Category: Wine

You heard it here first – James Beard Foundation coming to Las Vegas

The James Beard Foundation’s Taste America Las Vegas event will come to the High Mojave Desert on October 24-25. ELV considers this a very good, very prestigious thing for our humble burg.

The weekend will feature JBF award winners at one-of-a-kind events including hosted dinners, cooking demonstrations, educational panels and more. ELV will be in attendance at everything and everywhere that weekend, even if it means ELV will have to clone himself.

The events will take place at Bellagio, Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, Palms Place, The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino, The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and Wynn Las Vegas Resort & Country Club. ELV is ecstatic that Circus Circus, The Riv, The Trop, The Sahara and Slots O’ Fun were never seriously considered for event venues.

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LOTUS OF SIAM

LOTUS OF SIAM needs another good review like ELV needs another ex-wife. But as a public service, and because there don’t seem to be any out there, we thought we’d feature some tasty snaps of the food, wine list and menu pages for your perusal.

Calling LOS a great Thai restaurant is like calling Tiger Woods (who is 1/4 Thai) a great golfer. It’s probably the most authentic, fiery, interesting and pure Thai restaurant in the country. And like Eldrick “Call Me Tiger” Woods, it is rarely off its game. Saipin Chutima is a self-taught chef who brings the pure, clean snap of heat, sour and sweet to her Northern and Central Thai dishes, and husband Bill has built up a German wine list that Robert Parker has called the best in the country.

It couldn’t be in a worse location, and some of the food is not for the timid, but if you keep your mind and palate open for adventure (and you’re prepared to drink a lot of water) you’ll have the Thai-m of your life.

Click here for my first review of Lotus of Siam and here for my Critique of Pure Riesling (with apologies to Immanuel Kant) on Nevada Public Radio.

LOTUS OF SIAM

953 East Sahara Ave.

Las Vegas, NV 89104

702.735.3033

VALLEY CHEESE AND WINE

It was the gourmet food store I had been waiting for, for twenty years. It remains, two years after opening, the only purveyor of quality fromage in the entire valley.

The first time I walked into this modest storefront, I started to weep silently to myself with joy. Because laid before me, in its medium sized refrigerated case, were wheels (not pre-cut packages) of Colston Bassett Stilton, cave-aged Taleggio, true Camembert, cloth-bound Vermont cheddar, and dozens of others of the world’s finest (and hard to find) cheeses.

Behind the counter that fateful day were Kristin Sande and Bob Howald – a couple who met at a cheese convention…I mean how cheesy is that! They were and are there every day to discuss levels of ripeness, serving suggestions and wine pairings from their selection of esoteric (and extremely well-priced) wines of the world.

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