Category: Food

ORCHIDS GARDEN – Dim Sum Disappointment

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The dim sum at Orchid Garden isn’t bad…but it isn’t that good either. Most of it is best-hits-standard-issue, without a single deviation from, or innovative tweaking of, the Cantonese dumpling canon like you’ll find at Ping Pang Pong or even, on occasion, Cathay House.

Some offerings are pretty good (shrimp won tons), some are decent enough (fried pork and leek dumplings in wheat starch wrapper, shu mai steamed pork), and some are downright atrocious (lard-y, puny don tot (egg tarts), and gummy pasty cha siu sou (baked, barbecue pork triangles). If you aren’t a dim sum snob (amazingly, ELV isn’t*), you will leave satisfied (we were). If you demand delicacy and dreaminess in your dumplings, head to the Gold Coast…or as you can read in the comments below, to the West Coast!

That is all.

ELV’s dim sum brunch for two came to $25 and we left a $7 tip).

ORCHIDS GARDEN

5485 West Sahara Ave.

Las Vegas, NV 89146-0308

702.631.3839

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* Dim sum you see, is a lot like barbecue, sex and pizza, i.e., the worst we ever had was still pretty good.


Porkapalooza!

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Lovers of cooked and cured pork in all its forms were in hog heaven this afternoon, as Cochon 555 hit The Cosmopolitan in all its porcine-perfect glory. It was a much more food-focused event than many of our dine-around festivals — with celebrity chefs taking a back seat to the butchers and sausage makers who are re-defining American charcuterie.

Continue reading “Porkapalooza!”

ELV’s Thought for the Day – Lamb Praises the Pig

He must be roasted….There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share of the please at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — with e adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat! — but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child pig’s yet pure food — the lean, no lean but a kind of animal manna — or rather, fat and lean (if it must be so ) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result of common substance. – Charles Lamb

See you at the All-Star Cochon 555 at The Cosmo…today at 4:30!