Yes, it’s Friday food fans, and time for ELV’s Bad Italian Food Review. From this week forward, as a regular feature, ELV intends to single out the bad Italian food that infests our valley, every Friday on this website, right before he goes to Mass at his favorite worshiping place: Our Holy Mother of Perpetual Pasta Humiliation Church.
Click here to hear this morning’s Food Talk on News 88.9 FM – KNPR Nevada Public Radio, wherein Slapsie Maxie and moi interrogate, illuminate, eviscerate, hypothecate and pontificate about various subjects in today’s food and restaurant world.
Today’s topics included:
An interview with uber-restaurant writer John Mariani on his recent trip to Las Vegas;
Local bloggers Mike Dobranski and Jillian Plaster on what, why, how and when they blog about Vegas’ restaurants;
Max and my Top Five Wine Peeves; and
EAT IT OR BEAT IT, where we cross swords over:
Lola’s,
Nero’s Steakhouse, and
El Segundo Sol.
Click here for the link to “Wine Talk” on KNPR a couple of Fridays ago, wherein Max and John grill, kebab, fillet, carve, and incise John Mathew Smith of Wirtz Beverage Company and Jeff Wyatt of Marche Bacchus about the current state of our wine world.
Actually, most of what we do is chew the fat over:
* What’s happening in the world of wine?
* Has France lost its dominance?
* How have currency fluctuations affected what we’re buying and drinking?
* How do wholesalers and retailers react to such recessionary times?
* What new world wines are hot?
* What has the Asian economic boom done to wine prices? and, ELV’s favorite topic:
* Why are wine prices so friggin’ high on the Las Vegas Strip?
But strangely, no one thought to bring any fermented juice with which to wash all this erudition down.
We at ELV are obviously losing our edge.
If you’ve ever had a hankerin’ for a little deep fried squid cartilage — and let’s face it who hasn’t? — then point to the poster on the wall at Ichiza (that doubles as a menu for the place) and get yourself a plateful of the little nippers.
They’re surprisingly good — sorta like popcorn shrimp, only a bit more toothsome — and go quite nicely with a glass of junmai daiginjo sake.
And while you’re at it, grab some oysters in ponzu sauce, some jalopy fried rice, slimy raw wasabi octopus, and a little albacore sashimi, for one of the better Japanese snack meals around town.
Click on the link below to hear why Slapsie Maxie and ELV are so crazy about this place.
ICHIZA
4355 West Spring Mountain Road
Las Vegas, NV 89102-8784
702.367.3151
Here’s the link to this morning’s audio on KNPR’s State Of Nevada wherein John and Max tell you whether to EAT IT OR BEAT IT from:
Payard Patisserie and Bistro;
Gina’s Bistro; and
Ichiza.
We at ELV know that most of you don’t sit around your radios at 10:40 am on Friday mornings wishing, hoping and praying that the programmers at Nevada Public Radio will give you another taste of Max Jacobson and John Curtas’ captivating, contumacious and condescending commentary about the Vegas food and restaurant scene.
Therefore, as a public service, we hereby offer you this link to last Friday’s program. Scroll down on the page to get to the “listen link” so that you can actually enjoy the audio.
Featured:
Our Top 5 coffee shops in town, and
EAT IT OR BEAT IT, where we review:
Naked City Sandwich Shop
Hue Thai’s Famous French Sandwiches, and
American Fish.
Here is the link for last week’s KNPR-State Of Nevada’s Food Talk featuring interviews with:
Bon Appetit Editor Barbara Fairchild;
First came the KNPR interview (to be broadcast next week), then came the photo op, and finally, Slapsie Maxie figured chowing down on a dozen plates from the Greenland Korean Market’s new food court would be just what America’s most acclaimed chef would be in the mood for.
And so he was.
And thus were a multitude of plates were rendered, and laid before him.
And lo did he express thanks, and consume them with relish.
And verily did he proclaim the pepper chicken too laden with starch, and the kal-bi and cake of mung bean to be of the highest quality.
Words of praise were given and prayers answered and thus did it come to pass that hunger was abated.
And it was good.
So sayeth Thomas The Great.
We at ELV know most of you have better things to do on a Friday morning (play video poker, nurse a hangover, contemplate great architecture, etc…) than to sit glued to a radio listening to intellectual-and-digestively-stimulating banter about food and restaurants. Therefore, as a public service, we provide this link to yesterday’s State Of Nevada program on KNPR.
If you tuned in yesterday to News 88.9 FM KNPR’s State Of Nevada, you heard the Toothsome Twosome:
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.
