Tag: goats

Why is Eater Vegas So Terrible? Blame This Guy

(The dude who hired Susan Stapleton)

Eater Las Vegas has gone from bad to worse. Leaving us to believe that Susan Stapleton —  the absentee hack who runs it — must have some magical powers over her bosses at Vox Media to keep her position. Stapleton literally phones in her “coverage” of the Las Vegas restaurant scene, as you’ll read below.

Our theories are many as to how SS keeps her job, but they’ve centered on several distinct possibilities:

> Stapleton works cheap.

> Stapleton has pictures of Vox Media Editorial Director Lockhart Steele ( pictured above) fondling her. (A revolting proposition admittedly, but hey, it could happen.)

> Stapleton has pictures of the  Vox Media CEO having sex with a goat.

> Stapleton is drinking buddies with the person who pays her $14.11 a week to post her worthless tripe about Las Vegas restaurants.

Stapleton has convinced her editors that the Las Vegas food scene is so paltry, so unsophisticated, and so bereft of talent (both in the kitchen and at the keyboard) that even an out-of-town, know-nothing, booze-hound can report on it.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gEaAmUDEiGo/maxresdefault.jpg(Did Susan catch them in flagrante goat-lecto?)

The only way Eater Vegas would get better would be if there was a concerted effort by chefs, diners, foodies, p.r. types and other assorted interested parties (i.e. people who actually live here) to write to Vox and complain about the terrible job their absentee writer is doing, and what a disservice to our community she is.

(The complaints would start and end with the fact that Stapleton lives in fucking Iowa fer chrissakes and “blogs” about Las Vegas by just re-printing press releases and calling it “content”. They might also include the fact that “Bradley Martin” does not exist, and was invented by Stapleton to make it appear as if she had a staff. How insanely fraudulent and childish is that?)

She wrangled the job 8 years ago and they seem content to pay her a nickel a word and keep the world’s shittiest restaurant blog alive….while thumbing their fat, stupid noses at our community.

These complaints will never happen, of course, because all the big hotels LOVE whatever publicity even a crap website like Eater Vegas provides….and the little, local joints need the exposure. So even if Stapleton is worthless, they’re all afraid of her famous vindictiveness (She loves to write whiny/bitchy letters to anyone who criticizes her or the web site, or threaten them, or block people, or worse.)

Under these circumstances, the very existence of Eater in Las Vegas is a slap in the face to our entire food scene. A number of people have tried to get the gig (remember: Stapleton announced her “retirement” a few years ago), but Vox let her keep the job even after she left town.

It’s all quite pathetic….and a testament to how the internet has pretty much ruined food writing, and how little Vox thinks of food writing.

Don’t believe me? Try this piece of word-smithing  on for size:

The steakhouses of Las Vegas have a new rival with the opening of Bavette’s Steakhouse & Bar at the Monte Carlo. Chicago restaurant group Hogsalt dances onto the scene with this classic with a French flair take on a traditional steakhouse.

Customers can find chilled seafood towers, a peppered duck and goat cheese terrine, and crab cakes to start. The restaurant serves a double-bone Berkshire pork chop, lamb chops and spiced fried chicken.

But the real stars of the show? The steaks. Bavette’s uses USDA Prime with its Chicago cut classic rib-eye steak and dry-aged bone-in New York strip steak aged for 42 days. Vegetarians can order from their own special menu.

One must usually go to a children’s menu (or a ninth grade writing class) to find prose so scintillating.

For the record, yours truly has nothing against Eater National, and even enjoys reading the Eater blogs in other communities. But what is going on here (that has been going on for years now) is beyond the pale. (For those of you who don’t understand our outrage, look at it this way: Imagine a political columnist covering your city who lives four states away, or a sports writer with a nationally-sponsored Dallas Cowboys blog who never sets foot in Texas.)

The solution is simple: hire someone local who knows and cares about the Vegas restaurant scene — not a washed up cow who’s milking the gig. But until that happens….

The very existence of Eater Las Vegas is a continuing insult to our food community.

A pox on you, Vox.

And shame on you, Susan Stapleton. You don’t live here. You don’t work here. You don’t eat here. And you know nothing about what’s really going on in our restaurants. All you do is read this blog, press releases, my social media feeds, and few other outlets, and then aggregate/plagiarize articles into something that feeds your corporate master. You are a sorry excuse for a writer and you know it. You’ve embarrassed my city long enough.

And while I’m at it: Fuck you, Lockhart Steele. Payback’s a bitch, and her stripper name is Karma.

Greek or Not Greek? A Primer

https://www.skinnytable.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Estiatorio-Milos-Restaurant-The-Cosmopolitan-of-Las-Vegas-Las-Vegas.jpg

ELV note: With the opening of Elia Authentic Greek Taverna, we at ELV thought a primer was in order to educate our loyal readers about the true glory of Greek cuisine. So many dishes people associate with Mediterranean food are not, in fact Greek; having nothing to do with Greece; and are unheard of on the Greek table.

GREEK:

Fish (see above)

Cheese (Not a huge variety a la France, England, and Italy, but much more than the fromage-challenged climes of Syria, Turkey, Israel et al.)

Vegetables

Orzo

Dolmades

Grilled vegetables

Souvlaki (skewered meats, preferably chicken or lamb)

Ginormous Beans in tasty tomato sauces:

Lamb (Well-done – Greeks don’t like rare meat. It’s one of the rare cultural/moral failings of the country.)

Potatoes

Properly-seasoned lamb with potatoes:

Goats? Very Greek. Goats in trees? Not Greek.

http://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvcGxhY2VfaW1hZ2VzL2JmMzgwMzhjMDVjNjg0YWUyM185MTI0MTU2ODQ3X2NlMjg0ZGRjOTdfay5qcGciXSxbInAiLCJ0aHVtYiIsIngzOTA-Il0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIi1xdWFsaXR5IDkxIC1hdXRvLW9yaWVudCJdXQ

Tomato salads

Cucumber salads

Lentils

Phyllo dough in multiple guises (this galamtoboureko is one of the best):

Real bread, not pita bread

Whipped dips (Feta cheese – tryokafteri:

….cured fish roe – taramoasalata,  yogurt and cucumber – tzatziki,  potatoes and garlic – skordalia…in other words, the best savory dips on the planet.)

Wine (The Greeks practically invented wine; they certainly perfected it. Greek wines were as esteemed 2,000 years ago as French wines are today.)

NOT GREEK:

Fu8king Hummus

Fu8king Tabouleh

Fu8king Tahini

Fu8king Falafel

Fu8king Baba Ganoush – not Greek; Melizonasalata – Greek (They’re the same thing, but these distinctions are important, and basically were responsible for the Trojan War.)

Beef (Beef is more of an American-Greek thing than it is a Greek-Greek thing.)

Cheap, shitty, processed GY-ro meat from some slime pit in Chicago? (Definitely not Greek, although almost every Greek restaurant in America, to its everlasting shame, serves it. GY-ros are the spaghetti and meatballs of Greek food.)

Kebabs (The proper term is souvlaki.)

Shawarma

Pita bread (My father always called pita bread “Arabic bread” because he associated it with Syrian/Lebanese bakeries. Greeks only eat puffed, unleavened flatbread when they’re stuffing it with souvlaki meat.)

Meze platters (Greeks put out appetizers, but don’t call them meze or mezze, which is (gasp!) a Persian word.)

Rice (Alexander the Great brought rice back to Greece from the Himalayas; it is considered a luxury food in Greece and didn’t become popular there until the 1950’s. Rice pilaf is a Middle Eastern/Central Asian concoction.)

Greek salad with lettuce – not Greek; Greek salad without lettuce – Greek:

Pasta (You’ll never find spaghetti/linguine noodles in a real Greek restaurant. If you see pasta in a Greek restaurant, it’s either in a casserole or for gringos.)

Not Greek: Whatever the fu8k it is Arabs, Moroccans and Persians drink with their meals.*

So there’s your snapshot of what real Greeks eat, in Greece. Unfortunately, Greek food, like Italian, Chinese and many others has been bastardized by Greeks themselves over the past century, so that many Americans equate cheap GY-ros, any unleavened bread, and any meat on a stick as Greek. Real Greek food is subtle and sharp, creamy yet tangy, and herbaceously perfumed with finesse. It is unlike anything you’ve ever had in a Greek diner or gyro (HEE-ro) shop, and there is a restaurant in Las Vegas that’s now dishing out the actual enchilada – which will be the subject of our next article.

Many thanks to ‘cuz Elias George for inspiring and helping with this article.

Kali orixi and Opa to all!

 

 

* They’re Muslims, we get it, but not drinking wine probably accounts for most of their geopolitical squabbling and suffering. The occasional shot of arak does not quell the savage breast of an irrational jihadist nearly as well as a bracing glass of assyrtiko might. Just sayin’.

 

 

There’s No Niman In Niman Ranch Anymore

Bill Niman used to supply us with our favorite beef and pork products at Trader Joe’s. Over the last year or so, they’ve become increasingly less visible on those shelves — just as Bill Niman gradually became less visible at the company he founded, until he was forced out last year for being a bad businessman. Funny how no one called him that for twenty-five years, as he and partner Orville Schell were building up the company with meat products every chef in America coveted.

Continue reading “There’s No Niman In Niman Ranch Anymore”