Eating Las Vegas
We spent a great deal of time and money eating in Las Vegas so I decided to make a separate post about the food we ate.
Click to view more pictures.
The first meal we had in Vegas was at Tom Colicchio's 'wichcraft in the MGM Grand.
As the name implies, 'wichcraft is a fancy sandwich shop. Here's my cored beef, sauerkraut and swiss cheese panini. It was good but a little boring.
Sarah's roasted pork with picked jalapenos was more interesting. The jalapenos were really sweet, almost like slices of apple.
Rather than spend $200+ on tickets for the two of us to go to a show we decided to eat at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris. It was a formal white table cloth place up in the Eiffel Tower. We were lucky enough to get a window table with an excellent view of the strip and the Bellagio fountains.
We ordered the tasting menu, a six course meal of classic French foods. The first item was L'Amuse Bouche, little appetizers to "amuse the mouth".
Second course was herb marinated Alaskan King Crab with braised baby artichokes. This was sweet and tangy, a nice light start that was followed by English pea cream soup with smoked trout. The smoked trout really stood out in the soup, it was a great combination of flavors and quite hearty.
Next was the baked Alaskan Halibut topped with pesto bouillon and tomato confit. This may have been my least favorite dish. It wasn't bad by any means, but I'm not a seafood person so it has to be really stellar to grab my attention.
The fifth course was roasted rack of lamb with tarragon jus and a tomato tart. At this point I was incredibly full but managed to eat the bulk of this one. The presentation here was great and the lamb was spectacular with the sweet tomato tart.
Desert was a fluffy, crispy apple strudel. I had no problem finding room to put this away.
The next morning we walked from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign all the way up to the Wynn and back again, and then back up to Treasure Island... so we covered a lot of ground and worked up an appetite. We saw a lot of celebrity chef run restaurants like this one, Border Grill. The stand up outside lets you know that the owner is/was on Top Chef Masters, that's why you have to pay $30 to eat a burrito there...
Hubert Keller, who was on the first season of Top Chef Masters, owns the Fleur de Lys restaurant in the Mandalay Bay.
Here's one you've probably heard of, Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill in Caesar's Palace. We decided to eat here for lunch.
It was Mother's Day weekend so a lot of places had their brunch menu instead of their regular lunch offerings. We started off the meal with a bacon and hashbrown quesadilla topped with a fried egg. This was good, really good. It was crispy like a really thin crust pizza.
I got a pork tenderloin sandwich which was really juicy and covered in tangy sauce and served with the best garlic fries I've ever had (sorry Gordon Biersch).
Sarah got the spicy chicken and sweet potato hash. These little cylinders were topped with poached eggs and a tangy sauce. I only had a couple small bites of this but it was amazing, but maybe a little too spicy for a main course in my opinion.
Vegas is a great place to get really remarkable food and every restaurant has an extensive wine list. What I was surprised to find is that isn't quite hard to get a good beer on the strip. After much searching I read that Hubert Keller's Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay had a pretty decent selection, even if most were just bottles. We ended up ordering only Dogfish Head beers this evening because you can't get them in Kansas/Missouri. Above is a bottle of Midas Touch, a light colored ale that had a lot of white wine characteristics, Sarah loved it.
The highlight of the evening for me was the bottle of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA we ended the night with. This beer is 18% alcohol and tastes nothing like what you'd expect. I've had high alcohol beers before but none we as (relatively) light as this one or had a comparable flavor profile.
Our final meal in Vegas was at Wolfgang Puck's bistro in the MGM Grand. It's within spitting distance of Joel Robuchon's restaurant where the celebrity chef was actually cooking that day as part of a Vegas Uncorked event. We could watch him through the windows while we ate our prosciutto, olive and basil pizza.
Click to view more pictures.
The first meal we had in Vegas was at Tom Colicchio's 'wichcraft in the MGM Grand.
As the name implies, 'wichcraft is a fancy sandwich shop. Here's my cored beef, sauerkraut and swiss cheese panini. It was good but a little boring.
Sarah's roasted pork with picked jalapenos was more interesting. The jalapenos were really sweet, almost like slices of apple.
Rather than spend $200+ on tickets for the two of us to go to a show we decided to eat at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris. It was a formal white table cloth place up in the Eiffel Tower. We were lucky enough to get a window table with an excellent view of the strip and the Bellagio fountains.
We ordered the tasting menu, a six course meal of classic French foods. The first item was L'Amuse Bouche, little appetizers to "amuse the mouth".
Second course was herb marinated Alaskan King Crab with braised baby artichokes. This was sweet and tangy, a nice light start that was followed by English pea cream soup with smoked trout. The smoked trout really stood out in the soup, it was a great combination of flavors and quite hearty.
Next was the baked Alaskan Halibut topped with pesto bouillon and tomato confit. This may have been my least favorite dish. It wasn't bad by any means, but I'm not a seafood person so it has to be really stellar to grab my attention.
The fifth course was roasted rack of lamb with tarragon jus and a tomato tart. At this point I was incredibly full but managed to eat the bulk of this one. The presentation here was great and the lamb was spectacular with the sweet tomato tart.
Desert was a fluffy, crispy apple strudel. I had no problem finding room to put this away.
The next morning we walked from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign all the way up to the Wynn and back again, and then back up to Treasure Island... so we covered a lot of ground and worked up an appetite. We saw a lot of celebrity chef run restaurants like this one, Border Grill. The stand up outside lets you know that the owner is/was on Top Chef Masters, that's why you have to pay $30 to eat a burrito there...
Hubert Keller, who was on the first season of Top Chef Masters, owns the Fleur de Lys restaurant in the Mandalay Bay.
Here's one you've probably heard of, Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill in Caesar's Palace. We decided to eat here for lunch.
It was Mother's Day weekend so a lot of places had their brunch menu instead of their regular lunch offerings. We started off the meal with a bacon and hashbrown quesadilla topped with a fried egg. This was good, really good. It was crispy like a really thin crust pizza.
I got a pork tenderloin sandwich which was really juicy and covered in tangy sauce and served with the best garlic fries I've ever had (sorry Gordon Biersch).
Sarah got the spicy chicken and sweet potato hash. These little cylinders were topped with poached eggs and a tangy sauce. I only had a couple small bites of this but it was amazing, but maybe a little too spicy for a main course in my opinion.
Vegas is a great place to get really remarkable food and every restaurant has an extensive wine list. What I was surprised to find is that isn't quite hard to get a good beer on the strip. After much searching I read that Hubert Keller's Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay had a pretty decent selection, even if most were just bottles. We ended up ordering only Dogfish Head beers this evening because you can't get them in Kansas/Missouri. Above is a bottle of Midas Touch, a light colored ale that had a lot of white wine characteristics, Sarah loved it.
The highlight of the evening for me was the bottle of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA we ended the night with. This beer is 18% alcohol and tastes nothing like what you'd expect. I've had high alcohol beers before but none we as (relatively) light as this one or had a comparable flavor profile.
Our final meal in Vegas was at Wolfgang Puck's bistro in the MGM Grand. It's within spitting distance of Joel Robuchon's restaurant where the celebrity chef was actually cooking that day as part of a Vegas Uncorked event. We could watch him through the windows while we ate our prosciutto, olive and basil pizza.