Tag: tapas

Enough Already…

Whiskey Barrel Wood Block SMOKED Cocktail Gift Set image 0(Please god, Make. It. Stop.)

Smoke – No one likes smoked meats more than yours truly. But bread? Veggies? Cocktails? Butter? Ice? Banana pudding? (Yep, we had it once, in Austin, TX, natch.) When it comes to smoked foods, a little goes a long way (unless we’re talking beef brisket), and the gimmick has run its course.

Octopus – If another piece of octopus never touches these lips it will be too soon. If another waiter never comes to my table bringing the grilled tentacles of a dead cephalopod (which probably cost the restaurant 89 cents), I will jump for joy. The gleam in their eyes when they act like Neptune has anointed them special dispensation to shower us with rubbery nothingness is actually quite comical, considering that every upscale restaurant in the world seems to offer it these days.

Branzino – I’m old enough to remember when Mediterranean sea bass was a new thing in America (we’re talking mid-90s); now every chef in town trots them out like the fresh-caught king of the sea is being bestowed upon your table. When every restaurant you go to is shilling “branzino,” you know you’re being mass-marketed by a wholesaler with plenty of product. It’s almost enough to make us miss Orange Roughy.

And as long as we’re talking about being sick of seafood, how about…

Scallops in the shell

Scallops – are great, when they’re done correctly. And by “correctly” we mean being broiled whole, in the shell, with their roe (see above) — like they do in Europe. Sea scallop abductor muscles are the boneless, skinless chicken breasts of American cuisine. Every chef cooks them exactly the same way: crispy-browned on one side, sitting in the middle of a naked plate. This is because they (and their diners) are afraid of actual scallops. ADMIT IT.

Infeasibly large Nigerian prawns – God only knows why/when these things started to invade American menus (actually, we know: it was around four years ago). Now they’re more ubiquitous in Las Vegas than attorney billboards.

Curated cocktails – Just make me a decent drink with good booze and get over yourself.

Tacos – unless you’re Mexican. It is a scientific fact that you can’t make a good taco unless you speak with a slight Spanish accent. No one named Seamus McMullen ever made a taco worth eating.

Image(Made by real Mexicans at Milpa)

Every chef thinking he/she can barbecue – Unless you’re getting three hours of sleep a night, hauling whole hogs around, and are covered with more smoke than a northern Californian, you aren’t doing it right.

(Ken Spadey, doin’ it right)

“Tapas menu” – Unless you’re Spanish, stop it.

Tomahawk steaks – Bros and Bruhs love these odes to excess, served in temples to testosterone. Modern Vegas was made for them. Show me a table making a big deal over 40 ounces of meat and I’ll show you a group of douchebags. Give me a tasty strip or picanha steak any day.

Image(Picanha steak at 8East)

Natural wines – Don’t get me started. If I wanted to drink fetid feet, I’d ferment my sweaty socks.

Korean ketchup – Unless you’re a Korean cooking Korean, you need to holster this luscious condiment and leave it to the experts. Non-Koreans playing with Korean flavors are as out of their depth as a short order cook at a sushi bar.

Bao – Unless you’re Chinese (or at least vaguely Asian), stop sticking everything imaginable inside of tiny buns! I know, I know: THASS RACESS!

Avocado toast – I know, I know: taking on avocado toast is trashing some pretty low-hanging fruit. Most of it is terrible, but the one exception? This bad boy at Johnny C’s Diner:

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Tataki – Thank you Nobu Matsuhisa, for giving every chef in America license to throw a tangy, vaguely Asian vinaigrette on some lightly-seared protein and call it original. “Ceviche” is almost as bad, but I’m too exhausted to complain about it right now.

Tartare’d everything – It started with steak, now it’s everything from tuna to avocado to beets. Calling it poke doesn’t get you off the hook. We realize attaching “tartare” to a foodstuff removes the sting of it being raw, but slapping a trendy name on something doesn’t make it special,

Obscure, weird-ass menu names – Tatsoi, Dulse, Samphire, Tropaeolum tuberosum….we get it: you are ready to dazzle us with your out-of-the-box cooking and mastery of the inscrutable. But we’re here for dinner, not Google searches.

Under-cooked vegetables – This includes potatoes. You’d be surprised how many restaurants don’t know how long to cook a spucking fud.

Photo of Able Baker Brewing - Las Vegas, NV, United States. Beer Menu 1(Pacifiers not included)

Local brews – Face it: most Las Vegas-made beers taste like carbonated dishwater. FACT! The only time you’ll ever catch me telling people NOT to support locals is when they’re trying to drag me into a local brewpub. You can tell our water is all wrong for beer brewing because our suds landscape is littered with…

Infeasibly absurd beer flavors (see above) – You can tell how awful most made-in-Vegas brews are by the ridiculous additives (and juvenile/asinine names) they employ to get you to drink them. Pineapple-Curry-Spice Stout? Coming right up, sir!

Dumplings – unless you’re a dumpling restaurant.

Shishito peppers everywhere – Who decided this was a good idea?

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Deep-fried cauliflower – hasn’t quite yet jumped the shishito pepper/Brussels sprouts shark, but it’s close.

Crispy sweet-sour Brussels sprouts – Another way for chefs to push some cheap-ass bitter vegetable no one likes to try to boost their bottom line.

Quinoa – No one likes it; it tastes like cardboard ; it doesn’t go well with anything. The only people who order it are pansy-ass trend followers.

Word I Agree GIF by INTO ACTION

Keto – I don’t even know what the fuck it is, but I hate it.

Paleo anything – When I’m allowed to start dragging women around by the hair, I’ll start eating like a caveman.

Gluten-free – Are we done with all that celiac disease nonsense? (I know some people suffer, but most of you don’t, so get over it and eat a real pizza fer chrissakes.)

Calling anything “milk” that isn’t – Soy milk, almond milk, rutabaga milk…..STOP IT! It ain’t milk, it’s JUICE. Call it “soy juice” and watch the sales dry up…like they should.

Making a big deal out of a motherf*cking chicken sandwich – ANY chicken sandwich.

Air-frying – You ain’t FRYING A GODDAMN THING! How dumb are you? Wait, don’t answer that.

Celebrity booze – Does the world really need another tequila? Or Jay-Z slapping his name on another overpriced champagne? The question answers itself.

Each one of these is enough to make me want to chug a bottle of Walton Goggins’ Mulholland Gin.

Feel The Bern Democrats GIF by Bernie Sanders

The End

Postscript:

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Tapas, Tapas, Tapas…and Paella! (Part 3)

Mordeo Boutique Wine Bar is a small plates purveyor of a different stripe. Where Pamplona shoots and scores with authentic, Madrid-style tapas, and Edo gives an updated spin to their Spanish classics, MBWB takes the tapas thing in several different directions. And those directions have as much to do with wine as it does with shareable food. The good news is both are pretty nifty.

What confronts you when you enter is a long, in-laid, colorful three-sided bar. Very L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon that. This counter represents latest manifestation of the side-by-side dining that has been all the rage since Robuchon made such a splash with it in Paris in 2003. Grownups may find it a tad awkward, and for us there’s a couple of high-boy tables in one corner where 4-6 people can actually talk without leaning in and out with every sentence. Hearing is another matter, as you’ll see below.

Once you get comfortable (and to their credit, the staff here puts everyone at ease), you will observe the hustle and bustle behind that bar, as well as the refrigerated wine racks, and all sorts of people moving to and fro, taking orders, mixing drinks, pouring wines, and delivering plates.  It’s really quite a scene, but only three months into its run, the staff and kitchen seem well-synchronized. If you score one of those tables, don’t expect to hear any whispered sweet nothings from your dearly beloved though, as that would require a bullhorn over the din. (In this regard, side-by-side seating makes a lot of sense.)

Image may contain: 2 people, including Luis de Santos, people smiling, drink

If the term “wine bar” in the name doesn’t give you an idea what this place is all about, then the two-sided list will. It’s compact — five whites, six reds, some sake, several sherries — but (almost) everything is price to sell. Strip wine maven/veteran Luis de Santos (pictured above) co-owns and runs the libations side of things, and he has tailored his list to go with the food, but also to be quaffed and enjoyed, not pondered and discussed.

The whole point is to try a couple of bottles with your food, and when you can get a pretty Clarete rosé from Rioja for only $34, and tempranillo-syrah for the same price, there’s no reason not to try both. (Those are bottle prices, not the by-the-glass gouges you find on The Strip.) You almost get the feeling that he and chef/owner Khai Vu are testing the waters with these wines, as they try out which ones, at what price point, will appeal to their customers. Something tells me the offerings will expand as this place gains its footing, and every bottle won’t always be in the $30-$50 range. But for the time being, everything is quite a bargain. Even the beer.

Tasty, inexpensive wine may be what brought you through the door, but the food is what will keep you here.

Here, you’re just as likely to find a Mexican-inspired elote corn skewer, and snow pea leaves with garlic, ginger and sake, as you are a satisfying fingerling patatas bravas. This all-over-the-map menu has them all, and by and large, you won’t be disappointed. The Lomi Lomi Ocean Trout (pictured above) can only be described as zesty. It may be the best ceviche you’ve ever had in Vegas. Right beside it on the ceviche list are a classic, Mexican shrimp aguachile, and Maine lobster with mango salsa, and they’re no slouches, either.

Just as enthralling as all that sparkling seafood is The Cloud — thin, and we mean really thin, slices of Iberico de Bellota Cinco Jotas on top of a super thin, almost invisibly crispy chicharrónes :

— as perfect a nibble with a glass of verdejo as has ever been invented.

They do something they call Beet Garden here — red and golden beets with a goat cheese mousse — that is as wine-friendly (and pretty) as any root veggie dish can get:

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The meaty king crab leg (at $38, the most expensive thing on the menu, but not the most photogenic) is crabby enough for two, and the cold, briny oysters, and ginormous Nigerian prawn (below) show they’re also serious about their seafood:

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Other winners include a meaty La Asada (grilled Angus skirt steak with some kick-ass chimichurri sauce), and a stew of clams, chorizo, and mussels (pictured above with the prawn) that has quite a kick of its own (from the white wine/sriracha sauce).

Desserts are only two in number (and always in flux), but if this mango rice pudding (made to look like a fried egg) is offered, don’t miss it:

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You’ll have no complaints about the flan, either, but when was the last time you complained about a flan?

Too many many modern restaurants, in their endless attempts to mash up American food into with every cuisine on the planet, try too hard to dazzle you with their footwork at the expense of harmony and balance. There is both ingenuity and restraint in these dishes, which is rare these days. While it’s easy to decry the menu’s lack of focus, the wild ride you take among these flavors captivates your palate without ever wearing it out.

If you squint a little you’ll see a lot of similarities to what Edo is doing just down the street. But whereas Oscar Edo keeps his eye on Spain, Khai Vu let’s his wander a little farther, and tosses in everything from Mexico to the Japanese/Chinese kitchen sink. That he does this without ever going a seasoning too far is quite extraordinary. Mordeo, like its competition, may have hit on just the right formula to drive complacent palates down to Spring Mountain Road: interesting, hand-tooled, strongly-seasoned, wine-friendly food. The kind of food Las Vegas has needed since I moved here in 1981. The kind you can now find in three restaurants (Pamplona, Edo and Mordeo) all within a couple of miles of each other.

(Dinner for two, with a few drinks, or a bottle of modestly-priced wine, should run around $100/couple, excluding tip.)

MORDEO BOUTIQUE WINE BAR

5420 Spring Mountain Road #108

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.545.0771

https://www.mordeolv.com/

 

Tapas, Tapas, Tapas….and Paella! (Part 2)

Edo Tapas & Wine is half as big as Pamplona with twice the ambition. Its matchbox size belies an attempt to expand the flavors of Spain beyond all boundaries.  By and large it succeeds, in a forty seat space that announces from the get-go you’re in for a wild ride in tapas territory.

It may look unassuming from the front but it has quite a pedigree. Exec Chef Oscar Edo is a Strip veteran (and a survivor of the food truck craze of 8 years ago), while partner Roberto Liendo (late of Bazaar Meat) runs the front of the house. Between them, they have a strong sense of the food and service a place like this needs to appeal to gastronauts who demands the new over the tried and true. And while the whole small plates/tapas thing may seem like old hat by now, they freshen the genre by blending the traditional with more than just a wink and a nod to their Asian surroundings.

The small, narrow space gets a big lift from a bright mural taking up an entire wall (above). The reference to Spain is dramatic, and sets the stage for a production that punches way above its weight. It presents the requisite specialty cocktails, along with a rolling gin and tonic cart, a small-but-mighty wine list (with nothing over a hundy), and those three sherries by the glass I was complaining about Pamplona not having. There’s also eight nice craft beers on hand, a variety of vermut (vermouths) and cordials, and dessert wines (all by the glass or bottle).

If you think that’s a lot going on in this teeny space (formerly home to Chada Thai), then wait until you see the menu.

Four different dressed oysters are offered — depending upon what sort of bath you like your bivalves to take. Personally, I went nuts over the tamarind mole with pickled cucumber (above), although you might prefer yours to be swimming in kiwi leche de tigre or braised melon, lemon and mint. Bottom line: they’re all fabulous.

The obligatory Spanish cheese and ham selections, and they’re perfectly fine, if totally in line with what you’ll find all over town. (This is not to damn Spanish jamon with faint praise — it is the tastiest cured pork leg in the world — but only to point out that these folks get their stuff from the same distributors as everyone else, so if you’ve chowed down on one lomo, you’ve probably tasted them all. The really expensive hams are too muy caro for our ‘burbs, and you’ll have to head to Bazaar Meat (and pay through the snout) for them.

As satisfying as these starters are, it is in the cold and hot tapas where Edo hits his stride.  His fermented tomatoes with burrata and basil air was probably the most summery summer dish I had this summer; it both sparkled and soothed the palate the way only super-sweet tomates can — making like an overripe Caprese at half the weight. While his tuna tostada was a little bland for these buds, nice big and chunky Maine lobster comes “salpicón-style — dressed with more of that “tiger’s milk” — which nicely lightens the richness of the crustacean.

On the “hot tapas” side of things, the hits just keep coming: croquetas with kimchi pisto; pulpo viajero (octopus with tamarind mole), buñelos de bacalao (salt cod fritters with squid ink and lime); and something called “Bikini” — a wahfer theen, crispy compression of sobrasada and Mahon cheese — which might be the last word in tiny toast:

One is tempted to wax poetic about these bikinis, so packed with flavor are these two inch envelopes. So much soft crunch, so much sausage punch, my guess you’ll want to order a bunch is more than a hunch.  I overplay calling certain foodstuffs “addictive” at times, but the moniker fits here like the best cheese between bread you’ve ever eaten.

You really can’t go wrong with any of the plates here — some are just more spectacular than others — but there’s not a clinker in the bunch. One of the more eye-popping ones is Huevos Estrellados:

…a toothsome concoction of olive-oil fried eggs, piquillo peppers sitting atop a melange of mushrooms and fried potatoes. You can’t see the ‘shrooms underneath, but that collection of maitake, shitake, enoki, and king-oysters is crave-able in its own right. Top it all off with some garlic-parsley oil and you have a classic of Spain tweaked in all the right ways.

Of course, some purists might disagree. My friend Gerry Dawes — who probably knows as much about Spanish food and wine as any American — went apoplectic (on Facebook over it not being a proper estrellados, but he misses the point. Edo is using this menu to riff on the cuisine of Spain.  There will be hits and misses with some of his creations, but he’s putting it out there, and when the results are this lip-smacking, what’s to argue about?

The menu is nicely balanced between meat and seafood offerings, but, given that this is Spanish food we’re talking about, even the seafood can have a certain dense, rich sensibility, such as these Manila clams — which get the full arroz meloso de pescadores (rice seafood stew) treatment:

And when it comes to a certain famous Spanish rice dish, let’s just say that we are now blessed with a plethora of palate pleasing paella. If I had to grade the different ones in town, I’d put both Edo’s and Pamplona’s a notch below Jaleo’s, if only because there’s no substitute for the open fire smokiness imparted by José Andrés’ paella pit.

Image may contain: food(Edo’s pulchritudinous jamon paella)

None of these new places goes overboard on desserts, and this is a good thing. After bombarding your senses with oysters, clams, eggs, hams and octopus, what you’re looking for is something simple and soothing. The flan here pushes all the right buttons and the olive oil dark chocolate fudge does the same while adding an inch to your waistline. If you’re looking to go lighter, you’ll love the intensity of this strawberry granita with popcorn mousse:

….and if you’re looking for the most interesting Spanish food ever to come to off-Strip Las Vegas, you’ve come to the right place.

(Drinks are $14-$16 – and worth every penny. Tapas are priced from $7-$18, with most at the upper end of that. Paellas and stews run $25 for four modest servings. Two people can eat like royalty here for less than $100, excluding tip. )

EDO TAPAS & WINE

3400 South Jones Blvd. Suite 11A

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702. 641.1345

https://edotapas.com/