There is good food to be found in Las Vegas. Specifically, if you find yourself there, please consider eating at Lotus of Siam (953 E. Sahara Avenue #A-5, (702) 735-3033). Gourmet calls this the best Thai restaurant in the country: I do not feel I have the qualifications to agree with (or dispute) that statement, but I did think our meal there was extraordinary (and, I might add, very reasonably priced: I'd say within $5 of what you'd pay at Thai Kitchen for an equivalent amount of food.) The menu shows a true seriousness of intent (they prepare dishes from three different provinces of Thailand), well matched by excellent service.
Other than Lotus of Siam, it gets tough. I can recommend that you stay away from the buffet at the Bellagio: indeed, I can recommend that you stay away from the Bellagio ("Most annoying place on Earth.") completely. The Stratosphere adds the "Chocolate Stratosphere" to the list of architectural desserts: it works better as a conceit than as an actual food item. (And the view from the rotating restaurant is nice: sadly, my burger stayed with me longer than my memory of the view.)
Our remaining meals weren't really memorable (in either a good or bad way): I wasn't overwhelmed by the buffet at Main Street Station (unlike the writers for the Lonely Planet travel guide) but it was a decent enough buffet for $10.99. We also had a fair to middling (and probably somewhat overpriced) steak dinner at the Rio. Beyond that, you're on your own, kids: let me know if you try any place in Boulder City (or the cafe at the dam), if you go to Lotus of Siam, or if you find some place we missed.
I don't have much to add to Lawrence's comments below. All I can say is that I was perfectly happy with my dish (the spiendo di mare), it isn't clear to me who was at fault in the incident of the salad, and I'll gladly go back again any time.
If you've been following the Saturday Dining Conspiracy for any length of time, then you know that Reale's is our favorite Italian place. But boy did we catch them on an off night.
The dinner started out OK with the usual fine calamari and cheese garlic bread appetizers, the latter living up to their reputation as the best in town. Problems soon developed, however, after we had finished our initial drinks and waited for refills. And waited. And waited. We finally flagged down another waitress for refills. Then they brought us our salads, only they got Andrew "I've got rhythm" Wimsatt's order wrong, so that got sent back and he waited for his Chef's Salad to arrive. And waited. And waited. When we asked about it, the waitress went: "Oh, we thought he wanted that when the rest of you got his entrees." Did we ever say that? No? They don't try to put words in our mouths to cover up your own manifest incompetence. In fact, Andrew was waiting anxiously for his salad because he had to leave for another engagement.
Then I got my fettucini alfredo entree with a side of meatballs, only to discover that it was virtually tasteless. I found myself shaking out an every larger amount of salt simply to have my food taste like something. I've had better fettucini alfredo in microwave dinners. Diet microwave dinners. And the meatballs? Feh. Spongy, tasteless and seemingly possessed of a hell of a lot more filler than you're supposed to use in meatballs.
I take it as an article of faith that these are aberrations, and Reale's will be back to serving excellent Italian food Real Soon Now. But just to be on the safe side, the next time I'm there, I think I'll order a pizza.
Good curried squid, nice fried shrimp rolls, and they do pretty decent dim sum.
The menu doesn't offer as many chances for adventure as the nearby T&S Seafood (which I think is a little better), but you can actually get squid at Twin Dragon. (Last time I was at T&S, they didn't want to sell it to me.) On the other hand, Twin Dragon seems to have problems with duck gone bad. ("The duck's doing 3 to 5 for armed robbery.").
At least Twin Dragon got rid of the tippy chairs.
What is it about Chinese places on a Saturday night? It seems that more often than not, they're deserted when we walk in at 6 PM and still mostly empty by the time we leave (this was even true of the late, lamented Pao's downtown). And so it was at Twin Dragon, where we started out as the only diners in a a fairly spacious restaurant.
And the food? The appetizers seemed blander than last year, and they were out of the roast duck, but my lamb dish was quite good. Our waiter was something of a smart ass, but probably not any more than we deserved.
I'd go back (they also do good Dim Sum), but I do wonder why the place seems to deserted.
I've heard from several people that they like Elsi's. I can't see its charms as a dinner spot: I thought the dinner menu was rather limited, and I wasn't all that impressed with my fajitas.
On the other hand, I can see that Elsi's is a good place to pop into for a quick lunch if you work in the area. They also have a breakfast menu that's much more impressive than the dinner one. (They even serve pancakes! A TexMex joint! Can you believe it?) Worth a try, I think, but more so for breakfast.
Though we had been told that Elsi's offered Salvadoran food, there was little on the menu other than standard TexMex fare. Fortunately, they do a reasonably competent job at TexMex. The flameda was good and the nachos were slightly better than average. My fajitas were tasty but a bit dry. Service was very attentive and the food is reasonably priced.
The best thing Elsi's has going for it is location, since they're in something of a TexMex "dead zone." Not a bad choice if you're in the area, but I'd like to see more Salvadoran dishes on the menu, and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up to the new Curra's North.
I feel somewhat alone in the crowd; but I disliked Buca di Beppo.
Some of that is probably personal: I don't care much for the heavily tomato-based style of cooking that BdB seems to specialize in. The only thing I really cared much for is the garlic bread: the rest of dishes didn't strike me as anything special. I didn't even care much for the pizza, with its cracker-thin crust: I like a good thin crust pizza, but Brick Oven does a better job.
The (apparently deliberate) maze-like design of the place is also a problem. Once you're inside (the waitstaff takes you in through the kitchen: why?!) you need a road map (or a handy memeber of the waitstaff) to find the bathrooms, or to find your way back to your table.
I'm also dubious about the "family" style concept. I usually don't go out to eat with more than three other people: even the dining conspiracy is usually 4-6 people. That's 2 or 3 entrees at BdB: finding three things that everyone can agree on is tough. And BdB's entree plates are large, hot, heavy, and tough to pass around.
What really gets under my skin, though, and makes me go "thumbs down" is the contrived hokeyness of BdB's whole "concept". Buca di Beppo is the perfect example of "all you need is sincerity: once you can fake that, you've got it made."
Buca di Beppo is the anti-Zoot. By that I mean they have huge portions of pretty decent food at reasonable prices. Their gimmick is that all of the portions are "family" sized and capable of feeding 2-3 people. (Or more: They had a nice house salad platter that easily fed the entire table.) It's actually a pretty good gimmick, making it an agreeable dining spot for large groups of people.
We started out with the garlic cheese bread, calamari and mussels for our appetizers. The garlic cheese bread, featuring Buca di Beppo's hearty rustic bread, was excellent, just a tick down from that served at Reale's. The calamari was adequate but a bit chewy, while the mussels were descent but the sauce was nothing special (Carrabba's does a much better job).
The Neapolitan pizza arrabiatta was about as large as the ones Little Ceasers used to offer (are they even still in business?), but much better and with quite generous toppings. However, given the thin crust, it's not quite as good a deal as some of the other entrees.
The veal parmigiano platter came with three veal chops on it. It was good but not outstanding. I wanted to try the spaghetti and meatballs but Dwight's folks opted for a spaghetti and vegetables dish, so I didn't try that. Just as well, since I was pretty much full by that point. I did like the "slice" of Andrew "the other Andrew" Landwermeyer's Neapolitan ice cream for his birthday. (Yeah, we did sing "Happy Birthday" (but not this version). It's a kid thing, you wouldn't understand.)
All in all I found it a very satisfying meal, over-caffinated children notwithstanding. Next time we eat there we should see if we can get the Pope Room...
See the logs for August of 2001.