Category: Rant

Tasting Menu Tyranny

ELV note:  A quick aperitivo of opinion to whet thine appetite for the flurry of essential eateries to come:

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(ELV’s worst nightmare)

A few of our ardent Facebook foodie friends (and we have many of them) have asked why we didn’t make it to Coi, Crenn, Benu or Saison on our just-finished, four-day trip to Frisco.

Our answer is simple (and – with apologies – a bit insulting): The last thing ELV wants or needs at this point in his insatiable existence is to be enslaved for 3+ hours by a team of 30 year old cooks assaulting his senses with dozens of “wildly inventive” teeny-tiny plates of overwrought tweezer food.

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Bon Appetit Craps Out; Mariani Makes His Point

ELV note: We temporarily interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (i.e., our march through the 50 Essential Restaurants of Las Vegas) to bring you a word (actually 2,193 of them) about a most disturbing development in the food media world.

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Two mornings ago, the editor of Bon Appetit magazine, and the restaurant editor of the magazine, appeared on the CBS Morning News to announce Bon App’s “Best New Restaurants of 2014.”

In introducing the segment, they listed their general criteria for determining which restos made the overall list, and how they specifically determined their Top 10 eateries on the list.

Those criteria were, in order:

1) Good Vibe

2) Good Music

3) Good Lighting

4) Good Food

To say that Eating Las Vegas was appalled is an understatement. And we weren’t the only ones.

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Masa Would Be Mortified

ELV note: We interrupt our regular programming — i.e., our march through the 50 Essential Restaurants of Las Vegas, in descending order —  to bring you a few words about Bar Masa.

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What you mainly feel, after the anger subsides, is a sense of relief. The sort of relief that only comes from knowing you’re free. Free from the pull of perfection. Free from dark thoughts that pull you back in, time and again. Thoughts of passions and pursuits. Chasing the high. Never getting enough.

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