My Summer of Suck

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The only things worth talking about are sex and death. – Jean-Paul Sartre

I’m supposed to be in Italy right now. Should have been there a week already. But something sinister grabbed me by the lungs three weeks ago and hasn’t let go. All the tests say I’m healthy enough to kayak the Colorado, but my short, panicky breathing tells me otherwise. Taking a deep breath has become harder for me than ordering a vegan pizza.

I’m not exactly bedridden, but a twelve hour plane flight was more than my anxieties could bear. More specialists are on the horizon; we shall see.

In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of time to wonder why the stars have aligned to turn this into my personal Summer of Suck.

Mother dying? Check. Wicked sinus infection that laid me up for most of June? Check. Remember my busted toe? Walking was a pain for almost two months, but that’s small potatoes at this point.

Just when the physical pain, body aches, and soul-crushing loss of a loved one all seemed to be subsiding, I awoke in the middle of the night not being able to breathe. Haven’t spent a conscious minute not thinking about breathing ever since.

Many people close to me (The Food Gal®, my sister, the last sommelier who poured me a glass) think the whole thing may be in my head. With that in mind, I thought I’d explore a few theories about why this is happening. More specifically: what could be weighing on me to the point where a fundamental, automatic bodily function now feels like a daily challenge. Some of these are pretty obvious, others unique to me. Collectively they might supply some answers. Writing them down helps me take a deeper breaths while I’m typing. So there’s that.

GETTING OLD SUCKS

YARN | Getting old sucks. Don't let anybody tell you any different. | Jumanji: The Next Level | Video clips by quotes | c4d2c0cf | 紗

Who knew? It is such a cliche to say that youth is wasted on the young, life is too short, and you never really appreciate someone (or your health) until they are gone. But as you age, the import of these phrases comes into sharp relief, and their meaning weighs on you like a ghostly specter, always there whispering terrifying realities to you.

It’s a given that we always take good health for granted until some affliction grabs us. (You have no idea how much you take your bung hole for granted until hemorrhoid surgery turns your aching anus into the focal point of every waking second. DETAILS UPON REQUEST!)

The list of things that fade with age are too numerous to count. I’ve been blessed with good hair, decent skin and a great memory. (My memory is so good I sometimes wish it wasn’t. There are many events from my past, some many decades old, that I still cringe about when I remember them in excruciating detail.) My eyesight has been shitty since I was six, so aside from those annoying floaters inside my eyeballs, I can’t complain there, either.

Of course I’m heavier than I once was, and losing ten pounds seems like a Sisyphean task, which also describes my sexual performance. (Note to young men: enjoy those heroic erections while you can. After sixty, even with pharmaceutical help, you’re lucky if your penne ever gets to al dente.)

LOVE AND DEATH

“I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen

Film — Love and Death ,Woody Allen , 1975.(Your table is waiting, Mr. Curtas)

Losing your last parent is another reality that comes to us all. They were there at your beginning — bigger, stronger, wiser than you could ever hope to be. Then, over the decades, the roles reversed. They begin to decline as you ascend, and in their advanced years they look to you the way you once revered them: as a tower of strength, love and protection. If you’re lucky like I was, at least one of your parents will not go gentle into that good night, fighting back and forestalling their inevitable disintegration, retaining their mobility and their nobility right up to the end.

My father faded more quickly than my mom, dying at 80 of a blood disease, but neither of them ever lost their eyesight, their hearing, or their joie de vivre. I still remember my dad sitting up in his hospice bed, fading in and out from whatever pathogens and chemicals were coursing through his veins, but lighting up like a kid at Christmas when I brought him a plate of barbecue. Mom used to joke about his hearing: “I wish it didn’t work so well – whenever we’re whispering in the corner about his condition, he hears every word.”

So I’ve got that to look forward to: being keenly aware, through sight and sound, of every chink in the armor and leak in the machinery which is certain to befall me.

I’m dying and I know it. All of us are. The great Oliver Sacks, while literally on his deathbed, wrote a book “Gratitude” about what kept him going through his terminal illness.  As a (part-time) writer, I can see how absorption in one’s craft can supply an important diversion from the reckoning we face.

Sacks, famously, did it with his obsession with science (he was a neurologist and a total Periodic Table geek). As he put it:

“Times of stress throughout my life have led me to turn, or return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death.”

It would be nice if religion or (C12H14CaO12)n (calcium alginate) gave me a boner (or helped me sleep at night), but that’s not the way I’m hard-wired. Losing yourself in abstract principles is difficult when you have the attention span of a housefly.

LOSING AMBITION

Forever Lazy GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY(Epicurean education, 21st Century style)

I used to be great at rebooting myself, and reviving my energies, no matter how badly I crapped out at something (marriage, career setbacks, money troubles, etc.) “I never worried too much about you, you’re a survivor,” my mom always said, and I guess she was right.

For 60+ years I was great at springing to my feet and avoiding the standing eight count. Whether it was something good for me (golf, cooking, writing, work), or self-destructive (women, ego, partying like it’s 1999, all the time), my attentions vacillated from the compelling to the insatiable. (One thing that never motivated me was money, much to my ex-wives’ chagrin.)

But times have changed and age has caught up with me. As Garrison Keillor recently put it: “In your seventies, you lose your ambition.”

Boy do you ever. And when someone like me loses his motivation to prove himself (whether in the kitchen, the bedroom, or the courtroom), the wattage within has dimmed and you can feel it.

Younger people do not know this feeling. They still have mountains to climb, and an entire world of commerce exists to trade on their hopes and spurious dreams: selling them everything from cars to clothes to entertainment — each sales pitch aimed at trying to convince us how important something fungible is to our well being.

Amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman put it, anesthetizing ourselves in the service of mindless consumerism. The smarter among us suspend our disbelief and indulge ourselves with these perquisites of purchase, while ultimately realizing how little they mean. But you don’t realize this until you’ve drifted into old age, and one day realize how little joy you actually get from everything competing for your attention.

As I age, I have become less and less interested in: politics, the economy, global warming, abortion, culture wars, gender identities and education battles. These are future concerns; at my age, you become a man of the present.

FOOD WRITING FUTURE

Food Blog GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY(Restaurant critic, 2022)

Through divorce, professional pressures and numerous ups and downs, my food writing has sustained me since 1994. Kept me level and focused when (sometimes) all I could see was despair and chaos.

For all those years, no matter what was going on, there was always a script to record, a television appearance to make, or a review to write. Thus did the world of food and restaurants become woven into the fabric of my daily life. Even with the advent of the internet, this website provided us a nice blank canvas (and a bigger microphone) from which to pepper the landscape with our opinions. (Mix. That. Metaphor!)

Social media, as it slowly eats our brains, has only made things worse. “Everyone’s always sellin’,” my dad used to say, but until a dozen years ago, the only ones selling were those with something to sell, as in: an actual product. Now, everyone is their own brand, and woe to anyone under forty who isn’t constantly promoting themselves. The whole thing is exhausting, and definitely a young person’s game.

I understand why businesses do it, but long for the old days when restaurants slaved away and hungered for a little recognition in traditional media, rather than constantly bombarding customers with promotions, food porn, and chef’s lifestyle pics. I yearn for the undiscovered gem and hidden treasures — not the umpteenth video of pizza goo,   advertising disguised as influencing, or whatever the f**k this is:

Chantal Sarault / Foodie Beauty | Page 2330 | Kiwi Farms

You may find this hard to believe, but a dozen years ago, I was begging, BEGGING, restaurants to get on social media. Now my Instagram feed is nothing but a tsunami of selling, and all social media is one gigantic marketing platform.

What you gain in information, though, you lose in the romance of discovery and the seduction of surprise. Where’s the fun in knowing the whole menu, and what the food will look like, before you step through the door? By the time you get to most restaurants these days, you know everything from the brand of olive oil they use to the names of the chef’s children. God bless Chinatown, where a bit of modesty is still practiced, and they let the food (and not shite like this) do the talking:

Mishti Rahman Influencer GIF - Mishti Rahman Influencer Pretty - Discover & Share GIFs(I am so influenced now to eat this pizza)

I NEED A HOBBY

For forty years I’ve been obsessed with food. For almost thirty I’ve been writing about it. But as I’ve said since 2014: people are not interested in reading about food anymore (see above).

Something is needed to fill in the gaps of more free time which you and I will inevitably have in our later years.

My wife calls it something to propel me forward. Something which is decidedly lacking in my world right now.

On the bright side, I made a very good risotto this week which made me happy. I learned to make risotto from Marcella Hazan (in person) and that makes me proud. Maybe I’ll turn this into a cooking blog. Heaven knows the world needs more of those…

https://twitter.com/i/status/1553819294646947840

I kid. I kid. The world needs another cooking blog like I need another ex-wife. Showing off your kitchen skillz is something for which social media is beautifully suited. I think I’ll confine my creations to those venues. Maybe that’s what I should do on Tik Tok, when I’m finished looking at young women lip-syncing in their underwear.

I SUCK AT GOLF

…but not as much as this guy:

Charles Barkley Golf GIFs | Tenor

Golf was once my go-to therapy for everything from business pressures to a broken heart. I started playing when I was twelve and played a pretty respectable game (10 handicap) for about twenty-five years. My best golf came in my forties when I could break 85 on a good course without breaking a sweat. (BRAGGADOCIOS? YOU BET!)

Then, I gave it up….for twenty years! Many things conspired to end my love of golf: a divorce, the expense (playing became criminally expensive during the Tiger Woods era), losing a well-paying job in a big law firm, re-booting my career as a solo practitioner in the early aughts, and finally (and probably most important): the food thing taking off at the same time. Put them all together and my golf bag became a forlorn, discarded symbol of another me in my garage; so starved for attention that when the clubs were eventually stolen, it was probably a year or two before I even knew they were gone.

But all golfers are secretly gluttons for punishment. So against all odds, I decided to dust off the old irons about a year ago and have been diligently pounding balls at the driving range at least once a week — fully aware that my best golf is like a long-gone ingenue whose beauty will never be recaptured…even if an old diva like yours truly won’t admit it:

Is it better to speak, or to die?(Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my pitching wedge)

There are many reasons for this: 1) Golf is hard. 2) Golf is really hard when you have a twenty-pound gut on you that wasn’t there twenty years ago. 3) You’re way less limber. And finally, 4) your bifocals wreck havoc on any attempt to focus on the ball — either just sitting there, waiting to be whacked, or anywhere it happens to go in flight (usually sideways).

In other words, I’m not as strong, or as flexible as I once was. I can’t see the ball worth a shit whether it’s right in front of me or flying through the air. (The skulled grounders I hit I can follow just fine, thank you.) My coordination has faded and my swing now flows less like syrup and more like a busted jalopy constructed of spare parts.

It makes NO SENSE whatsoever for me to put myself through this humiliation, but am I going to stick with it? You bet!

At this point, golf is like sex: something I used to be fairly good at that still beckons me, even though my performance falls woefully short of my previous standards. The benefit of golf is there’s no one balefully staring up at you when, once again, your putter comes up short. But I continue to chop away, taking comfort in the words of three-time Masters champion Jimmy Demaret: “Golf and sex are the two things in life you don’t have to be any good at to still enjoy.”

NOSTALGIA BITES

Nostalgia GIFs | Tenor

The late Christopher Hitchens once said that when you turn sixty, you start looking back. I’ve delayed that process for ten years, but am now reckoning with it. But It’s hard to turn a rose-colored gaze on the gauzy memories of the past when sadness lays heavy on your breast and you have trouble taking a breath.

I have too many pictures, too many books, too many menus, and too many memories to cull through. Things that once comforted me, now feel like a burden. The thought of looking through decades old albums of times both good and bad, should bring a smile to my face. Instead, I think of them with dread, as if revisiting the past diminishes the present, or reminds me of the person I will never be again.

SELF DIAGNOSIS

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Some people (like me), love to go whistling past the graveyard — feigning nonchalance with the confidence of a teenager — but we know we’re only fooling ourselves. The Boogeyman under your bed may be in your imagination as a child, but the Grim Reaper is all too real, and standing at the end of your personal cornfield as an adult — ready to reduce your sentient stalk to a pile of dust.

Maybe the cure is simple for my summer of suck: to find meaning in the simple pleasures and tender mercies of everyday life. It has been very hard for me to do that over the past two months, but keep trying I will, because giving up is not yet an option.

Growing old will not make me a better person. (Turning fifty and settling down with my wife did that.) I intend to be the same feisty, not-suffering fools dude I’ve been for my entire adult life. There will be no religious conversion, no new leaves overturned, and no kinder-gentler persona adopted. By my age, your personality is pretty much set in stone, but the stage upon which my performance occurs doesn’t have to be. I may fit the official definition of an old man but I am not ready to be one.

Something has to change.

I need to find another mountain to climb.

The List – 2022

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We eat out a whole lot less than we used to.

But you’d never know it from this list.

We’re down to 5-6 restaurants a week (barely breaking a sweat compared to the old days), and sadly finding less and less to write about.

The infantilizing of food writing has not escaped our attention. The written word is an endangered species, and if it’s not in video or podcast form, few are interested in reading about restaurants anymore. Twenty years ago, I was considered an oddball for obsessively snapping pictures of my food. Fifteen years ago (when this website was conceived), I was still an outlier. Now, even high school kids take pictures of their tacos and rate them on social media.

With this in mind, for once, I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of words. Gleaning through my meals of these past five months, I discovered a number of tasty snaps (and a few videos) that should make you salivate more than prose ever could (which is, I suppose, the whole point of today’s ubiquitous food photography).

So here are the restaurants where you should be eating, from someone (me) who has actually eaten in them. Some of these recs are accompanied only with a picture (worth a thousand words?) — which, we hope, will supply you with ample reason to give them a go.

But first, a few words about Detroit pizza.

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For the uninitiated, Detroit is the home of a rectangular, reverse-form, pan-baked pie that loads its cheese on the top of the dough (and underneath the other toppings) allowing it to infuse a puffy, foccacia-like crust before a f**ckload of condiments are then applied.

Including pineapple? You betcha by golly.

 

Classic | Pizza Crimes | Know Your Meme(…and then we bake it in a casserole)

Refinement is not exactly its strong suit.

Detroit pizza is nothing new: Northside Nathan’s has been around for over twenty years. But it inexplicably became a “thing” a few years ago and now every foodie worth his fermentation extols the fine points of these belly bombs like they’re parsing the contrapuntal tinklings of Glenn Gould.

I blame the internet…and Instagram…and the legalization of weed. Because if nothing else, DP is perfect stoner food: ideal for dive bars, and temperamentally suited for a crowd that is usually as baked as the crust.

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Scott Weiner — America’s Pizza Geek extraordinaire — knows his pies, and Robby Cunningham’s Detroit rectangles stole a pizza his heart.

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If you insist, and if you’re stoned, Red Dwarf (second pic) and Guerilla Pizza (first pic and above, in the Hard Hat Lounge), are two of the best.

On to real restaurants…

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

Anima by EDO

https://twitter.com/i/status/1508882847855046658

Genting Palace

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Gorgeous room. Beautiful food. Bring your wallet. And a friend’s wallet.

Marisco’s El Fresco’s

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Mariscos El Fresco’s is brand new, and only days old as I type these words. But we snuck in early and the Mexican seafood by Chef/owner John Sosa and Chef David Serrano is like nothing else being offered in town.

Image(These tacos shrimply put others to shame)

What Elia Authentic Greek Taverna did for soul-satisfying Greek cooking these guys are trying to do with much-maligned Mexican seafood — most of which (this far north) is unmitigated crap out of a freezer bag. Minimal decor, maximum flavor, in a challenging location (Tropicana and Pecos). Fingers are crossed.

Nusr-Et Steakhouse

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Burger. Of. The. Year. (so far)

Rosa Ristorante

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Just like Stacy’s mom, Rob Moore (above) has got in going on…on St. Rose Parkway (of all places) way out in the wilds of Henderson. If this culinary renaissance keeps up in this former godforsaken restaurant wasteland, yours truly is going to run out of neighborhoods to trash.

Viva! by Ray Garcia

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Best. Mexican. In. Vegas. My pictures didn’t do the spectacular food justice, so you’ll have to go and snap some for yourself.

The Pepper Club

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Todd English’s third act in Vegas has impressed even an old cynic like me. They don’t call The Pepper Club a Japanese restaurant but that’s exactly what it is….with some great Korean fried chicken to boot.

Wally’s

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Pluses: Surrounded by a fabulous wine store and first-class French cooking, cheese, charcuterie, salads (above), sandwiches (below) and steaks, and perhaps the best fries on the planet. Open for lunch. Good service.  Great people watching.

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Minuses:  Rodeo Drive-level expense amidst a sea of bargain-basement fanny packers — who take one look at the potential wallet damage and flee faster than a fat man from a fresh vegetable.  Also, the inside seating (hard stools at bare tables) doesn’t match the cooking or the (seated) crowd  — making the whole place feel like a fast casual concept got lost on its way to the Cordon Bleu.

Bottom line: Wally’s, like The Pepper Club downtown and Harlo in Downtown Summerlin, is pushing the price envelope — seeing just far it can take the familiar-yet-FOMO comfort food thing. Inflation or no inflation, Millennials and GenXrs show no signs of voting with their feet, as it is consistently filled with folks who don’t seem to mind paying $32 for a salad.

TURNING JAPANESE

Izakaya Go

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Busier than a bee on a flower farm. Harder to get into than a nun’s habit. But worth it.

Sushi Hiro

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Hiro-san and his cadre of sushi chefs (above) are the best reason to eat in Henderson. Big plus: it’s open for LUNCH!

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Trattoria Nakamura-Ya

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Japanese-Italian food may cause some con-fusion to some, but the results are always lip-smackingly delicious.

Ichiza

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Twenty years on, our first izakaya has held up well, even if it now has loads of competition for the late-night sake-and-sustenance crowd.

IT’S CHINATOWN, JAKE

…and don’t you forget it.

One of these are not technically in Chinatown, but all are very Chinese and extremely worth their chopsticks.

Xiao Long Dumpling

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The new kid on the dumpling block is one of the best.

Noodlehead

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When China Mama is packed to the rafters, walk across the street and dandan the day away.

ShangHai Taste

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This is what we meant by “….worth a thousand words.”

Big Wong

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If there’s a better bargain in Chinatown than Big Wong’s Hainanese chicken, or its curry beef, we haven’t found them…or two nicer owners than Wei and Connie:

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Rainbow Kitchen

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Dat sum dim sum and dem sum.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…

Salvadoreño

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Because no “best restaurants” list should ever be without a Salvadoran platos tipicos:

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MORE SOUTH OF THE BORDER

La Vecindad

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Our go-to when we’re in the mood for some quick queso fundido fun. After lunch there, we usually traipse around the corner to…

Pasabocas Colombian Bakery

…for a taste of Bogata and buñuelos:

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Letty’s de Leticia’s Cocina

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These deep-fried chicharonnes might be our favorite noontime nosh:

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SEOUL FOOD

Napal Baji

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Unknown to most gringos, there is a mini Korean food boom going on in Chinatown. Some of it is perplexing, and subtle it is not.

Most is flat-out fabulous, even if it represents something like an assault  over the 38th Parallel against your taste buds. Rather than trying to parse all the flavors in these ingredient-heavy recipes, we prefer to let the sensations envelope us like the wisdom of their supreme leader.

If you don’t know Korean food, know your Koreans. We have good friends who know their Jjamppongs from their Gopchang Jeongols, and they always ply us with enough sochu that we don’t care how terrible we sound trying to pronounce these things.

Whatever you do, get the spicy sausage “Army” stew (above) — it’s just the thing to fortify you for your never-ending fight against the Commie menace.

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Q Bistro

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This joint has been around for a while, but is a good place to learn our kimchees and Qs. Our Korean friends swear by it. Beware though: some dishes will blow your head off. Like the Kim Sam Bok (above), that tasted as lethal as it looks.

Moobongri Soondae

Another recent addition to our Korean scene. Short on decor, long on authenticity. But it helps to have someone with you who knows how to cut the kalbi:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1515467243332640768

STEAK YOUR CLAIM

We sliced up this subject a couple of months ago, but here are the bovine beauties with whom we continue to have the best beef these days:

Bazaar Meat

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In a town of terrific tartares, José Andrés still makes one of the best. The only thing holding back this restaurant is its location….which we expect to change soon.

Golden Steer

https://twitter.com/i/status/1502493249612644355

Since the pandemic lifted, this place has been busier than a whisky concession at an Irish wedding. Reservations are now essential….even in the bar! The days of popping in for a quick drink and  grabbing a steak and Caesar on your way home are deader than Dean Martin.

Brezza

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Not exactly a steakhouse and not exactly not one, either. So we’re putting it here, even thought we’ve pretty much sworn off Italian restaurants (until we go to Sardinia in July). No matter what you call it, whenever Nicole Brisson is making risotto inside a ginormous wheel of Parm, we’re on it like a porker at an acorn farm.

Carversteak

We’ve eaten a LOT of beautiful steaks in the past six months, but the best has been the dry-aged Kansas City strip at Carversteak:

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We’re pretty nuts about Daniel Ontiveros’s mayonnaise-y take on tartare, too.

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Capital Grille

We come for the lunch (and the steak salad), but stay for dessert:

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Harlo Steakhouse and Bar

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Gina Marinelli’s pastas are better here than they are at La Strega. There, I said it.

The desserts are worth a special trip all by themselves:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1501736412307095557

SW Steakhouse

Wallet-bending but worth it. The steaks and sides are superb, but Mark LoRusso’s starters and are stars in their own right.

Image(SW recently gave me a boner. Wait, what?)

Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab

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I’ve never been quite sure what to call this place. In Miami where it was founded it is Joe’s Stone Crab. Here, it is more of a steak house but seafood gets top billing. Not only that but they also do incredible fried chicken. Color me confused, but always satisfied.

Pro tip: this joint is always packed, so go at an off-hour (late lunch is best) or late at night. (You’ll have to wait until fall for your stone crabs, however.)

Sparrow + Wolf

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S+W isn’t a steakhouse per se, but we think this is the best thing on the menu:

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If Carversteak fed us our best steak of the year (so far), this 32 oz. beauty with American banchan isn’t far behind. All of those small dishes of sharply-focused spice, veggies and texture are perfectly calibrated to mitigate the richness of the beef.

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I may occasionally give Howard grief for criticizing the high-wire act he has going on with some of his food, but there’s no denying the pioneering status of his restaurant, and the revitalization of Chinatown it sparked five years ago.

Vic & Anthony’s

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The Golden Nugget does not leap to mind when someone says “first-class beef emporium,” but its steakhouse goes t-bone-to-t-bone with the competition on Fremont Street. The old-school, dark, clubby atmosphere is a big plus, as is the professional service, and a wine list full of bargains if you’re willing to break your Cali cab addiction (see above).

It might also have the best crab cake in Vegas (see below):

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NEVER BEEN TO SPAIN?

Jamon Jamon Tapas

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Traditional Spanish in the burbs. Fun decor. Easy parking. Ignore the surroundings, and dig into tapas to beat the band and the best paella that isn’t made at Jaleo (below).

Jaleo

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There is no better paella in America. The open pit alone cost over $1mil and you can’t duplicate its woodsy subtlety and smokiness without moving outdoors. Also open for lunch (which we tend to forget), and has a killer bar and beverage program (which our aging liver doesn’t need). Around for more than twelve years and still one of our gastronomic gems.

TRIED AND TRUE

Cipriani

https://twitter.com/i/status/1497673359080845319

DE Thai Kitchen

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Don’t ask me what this is or how to pronounce it. Just take this picture to the restaurant, point to the not-so “secret menu” on the wall, and dive in. Beware, however, of ordering it or anything here “Bangkok hot.”

Saginaw’s

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The world famous 99 cent Vegas shrimp cocktail lives! But now it costs $11. Still a bargain; still worth every penny.

Life’s a Bagel

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The Legends Oyster Bar & Grill

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Your best off-Strip seafood option that doesn’t have a Japanese flag attached to it.

PublicUs

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Our weekend go-to for incredible coffee and fresh-baked pastries. These scones should be illegal:

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Braeswood BBQ

The two best barbecue options in town are within a couple of blocks of each other on Main Street in #DTLV. Both are no-nonsense odes to smoked meat. Don’t even think of arguing with me about Vegas ‘cue until you’ve given each one a test drive.

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Soulbelly BBQ

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Elia Authentic Greek Taverna

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As welcoming as the Greek Isles, blessedly without the unwanted nudity and non-stop bouzouki music.

Bouchon

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I’ll put this $36 chicken up against your $72 steak any day.

Marché Bacchus

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We don’t know for how much longer André Rochat is going to be cooking, but right now, this septuagenarian’s desserts are worth a special trip.

It’s hard for us to carb our enthusiasm for this place. An essential stop on any Italian eating tour of Las Vegas.

Khoury’s

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I have dreams about this mezze platter: visions of endless baskets of nutty-puffy pita bread, stuffed into my eager maw after a slathering of spicy sujuk sauce and a dollop of labne as cool and bracing as a summer salad  — all of it refreshing my spirit as it satisfies my primal appetites. In my dreams, I caress and suckle each bite as if it were my last, kneeling before these treasures, intoxicated by the perfume of garden greens given lusciousness by oils, seeds, fruits and plants squeezed gently, then rapidly from the earth by pulsating soft-yet-turgid fingers, until, after stroke after stoke, then lick upon lick from my avaricious mouth, the cornucopia of sweet, herbaceous and milky tastes ooze forth in an explosion of happy, dribbled satisfaction.

Thanks, I needed that.

Anyone got a cigarette?

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D’Agostino’s

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Just order this linguine with clams and thank me later.

Cafe Breizh

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JUST DESSERTS
How inexcusable of us to end without featuring a few sweets that have sated our cravings for something sugared and syrupy after a surfeit of savory sustenance. Good, house-made desserts (like good bread) are now as common in Las Vegas restaurants (on and off the Strip) as hamachi crudo. Here are a few concupiscent confections of which we are quite fondant (sorry, couldn’t resist one last pun).
Just as we can’t resist this picture of Cipriani’s luscious, multi-layered, insanely rich chocolate cake — here being attacked by a Proper Lunch Bunch attendee who we try to keep away from sharp objects and anything that has to be shared:
Image(Matt Brooks can resist anything but temptation)
Honey toast at Sparrow + Wolf (modeled by Sherri Mirejovsky, who graciously took her modeling fee in sweets):
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Vanilla Panna Cotta with Vanilla Sorbet at Wally’s:
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And finally, all the Catalan creams at Jamon Jamon Tapas:
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That’s all for now folks. These should keep you busy for a while. They aren’t every restaurant I’ve been to since Jan. 1, 2022, but they are the ones that left the deepest impression….and where I think your hard-earned dollars will be best spent.
In the meantime, should you want to follow me on a podcast, tune into the What’s Right with Sam & Ash show every Friday to hear my masticatory musings about the Las Vegas food scene.
Or follow me on Twitter (@eatinglasvegas), where I try to post real-time photos (with commentary), about all of my eatings about town.
Bon appétit!
THE END
Image(It only took thirty years, but I’m finally the official something of something.)

Bad Italian Food Review – ZEFFIRINO’S

The only difference between Italian food in New York and L.A. is, in L.A. your food is made by overworked and underpaid Mexicans, and in New York it’s made by overworked and underpaid Puerto Ricans – Michelle Huneven

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It’s Friday boys and girls, time for another installment of Bad Italian Food Review.

Today’s lecture has Professor ELV in somewhat of a quandary. He would like to get medieval on Zeffirino’s sorry, over-hyped, under-performing, tourist trap ass, but in all fairness, there are things to like about this restaurant. But before he gets to the good, the bad and the ugly, first a short story.

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