Monday, April 19, 2010

Las Vegas Restaurants


Not too many blog posts this past week, as I was on Spring Break! (Read with much excitement!) The week went by way to fast, but I did manage to squeeze in a trip to Vegas with the family (minus Brian). Definitely not a lot of cooking going on, but I thought I'd give you an overview of my tasty travel finds.

I did a bit of research to see which of our famous chefs has restaurants in Las Vegas. The first night there we hit up another Mario Batali restaurant, Enoteca San Marco, located in the Venetian Hotel. I blogged about another Mario Batali restaurant in LA, and this one had a very similar menu. This time we got a starter of cheeses and it was amazing. I honestly can't remember the different types of cheeses we had, but they were accompanied by apricots, cherries and honey with truffle oil. When you ate these with your cheese it was pretty much the best thing ever. I personally liked the apricot and the honey the best. I ordered a arugula and parmesan salad, Penne alla Norma (pictured at top) with tomato, eggplant, and ricotta, and finished it all off with some dark chocolate malt, salted caramel, and olive oil gelato. Throw in great conversation with most of my favorite people and it was a near perfect dinner.



The next night we decided to go to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill in Caesar's Palace. I actually ate at his New York location a few years back and absolutely loved it. So I figured, why pass up an opportunity to share this restaurant with my mom and sister. We all ended up ordering the same thing: Grilled Mahi Mahi with roasted pineapple-cascabel chile sauce, caramelized pineapple-green onion salsa served with creamy green chile rice. I thought I died and gone to heaven. I haven't had fish in a while and this far exceeded my expectations of what mahi mahi could be. The sauce was sweet and had a bit of a kick, and my mom couldn't get enough of the creamy green chile rice. (I'm pretty sure she was trying to figure out how she could make it at home.) We also shared the gala apple salad. It was made with thinly sliced baby spinach, Maytag blue cheese, toasted pecans and tossed with a spicy orange vinaigrette. It definitely was spicy, which was interesting on a salad, but of course Bobby knows what he's doing and the flavors were perfect together.



Another New York favorite that has made its way to Las Vegas is the ever popular Serendipity 3. It has a new pink color scheme and sits outside Caesar's Palace, but the food is exactly the same. Well, I can't speak for the real food, I've only eaten real food there once (in NY) but they have my favorite chocolate cake/brownie and ice cream dessert ever. It's huge, messy and topped with the most amazing hot fudge. The Forbidden Broadway Sundae is a dessert to share with friends, but you'll wish you could eat it all by yourself. It's that good. I always hope that someone I'm with with orders the frozen hot chocolate, it is, after all, what they are famous for. I can't handle two desserts, but I always want a long sip of the frothy, frozen drink.



You can probably tell that my vacations generally revolve around food, but I have absolutely no problem with that. Feel free to share great restaurants you've eaten at. I currently have a list going of a dozen cities and places I want to eat when I visit there!

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