuser-Busch makes over 11 billion bottles of beer a year, at thirteen different bottling plants**, and pockets almost $40 billion a year doing it.

** Local brewer my ass***.

*** Speaking of giant asses, that seems to be what this poor young woman has stuck on her ribcage:

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ELV Remains Elusive, but Wilburn is Willing

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If you click on and look closely at the above picture, you will see yours truly settling in for his birthday dinner at Antoine’s in New Orleans last Friday night. The setting was chosen with particularity since it was at this fabled restaurant that I had my first food epiphany way back in 1962. (Over a silver dish of crab meat bubbling in a sherry-butter sauce, if memory serves. I still recall turning to my mother — Marcella Ruth Schroader Curtas – d.o.b. 08-10-24 – and asking, “Why don’t you cook like this?”).

As you may recall, I was in N’Awlins shooting another episode of “All Forked Up,” premiering this Spring on the Travel Channel. That gig has kept me traveling around the U.S.A. for the past four months (Philly, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago and New Orleans), with one episode left to go. After that, it’ll be all over except the shouting as we wait for the public to give its verdict. If ratings are good, we’ll hit the road for more episodes. If the public decides we’re not worthy of its viewing attention, it’ll be back to Vegas with a great experience under our belt and lots of stories to tell.

Truth be told, our delusions are less grand than you might think. Sin City Rules set a pretty low bar  that succeeded only in reinforcing the shallow and stupid stereotypes that surround our humble burg. Insofar as it besmirched all things Vegas with its cast of spoiled lamebrains — and believe me,  it made Hillbilly Hand Fishing look like Tennessee Williams — our show tries to edify and entertain….oh, who am I kidding? Mostly it’s just me and Mancini yelling at each other over everything from soup to nuts, hurling invectives and mining our insult thesauruses daily. But we love the cities and the food and the production is going to look MAH-VEL-ous.

Until the show airs — looking to be late April right now — our travel schedule makes covering the Vegas food scene impossible. But an un-posted blog is an unhappy blog, soooooo cue Mitchell Wilburn!

Yes, Mitchell Wilburn… a young, stylish fellow who is a spirits and suds fanatic looking to expand his coverage of our food and beverage scene. My staff and I have given Mitchell the keys to the kingdom, as it were, and you will now see occasional articles and postings from his passionate pen. (There may also be other guest writers popping up from time to time to keep all of us on our toes, and who knows? you may even see an occasional iconoclastic exclamation from moi!

Please be patient with Mitchell (and all young writers), as he’s still finding his sea legs. He won’t be as edgy and outrageous as the guy whose picture is at the top of the page, but he loves excellence in eating and drinking just as much as your favorite bloviating blowhard.

Speaking of edgy and entertaining blowhards, Michael Winner died yesterday and you could hear the sighs of relief go up from restaurateurs across Great Britain. He was opinionated, imperious and impossible, but his Winner’s Dinners column was always a great read.

R.I.P. Michael Winner.michael winner