Travel Rant #18 – De-Planing With Your Carry-On Bags

surely you cant be serious don't call me shirley GIF by Top 100 Movie Quotes of All Time
Your plane lands. It’s been a 5 hour flight. It’s late. All everyone on the plane wants is to get off the friggin’ plane. SO WHY DOES IT TAKE EVERYONE SO LONG TO GRAB THEIR BAGS AND GO?
 
Since you asked, I’ll tell you why: It takes soooo long to de-plane (love that word) because people are either too stupid, too lazy, or too polite to do it right.
 
Here’s the scene: You’re in the middle of the plane. Everyone is filing out. Everyone is waiting too long to reach up and grab their goddamn bag THAT’S IN THE BIN RIGHT ABOVE THEIR HEAD. They (especially the people on the aisle seats) could do this WHILE every one ahead of them is filing out, but NOOoooooo….EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. waits until everything has cleared out ahead of them before completing the simple task of reaching up and grabbing their precious carry-on.
 
Sooooo, you’re on an aisle seat, the woman beside you is standing up; you’re standing up; both of you have been standing up for at least five minutes. A couple of more minutes drift by at the pace of a glacier when you notice the entire plane ahead of you is empty and she’s not moving. You’ve actually been trying to give a little ground to her so she can scoot out ahead of you. But she lifts not a finger until there’s not a goddamn soul on the plane ahead of her. At that point she says, “I just need to get my bag,” — the bag which has been right over her head — waiting to be grabbed — for the past 10 minutes.
 
Seeing a blank expanse of jet aisle before you, and completely out of patience with this dolt (and the numbskulls you’ve watched do the same thing for the previous ten minutes), you do not meekly recede back into your seat row while she proceeds to hold up another 75 people. Instead, you break into the the open field (bumping her slightly with your man bag). At that point, she let’s out a loud “Excuse me, sir!” — letting everyone on the plane (including your spouse) know that you had pushed past her rather than do the ultra-polite thing of waiting for her to finish something she could have done a long time ago.
 
Once we get out into the terminal, the same lady is all sarcastic, “Merry Christmas, sir” to me, as she walks past me, and the wife catches up to me and SHE be like all “Why were you so pushy and rude to that woman,” and I be like “BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE TO QUIT BEING SO FUCKING POLITE AND JUST GET THEIR GODDAMN BAGS AND GET OFF THE GODDAMN PLANE,” and the wife be like all annoyed and such at me for the whole LYFT ride home….
 
….and I still, for the goddamn life of me, can’t figure out why it takes people so goddamn long to grab a stupid carry-on and get off a goddamn airplane.
 
Thanks, I feel better now.

EATING LAS VEGAS 2018 Hits the Shelves

It’s here; it’s all mine; and it’s much more than just a restaurant guide.

Twenty-five years of my life have gone into this book, as have over twelve thousand restaurant meals in Las Vegas alone. Add another 10k or so of meals in the previous decades and you get way north of 20,000 when you start counting up how many times I’ve sat down in a restaurant. (ELV – the man, the myth, the inveterate epicure – scoffs when he hears other food writers brag about reviewing restaurants for “years” or through “thousands of meals.” Scoffs, I say.)

This book is a lot different than the previous five editions. All 52 “essential” joints were visited by me within the past year, sixteen worthy places leapt into our top 52, and two-thirds of all the reviews are either brand new or freshly re-written. All sorts of tasty tidbits are also peppered throughout the pages, for your edification, contemplation and delectation.

Six new chapters introduce the book, ranging from the pros and cons of the Las Vegas restaurant scene (pro: comfort, accessibility; con: how casino comps ruin everything), to the glories of dining alone, to our disgust with celebrity chefs and the people who worship them.

Along the way, you’ll also find a brand new Bottom 10 (example: “SW Steakhouse – Are you the sort that likes gargling with razor blades while electric shocks are applied to your genitals? Then you’ll probably enjoy perusing this wine list, then paying the straight-up-your-fundament tariff.”), as well as a host of hot new places to visit in Chinatown. For dessert, we feature an epilogue as well as a lengthy description of my perfect meal — because people are always asking me, and I thought it high time I put it on paper.

If you’re interested in eating out in Las Vegas, you should buy it. If you like to eat in restaurants generally, you probably should buy it too.

Now, here’s the important part: where to buy it.

Simple. Just click on the link below and you’ll get the best deal (52 delicious reviews, and more opinions than you can count for the price of a cocktail) and the fastest shipping. Bon appetit and Merry Christmas!

2018 Eating Las Vegas

 

 

Restaurant of the Year – TWIST BY PIERRE GAGNAIRE

Twist by Turbo Gagnaire

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR – TWIST BY PIERRE GAGNAIRE

When Twist by Pierre Gagnaire opened in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in 2009, it capped a culinary renaissance that had been seven years in the making. Beginning in 2003 with Thomas Keller’s Bouchon, our French revolution continued through the openings of Joël Robuchon (2005), Daniel Boulud (2005) and Guy Savoy (2006), and was such a sea change in the quality of restaurant cooking that the whole world took notice. By the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, only New York and San Francisco could lay claim to having a fine dining scene as sophisticated as ours.

Twist was last but not least to this party, but what an entrance it made. From the beginning, it featured the groundbreaking, modernist cuisine of Pierre Gagnaire, usually served in a blizzard of plates surrounding a central theme. At the time, you might be excused for thinking that you were getting too much of a good thing as Gagnaire’s chefs riffed on everything from crabs to cauliflower, sometimes overwhelming your palate in the process. These days, Chef de Cuisine Frédéric Don does his master proud by creating more focused menus, in a glistening atmosphere, delivered by a staff that never misses a beat.

Besides the razor-sharp execution, jaw-dropping presentations and fork-dropping flavors, what impresses the most about Twist is how it’s come together in the past year to become an almost perfect Las Vegas restaurant. It always had the pedigree, the spectacle and the world-class cooking, and now its menu fits the Strip like a Chanel suit. Exotic fare (foie gras parfait, langoustine beignet, smoked haddock soufflé) competes with eye-popping vegetarian menus as this kitchen toggles back and forth between wild tubot finished in a classic beurre Nantais to a not-so-classic black eggplant tortellini with black garlic velouté. This is cooking in the deep end of the epicurean pond, and in the wrong hands you could find yourself drowning in a sea of ingredients. Instead, everything from the proteins to the plants is always on point. If all chefs cooked vegetables this well, the birds and the beasts that roam the earth would have nothing to worry about.

The point of Twist is to dazzle, to intrigue, and to amuse; but it never confuses. (Along with those pirouettes on the plate, they also serve some mighty great steaks.) With an improved (and more affordable) wine program, and Vivian Chang’s ethereal desserts, it has become our most complete dining salon — ready to impress the neophyte gastronome as much as the fussiest gourmet — all served with a view that’s as breathtaking as what’s on your plate.

TWIST BY PIERRE GAGNAIRE

Mandarin Oriental Hotel

702.590.8888

https://www.mandarinoriental.com/las-vegas/the-strip/fine-dining/restaurants/french-cuisine/twist-by-pierre-gagnaire