ELV note: Scroll to the 16:13 mark to watch ELV’s meltdown over the perplexing popularity of (yet another) vapid, franchised Italian restaurant, and please bear with our scratchy voice that keeps threatening to heal, but which has plagued us for the past two weeks.
And while we’re at it, we’d love for someone to explain to us why Brio is turning away customers every night…
ELV note: Click here to read this article in its original format, or scroll below to see what Brock, Jim and ELV thought were their top bites of 2011.
On the plate, it was a very good year. In revisiting their best bites of 2011, the Weekly food critics will get you salivating for 2012.
John Curtas
1. Oxtail Bucatini with Oxtail Sauce (Le Cirque, at Bellagio) This Gregory Pugin dish looks like a plain, savory custard but unspools to reveal bucatini strands hiding insanely rich braised oxtail. It’s a meat dish made by angels with a devilish calorie count, and it might be the biggest umami bomb of the year.
2. Roasted Sea Bass over Arugula (Due Forni, 3555 S. Town Center Dr.) Take a talented Italian chef (Carlos Buscaglia) and give him an 800 degree oven and a juicy piece of branzino—in a minute or two he can turn out a crispy, succulent seafood wonder, atop a bed of tangy arugula sprinkled with capers. The best off-Strip seafood dish I had this year.
The Old Homestead is set to open for customers tomorrow night in Caesars Palace, and has been doing the friends and family thing for a couple of days now.
And when there’s meat around, you can be sure Josh “The Maharaja of Meat” Ozersky will be nearby, testing the grinds, calibrating the cuts, assessing the seasonings and parsing the proteins for presumed perfection.
When we caught up with him last night, that’s just what he was doing….when he wasn’t marveling over his newest, favorite book:
We’ll be reporting more on our adventures in eating with Josh….but right now, it’s off to another meat-fest.
In case you missed it, Iron Chef America aired Battle Tilapia last night on Food Network.
ELV missed it, because no one gave him fair warning the episode was about to air. We found out at dinner at Due Forni, where they were nice enough to bump the football game for a few minutes to watch us try to treat tilapia as something trenchantly tasteful.
The episode will be repeated this coming Saturday at 5 pm.
Battle Tilapia
Episode IA1018H
Tune in:
Dec. 17th, 2011
5:00 PM ET/PT
Iron Chef Marc Forgione battles young New York-based chef Nick Curtin in Kitchen Stadium.
For the record, Marcella Ruth Schroader Curtas (d.o.b. 8.10.24 – The Official Mother of ELV) insists that we set the record straight about Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks. “I never served them to you,” she claims. If not, ELV has no idea where he developed such a loathing for the crispy little fishy fritters.
If someone had dropped a bomb on Restaurant Guy Savoy last night between the hours of 6-8 pm, it would’ve set Las Vegas’ culinary destiny back twenty years. Such was the assemblage of top toques from across the valley (and from beyond the pond as well), who came to kibbitz and consume incomparable comestibles (jamon iberico de bellotta de pata negra, pumpkin soup with white truffles, oysters en gelée, Paris-Brest pastries, and two croquembouche towers of nonpareil profiteroles) and champagne in the consummate style the French do better than anyone.
The Top 10 Restaurants in Las Vegas, according to EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants are (in alphabetical order):
Bar Masa
CUT
Estiatorio Milos
Guy Savoy
Joel Robuchon
L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon
Le Cirque
Michael Mina
Picasso
Twist
ELV note: Chris Shen from Henderson weighs in on Yelp with this fine and funny haiku review* of Raku! Read it here in its original Yelp-er format or continue scrolling below. Perhaps we wouldn’t be so hard on Yelp if people were this clever and conscientious with their reviews…(re-printed with permission).
Finally had the opportunity to bust my Raku cherry with three friends visiting from out of town, and when you have a group of folks walk in with no appetite from a heavy late lunch and still managed to complete a meal with their taste buds completely blown away, it is clearly a sign of just pure amazing food. We had a taste of a few items from each section (appetizers, robata grill, and noodles/rice/soups), and can hardly wait to return for more. I was so inspired that I composed a Raku Haiku for each of our selections:
“Sashimi Salad”
Fresh slice of the sea
Deep-fried onions paired with greens
Perfect start to meal
Like we said in our last post, if this keeps up, criticizing the restaurant offerings in Henderson will cease to be our third favorite indoor sport.*
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.
