Category: Food

E-JO KOREAN Kool

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We at ELV have decided Korean is our favorite Asian food.

Of course, they do kimchi you to death, and everything is either a crudely cut stir-fry or a giant bowl with 94 ingredients in it, but the spices always seem right, the heat is always gently warming, and nothing is ever as salty as the Chinese make it. Best of all, they are inordinately fond of placing huge color pictures of everything everywhere so fat white boys can simply point and eat.

Remarkably, no matter what the restaurant, the food always comes out looking exactly like those pictures. Imagine any American restaurant — from a greasy spoon to the Cheesecake Factory to Spago — trying to do that.

Plus, Koreans are friendly, the women are beautiful, they like to take a drink now and then, and they are seriously in love with meat in all its forms.

Our staff has also fallen in love with Korean food because they discovered a good one — called E-Jo — withing walking distance of our office. It is also located within an old Taco Bell, making us feel morally superior every time we give these owners our hard-earned won instead of fattening the coffers of a large, impersonal, multi-national company.

E-Jo is small, impeccably clean, welcoming, reasonable and easy to navigate. The owners/waitrons may look a little shocked when you (a non-Korean) first walk in, but they are all smiles after that. Everything is cooked to order, and the tasty snaps on the wall are so big even David Paterson could read them. What this means is, you can study them while you wait for your food and plan your next Korean foray even as you’re eating. Just as important, English translations come with every picture, saving you the embarrassment of trying to pronounce such tricky Korean phrases as “bulgogi” and “fried chicken.” How cool is that?

ELV’s lunch for two pictured above came to $31 + $7 tip.

E-JO KOREAN RESTAURANT

3429 South Jones Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.368.1004

Arena on Pizza – Were The Good Ole Days Really That Good?

ELV note: John Arena’s pizza musings stimulate our brain and our appetite. Below, he wonders if the pizzas of yesteryear really were all that nostalgia has cracked them up to be.

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Lately I’ve been thinking about…Roger Bannister. No, Bannister is not the latest hot shot artisan pizza maker. For those of you too young to remember, Roger Bannister was a British Track & Field athlete who on May 6, 1954 became the first person to run a sub 4 minute mile. Roger, who was later knighted for his efforts, broke what was considered by the general public to be an unbreakable barrier. What is interesting is that to serious athletes of the day, shattering the 4 minute obstacle was considered not impossible but inevitable. The fact is they were correct, and the current US High School record stands at a full 6 Seconds faster than Sir Roger Bannister’s World Record achievement of just 57 years ago!

So what has this got to do with pizza? Well, last week I came across an article in a pizza trade publication about a certain well established pizza chain that proudly stated that their pizza has not changed in over 50 years. In truth many pizza makers make similar claims about “Old World Traditions” and “Time Honored Family Recipes”. The widely held belief is that the old ways, old ingredients and old methods are always superior to the new. Well folks, here is something to think about. In virtually every objectively measurable endeavor mankind improves over time. We run faster, jump higher, live longer more active lives, build more efficient engines and yes, we know more about baking than our ancestors did.

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Eat This Now – Tomato Salad at MILOS

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How can something so simple be so perfect? If ever the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” applies to a recipe, it applies to this elementary concoction of quartered tomatoes, sliced onions, green peppers, barrel-aged feta, Santorini capers, and fresh oregano, all tossed in a light, lemony vinaigrette.

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