Encore Spa

“It’s kinda like the Taj Mahal with hot tubs,” is how one ELV staffer described the ABA-designed Encore Spa after they’d completed a day of relaxation.

We realize this has nothing to do with food, but uber-designer Todd Avery Lenahan’s massage-motivated-palace-of-pleasure-zen-masterpiece is so spectacular that we just had to run a few snaps of it.

And in case you’re wondering, ELV ain’t exactly down with the whole health and relaxation thing — since his idea of a massage begins and ends with Kobe beef, and he’d rather have some Pedro Jimenez P.X. sherry than a pedicure.

BOTERO – The Return Of Mark LoRusso

Mark LoRusso deserves to be a show horse. Not that he’s a showy or flashy guy. Far from it. He’s one of those humble, workaholic chefs who prefers to let his cuisine do the talking. As the Chef de Cuisine of Michael Mina’s Aqua (now Michael Mina), he was that kitchen’s secret weapon, and a guy whose reputation among fellow chefs was exalted long before the public had ever heard of him.

His work at Tableau in the Wynn from 2005-2007 earned him Chef of the Year honors in ’07 from KNPR, and when he’s on his game (which is just about every day and night) the guy is the Tiger Woods of kitchen consistency. Unfortunately, what he’s being asked to do at Botero is the equivalent of chaining a thoroughbred to a milk wagon — and then asking it to make deliveries at 50 miles an hour. Thus has the show horse become a work horse, and because of it, the results are mixed.

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Critiquing The Critic – French Style

Francois Simon the restaurant critic for Le Figaro in Paris, is the overbearing critic to end all critics. Read this article about how insufferable he is, and then, maybe, ELV won’t seem so bad after all!

Here is an example of his blog that is very, very French, but amusing in all sorts of ways for that very reason. If you can plow through the crazy, inaccurate translations like: “These meals are trompe l’oeil. It would take days to leave the great restaurants after the snack.”(?) — you’ll see how true food snobs operate in that motherland of all food snobbery.

And then you’ll realize what a cupcake ELV truly is…