Tag: small plates

(End of) Summer Dish Review – “Bacon and Egg” Fettuccine at LA CAVE

This isn’t the first pasta to tangle itself up in a pretty pile.

Nor is putting a bacon crisp (or an  egg) on top of something the height of originality.

Lightly binding those noodles with cream and some sharp parm ain’t nuthin’ ingenious, either.

But put it all together in this beauteous bundle and you have a starch you can’t resist.

Show stopping in appearance; fork-dropping in deliciousness.

And one of many dishes at La Cave this summer that had me re-thinking my opinion of the place.

Every small plate that came out of this tiny kitchen:

….seemed to be more finely tuned and carefully composed than we had seen or tasted before.

It was quite a meal made quite better by Mark Hefter’s extensive (and well-priced, at least for the Wynncore) wine selections. (50+ wines by the glass is nothing to sneeze at, and, if you look for them, plenty of off-the-beaten-track options for well under a hundy.)

Thus has a place I wrote off a couple of years ago  seem to have re-booted itself in all the right food + wine ways.

L’chiam, La Cave!

LA CAVE FOOD & WINE HIDEAWAY

http://wynnlasvegas.com/Dining/CasualDining/LaCave

Eating Crow at DAVID CLAWSON

David Clawson opened the David Clawson Restaurant on October 1, 2014 and I’ve been avoiding it like the plague ever since. The reason for my evasion is simple: I have loathed the Henderson/Anthem area of Clark County with every fiber of my body for twenty years. So unpleasant do I consider the entirety of the Southeast quadrant of our humble burg that I would rather be sentenced to a lifetime of eating Slim Jims and Hostess Twinkies than endure the mind-numbing, soul-killing drive up or down Eastern Avenue to expose my sensibilities to the commercial wasteland it celebrates.

Henderson/Anthem is so generic, pre-fabbed, cynical and craven it makes the Strip look venerable and historic by comparison.

It is a collection of monochromatic developments centered around franchised businesses with nary a place to walk or ride; an amalgam of residences and businesses with all the charm of a Subway sandwich shop. There is no place to walk; there is no place to drive. It is a community without any sense of one,  formed for one and only one reason: to make housing and strip mall developers rich.

Get the point? I hate the place. I only go to  Henderson/Anthem at the point of a gun. (Or to go to Valley Cheese & Wine)

Until now.

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KYARA – First Bites

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KyAra is not as good as Raku nor as fun as Ichiza, but ELV is fairly certain you’re about to read that it is from his Eating Las Vegas co-authors — who will no doubt be effusive in their hyperbolic praise for a place that’s not nearly as fine as it wants to be. Slapsie Maxie will no doubt love it because it’s Asian, and “Mad Man” Mancini will love it because it’s cool and cheap. But both will be missing the point, which is: This place exists to cash in on the uber-cool Japanese tapas craze started by its predecessors. ELV wishes it would, and would be right there with them if the food was solid, but it isn’t. At least not yet.

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