Merry Christmas to All!

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Santa Claus (me) has been checking his list and checking it twice, and he’s gonna find out who’s been naughty and nice. Actually, he already knows, and since Santa sees all, we thought it time to hand out a few appropriate gifts to a few deserving souls. (And by “deserving souls” we mean those people and places in our local food scene who should get either kudos or scorn for how they’ve behaved in the past year.)

Aria Hotel – a big kiss from Santa and a Nebuchadnezzar of premium champagne for the continued excellence of Sage, Carbone and Bardot Brasserie.

Wynn/Encore – a bag of coal and rotten grapes for the most criminally overpriced wine lists on the Strip.

Downtown Summerlin – a lifetime pass to Penn & Teller for performing the magic act of keeping (what seems like) 58 half-empty restaurants open for the entire year.

Evel Pie – tickets to a Yankees’ game for bringing a slice of Little Italy to Las Vegas.

Cory Harwell – an in-house psychiatrist for the sessions he will need after being driven crazy by trying to appeal to the whims of Henderson diners.

El Sombrero/Irma Aguirre – a copy of Hamlet to help them weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that Donald Trump brought to their doorstep.

Bradley Manchester – a bottle of good whiskey to help him drown his sorrows after the sorrowful closing of Glutton.

Golden Steer Steakhouse – Windex, Clorox, a mop, bug-spray, a can of paint and a gift certificate to Coit Carpet Cleaners to finally clean up this ratty looking ode to the Rat Pack.

THE Steakhouse at Circus Circus – the Zsa Zsa Gabor award for hanging in there long after, by all rights, it should be dead.

Carla Pellegrino – the Comeback of the Year award for coming back from Miami, and for coming back from having her restaurant turned into a demolition derby by an errant driver.

Anthony Curtis, Greg Thilmont and Mitchell Wilburn – drinks on me for all the work they put into publishing two editions of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants this year.

EATT Healthy Food – salt and pepper shakers to brighten up their extraordinary food that is sometimes woefully under-seasoned.

José Andrés – a couple of brass balls for standing up to Donald “Mr. 46%” Trump.

Libertine Social – aspirin to hand out to all of their customers for the wicked hangovers they’re bound to get from all the wicked good cocktails.

The Mixx Grill & Lounge – fire extinguishers for the biggest, fastest, flame-out of any restaurant this year.

“Celebrity Chef” Sam Marvin (and the lamebrains behind F. Pigalle) –  a year’s supply of AA batteries, my old Vivid Video collection, and a case of K-Y to help you use all those decorative butt plugs and dildos left over from the WORST RESTAURANT IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

Ho ho ho to all until next year!

Bah Humbug!

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‘Tis the season to be jolly, isn’t it? The time of year for rejoicing and celebrating; for toasting the year’s ending with reminiscences, good cheer, and hale and hearty fellowship. Am I right?

Nope, not this year. Not by a long shot. Why? Because lovers of good food downtown are in mourning.  Because Bradley Manchester’s Glutton closed its doors for good last night, after just twenty months of operation. Because the number of good places to eat in downtown Las Vegas just got cut in half. Six days before Christmas.

That means Manchester and his small crew of chefs and bartenders and waiters are out of work, less than a week from what is supposed to be the happiest day of the year. The day of the year when gifts are bestowed and glasses are raised in celebration of the year’s past, and in hopes of a prosperous new one.

Not for Glutton, and not for downtown. Because the closing of Glutton portends dire days ahead for the downtown dining scene. Soon enough, a chain restaurant called Eureka! (exclamation point essential) will open in the space once occupied by The Beat coffee shop, and the marketing muscle it will bring to the scene will no doubt further endanger the survival of the small, locally-owned stores like Carson Kitchen, The Smashed Pig, Bõchõ, and La Comida — places that, like Glutton, had  foodies all atwitter just a couple of years ago.

Truth be told, we were never fond of the name, or the logo of Glutton. The name sent all the wrong messages, and the logo looked like some cheap eatery you’d find in a food court. But from our very first bites back on April 10, 2015, we were taken by the place. Manchester’s concept was everything people say they want in a restaurant: intimate, local, chef-driven, and delicious. The size was right, the corner location attractive, and the open kitchen/bar/dining room just the sort of Millennial-friendly space that the post-recession zeitgeist seemed to call for. He also had a solid mixology program as well as what might have been the best burger in town.

Alas, it was not enough. “I strongly stand behind the product we offered. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t get enough consistent business through the doors,” is how Bradley put it when I asked him what went wrong. Sometimes, though, quality isn’t enough. To succeed in the restaurant business, you’ve got to capture people’s imagination, and perhaps that’s where Glutton fell short.

Or perhaps downtown Las Vegas is about to get the (boring, derivative, franchise) restaurants it deserves.

 

Ciao Bella!

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Ed. note: ELV – that notorious nosher of noodles, inveterate investigator of ingestion, and lover of all things Latin — will be out of the country for the next week re-calibrating his pasta palate. Three guesses as to the city he will be visiting…and the first two don’t count.

To say we are a tad bored with the Las Vegas food scene these days is an understatement. (Perhaps it’s a post-coital-like letdown after the recent publication of our book. (And by post-coital letdown we mean Anita Ekberg.)  Or maybe it’s just that we’ve eaten in every Las Vegas restaurant worth eating in so many times (see graphic to your immediate left) , there seems to be little point in revisiting any of them, unless there’s either a seasonal menu change, or a new chef.

Sadly, even seasonal menu changes fail to excite us, because usually only about 10% of the menu gets changed…because that’s the way the bean counters like it.

FWIW: The new Lucky Dragon Hotel and Casino does offer some respite from the tedium of our corporate/convention dining rooms. It may be tiny (203 rooms, 3 restaurants), but the F&B program is the real deal — bring superb dim sum and that wonderful gongfu tea ceremony to a niche casino that fills a niche in our need to eat legitimate Chinese food closer to the ELV palatial manse.

We will be reporting in depth on that dim sum (and the other food venues at Lucky Dragon, once we return.

In the meantime….

Arrivederci to our loyal readers (for the next week or so), and buon appetito to all. (We will resume our weekly postings on December 20.)

As usual, if you want to follow our travels, please join us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.