CUT steak tasting

For 120 samolians, CUT will put before you three cuts of the best steaks in the world. One is A-5 true Kobe (Wagyu) beef from the Kagashima Prefecture in Japan. The other is wet-aged sirloin from Nebraska (that ELV contends isn’t really aged at all – only cryovac’d in plastic until opened), and the other is 35 day dry-aged beef from Illinois. Can you tell which is which?

Could you taste which was which?

And the answer is…..drum roll please…..from left to right: #1 is dry aged Illinois beef; #2 is the cryovac’d “wet aged” beef; #3 is Japanese Wagyu (very fatty, very tender, very expensive). If you look closely, you’ll see the tell-tale marks of blood/protein leaching out of the wet-aged steak.

Dry aging eliminates much of that moisture and concentrates the flavor into a gamey, funky, mineral-rich beefiness that the other two steaks can’t approach. That being said, the “wet-aged” steak had its fans at my table where we did the tasting, and it was one of the better pieces o’ beef I’ve had in a Vegas steakhouse. The true Wagyu/Kobe could be cut with a spoon, but is so rich that a bite or two is all anyone should want. Although management at CUT, Spago, Craftsteak, et al have told me tales of big, beefy American guys coming in and consuming 16+ oz. steaks of the stuff. 

Hot Hostess Watch – Ruth Fertel

It has not escaped ELV’s attention that the ladies who seat our middle-aged keister on a nightly basis are some of the most attractive gals in Sin City. Therefore, with this post do we begin a series entitled: Hot Hostess Watch, featuring the fine fillies that fillagree the fronts of our finest festals.

And in posthumous honor of the hostess who made it all possible, we hereby feature none other than Ruth Fertel, the founder and first hostess of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse (in New Orleans), who started the gourmet stampede to the High Mojave Desert in 1989, when she, along with Marcel Taylor, took the radical step of bringing a nationally known, upscale franchise to a town that knew but three kinds of restaurants: buffets, coffee shops, and “gourmet” rooms.

As Taylor tells the story, he met Mrs. Fertel during one of her many gambling forays to Vegas. He (as a dealer at Caesars) knew the convention business here was about to boom, and that the hotels were ill-equipped to handle the demand. But the Board of Directors of Ruth’s Chris (who were running over 20 restaurants at the time) thought no one in Vegas ever left their hotel to eat. In other words, they thought Fertel and Taylor were crazy. Needless to say, Fertel won the argument. Within a year of opening, the Ruth’s Chris on Paradise Rd. was the highest grossing restaurant in the entire chain. It didn’t take long for its wholesale purveyors to notice how much inventory was being moved in this single Vegas outpost. Word quickly spread among them –  and nationwide – and the rest is history.

Ruth Fertel, even though you have departed this mortal vale, ELV honors you as its first Hot Hostess!

Great restaurant opening downtown! In Los Angeles (sigh).

Got your hopes up didn’t we? Sorry. But in a move that we hope someone, sometime soon, takes a cue from in our humble burg; Celestino Drago, celebrated L.A. chef/restaurateur, is transforming a downtown L.A. bank building into a first class eatery (Drago Centro) for the citizens of that taste-challenged area. If anything, downtown Los Angeles is even more pathetic than Downtown Vegas (aka Oscar’s Folly) when it comes to eating out (if that’s possible.)

So if someone will take a gamble there, why not here? ELV can only hope…but isn’t holding his breath. Click here to read the whole story.

And FYI, ELV has it on good authority that uber-wine-guy Michael Shearin (late of the too-good-for-this-world DJT) is in line for the top sommelier spot at Drago’s new venture. Drago Centro is slated to open in September. Stay tuned.