What I Did on Christmas: Lupo

Christmas day was a bit rough this year. My other half was working all day so we celebrated on Christmas Eve instead. I wasn't really up for staying home alone all day, so I went to see a show that a friend of mine works on.

After the show, I was thinking about dinner and about how I really really didn't want to cook. As I was walking back to my car, I passed by Lupo, Wolfgang Pucks restaurant at Mandalay Bay. I decided... screw it. I'm going to make something good happen to day. So I set up at the bar and ordered a really lovely dinner.


I drank Seghesio Zinfandel 2012, which is always a winner. I actually went to the Seghesio Vineyard back in April, and I really like it. It's also a huge favorite of my friend Jenn's, and she has excellent taste as always.

The it was Gnocchi with Veal Ragu. The ragu was a hair on the salty side but the gnocchi was absolutely perfect. Light, fluffy, delicate, exactly the way it should be.

I asked the bartender to pick me a side, and he settle on Lemon Parmesan Cauliflower. I'm going to probably try to recreate this. It was perfect. The citrus against the Parmesan really worked beautifully. It had just the right amount of caramelization and I really loved it.

If you're having a crappy day, sometimes it's worth it to just say Jai Refuse!, and make it into something better. You have more control over your destiny than you sometimes think.

Hankook Taqueria

I'm well known for my deep love of Asian food. For some reason Asian flavors have always resonated with me more than most other cuisine types. The last time I was back in Atlanta, I was told about a little Korean Taco Place in a really unlikely location that was absolutely to die for. Life changing, it was called. Unforgettable. Perfect. That was some big talk there, and I was extremely skeptical. In the interest of research I figured I would try it.

It's not much to look at inside. There is a counter, and there are seats. It's in an almost shack-like building. They don't serve alcohol (though you can bring your own). My skepticism continued. Then I noticed that it had a fair few awards on the back wall. Fair enough, my interest was aroused.
I ordered Korean Tacos, one fish, one beef. My dining companion ordered the Bibim-bop. Total cost of the meal: $12.

The food arrived in a nice and speedy fashion. I was sad that I hadn't thought to go ahead and pick up a few bottles of beer, as it seemed acceptable to bring your own. Definitely something to bear in mind for next time.

The beef (bul gogi) taco was absolutely divine. The beef was perfectly seasoned and really tender. Korean barbecue really is one of the best tastes. I adored every bite.

The fish taco wasn't bad. The fish had a really nice crispy coating. The hoi sin tartar sauce though left a bit to be desired for me. I couldn't really find the hoi sin part of it. I think if I could have had a do-over, I would have gone for two of the beef tacos instead.

My companions Bibim-bop was absolutely perfect and divine. Everything was well prepared, the egg was perfect, the special sauce was tasty and delicious. It was a great plate.

This restaurant is definitely a find. The food is excellent and you can't beat the price. The location is odd, but it's actually worth the trip for the food. Definitely a great little out of the way place to try if you have a chance.

Eggworks and the Rare and Awesome Server

It's been a while, but I figured I should talk about one of my favorite Las Vegas Brunch Spots. Eggworks is pretty near the airport and handy to hit up on your way in and out of town. It's always busy and the food is consistently good. The last time I was there we were also lucky enough to have a really incredible server. Though we didn't order one, she brought us one of their yummy bran muffins, just so we could try it.

The muffin was super tasty and I was happy I got to give it a go.

It was definitely a morning where healthier options were the preference. My Stunt Guy went for an Egg White Omelet packed with veggies and topped with tomatoes and feta cheese.With a side of fruit. Really yummy.

I went for a Spinach Eggs Benedict with the hollandaise on the side. I like hollandaise a lot, but I've only recently become accustomed to ordering it, and I always get it on the side now... I don't like my eggs to drown. My plate was pretty darn perfect. The eggs had a great poach on them, the spinach was nice and fresh, the hollandaise well balanced. All in all, I was a happy camper.

I have to say, I get super happy when I'm at a restaurant and the wait staff is actually fun and nice and attentive and good at their jobs but not too overly hovery. I wish I knew the name of the lady so I could give her a proper shout out. She was really great, and that is a rare thing.

So yeah, definitely give Eggworks a shot if you're looking for something yummy one morning!

Open Sesame

I wanted to take a little trip back into the past to the weekend I spent in LA. Mostly because I wanted to give you a quick restaurant recommendation if you are ever in Long Beach. I went to Open Sesame for lunch with Amee, and had a really darn good meal.

Open Sesame is apparently so popular that they had to open a second location just a few buildings down the road to handle their overflow. It's Lebanese food, and it was really great. We sat in the front of the restaurant at a very very little table. The staff were really nice and very friendly.

 

We got hummus to start and, as always, not the right ratio of hummus to pita bread. The hummus was very tasty and beautifully presented, but we had about half the dish left by the time we ran out of pita bread. I think we would have taken it home, but we were going to be out for the rest of the day so that wasn't too feasible.

They did have Mango Mimosas though, which made me supremely happy. They were very delicious, made with prosecco. Amee went with the Pomegranate version. Definitely a perfect lunch time drink.

I had the Pita Kafta - Charbroiled Ground Lamb and Beef with onions, parsley, hummus, and I slathered extra hummus on top. It was absolutely delicious, the char on the meat was really tasty and the onions and parsley were almost juicy and fresh. It was a big meal, though, and I ended up only eating half and then pulling out just the meat (which I then covered in more hummus).

It was a good meal, and fairly inexpensive too. If you're in Long Beach I would definitely recommend swinging by for lunch. But make sure you order extra pita!

Vintage Enoteca

I was really happy that I managed to squeeze in a trip to LA last weekend. It takes about four hours to drive there from the desert if you swing by Cypress to pick up a gorgeous lady called Amee.

A couple of years ago, the ridiculously talented Mike and his beautiful wife Carolyn, whom I often refer to as "the classiest person I know", moved out to LA. A few months ago, Amee also moved out there. My Stunt Guy and I had managed to pull off dinner with Mike and Carolyn back at the tail end of our San Diego trip last summer, but we hadn't seen them since their wedding last fall.

Mike and Amee are both great actors, and I remain hopeful that wonderful things will happen for them soon. I sometimes feel like Carolyn could be my food soulmate. Her taste is impeccable and she really really knows food.

Carolyn suggested dinner at Vintage Enoteca. We were planning on heading to a show not far from there, and they had a pretty hard to beat happy hour that timed out perfectly with when we would like to be there.

Vintage Enoteca is lovely.

We decided to sit outside. The front of the restaurant is almost like a big covered porch. The benches around were strewn with comfy cushions and, though the street was noisy, the atmosphere just felt really good. I instantly tucked in to some really stellar Blackberry Sangria. It was light, fruity and perfectly balanced.

The Happy Hour special was for half off food not including the cheeses and salumi. With prices like that it was so easy to try several great things off the menu.

Carolyn and I are both really into cheese and I wish I had had the presence of mind to write down what we ate but, well, that didn't happen. One of the cheeses was a smoked blue cheese though and it was simply stunning.

I adored the Medjool Dates, which were stuffed with Manchego, Goat Cheese, Pepper and Speck. They were piping hot and quite good.

Next came a Bruschetta Trio. I went for Grilled Peach with goat cheese and bacon marmalade, Blue Crab with lemon and mint, and Chicken Pate with pickled shallot. Holy crap they were amazing. All three were just insane. So delicious. The crab was light and tangy and delicious. The bacon marmalade was out of this world. The pate, oh the pate. The pickled shallots were perfect on top. If you find yourself at this restaurant, you have to order those three. They were beyond superb.

I grabbed a bite of Mike's Mac and Cheese. It was really yummy, but I just wanted to get back to my Bruschetta. 

Seriously. Grilled Peach. Goat Cheese. Bacon Marmalade. Perfect.

The last dish that came out was the Gnocchi with Fava Bean Puree and Truffled Ricotta. This is the dish that I keep thinking about. The gnocchi was light as air with a perfect crisp edge to it. The truffle was pronounced, yet balanced, and the puree was unexpectedly good. I could have eaten it on it's own and loved it, though it's not something I would have thought to order.

Our bill was remarkably low for dinner and drinks for four people. I think we came out to less than $30 each including tip which strikes me as impressive in LA.

Spending time with friends was so worth the drive. I'm so happy for a lovely meal in such great company!

Tacos El Gordo

I usually shy away from Mexican restaurants. Many years ago I lived with a family that had a lot of Mexican heritage and we ate a lot of really good Mexican food. Every time I went to eat in a Mexican restaurant I was completely disappointed because I was used to things that were more delicious. I gave up, and now cite Mexican as something I "don't like that much". 

So when my friend Nico wanted to have lunch at Tacos El Gordo on the strip, I wasn't too excited. 

But dear god how wrong was I? Completely! Tacos El Gordo is on the strip, but North of all the craziness of the big hotels. Just past the Encore, it's in a little shopping strip on the corner. You go in, order your tacos, pay, then grab a seat inside or outside.

I tried the carne asada and the adobada tacos. One of each plus a soda came to $5. On the strip, this is unheard of. I was expecting to pay $15 for something I didn't like. These tacos were incredible. The meat on both was seasoned perfectly and delicious. It was tender, it was just the right amount of heat. The adobada (which is a pork marinated in a red sauce) was indescribably delicious. So savory with a hint of sweet and mixed perfectly with a sauce and vegetable adornments. They were both served on a corn tortilla. I inhaled them and felt light and satisfied. I wasn't weighed down at all but I wasn't hungry any more either. They provide plenty of limes on the side and slices of radish for your adorning pleasure.

One of my other dining companions got this dessert. I think it's called Dulce de Tamarindo. It's basically a sweet tamarind paste wrapped in sugar and dusted with chili powder. It was really amazing. I couldn't stop pulling off pieces. The paste had a great chewy texture combined with a little crunch from the sugar and the chili powder was an accent but not a punch. The tamarind flavor was awesome.

Now here's what I personally wouldn't order. One of my companions ordered the carne asada fries. I think the meat and the topping were wonderful, but the addition of the fries just made it all too heavy. Probably really good though is you are inebriated and need to soak up some alcohol. I think this whole box was $10. 

This place is brilliant. I'm going again on Saturday night with my friend Lee because I want to try more fantastic food and share it with anyone I can. They are open until 3am on weeknights and 5am on weekends. Definitely a great place to visit the next time you are on the Las Vegas strip!

Bread and Butter

I confess, my Stunt Guy and I rarely eat out. We're on a really tight budget (which will hopefully get some breathing room soon, with him heading back to the East Coast for work) but every so often we have a mini food-splurge. The episode of How I Met Your Mother that we were watching last Saturday heavily featured brunch, which of course made us crave it, so we decided to have Sunday brunch like a normal couple. It's an odd thing, since with my schedule Sunday is what other people would consider a Thursday.

Anyways, I poked around Yelp for some brunch places in Henderson and was surprised to find a very well reviewed one quite near me called Bread and Butter. Again, since we don't eat out much we hadn't discovered it yet. Sometimes I wonder what else we've missed in the last 13 months.

We headed over to Bread and Butter and were greeted by display cases of yummy looking pastries.





They also had an entire fridge dedicated to root beer, which I thought was quite neat.



Their brunch menu was a bit limited, and they were out of the first thing that I wanted to order, but the girl behind the counter steered us towards the Breakfast Pizza, which she said was perfect for sharing. Sounds awful, I know, but it was potatoes, caramelized onions, roasted red peppers and scrambled eggs on a very thin crust. We added Sausage, which is Stunt Guy's go-to meat addition (he's not into bacon, which I find peculiar).



When it arrived it was, indeed, perfect for sharing. The crust was delightfully thin, so it didn't add any kind of oily weight to the pizza. The scrambled eggs on top were delightfully fluffy, and I really enjoyed the sausage addition. All in all, it was perfectly yummy and definitely big enough to share... we had two pieces left over.



We also hit the pastry case, picking out a Fruit Tart, a Jam Doughnut, and Bread Pudding.



The Fruit Tart was really nice. I was initially concerned about the hairy kiwi, but thankfully it turned out okay. I think the big thing with this tart is that it just looked so gorgeous. You really do eat with your eyes.



The Jam Doughnut was ridiculous. Exploding with Jam, if you picked it up the weight it had was insane... heavier than a baseball. You could do some serious damage if you chose to chuck that thing at someones head.



It was impossible to eat in a really delightful way. The outer layer was thin and crispy, with just the right amount of chew.



There was honestly probably way too much jam, though. We left a sad little pool of it in the bowl. It also got all over our hands in a fantastically Macbethian way.



I'm a bad judge of Bread Pudding. I have fond childhood memories of this dessert, so it's a tall order for someone to catch up. This was... okay. I wanted more cinnamon and for it to be gooier. But it was certainly quite edible and yummy.



The atmosphere of the restaurant is pretty cute and quirky. There aren't really servers, so you need to just go in and order at the counter and then find yourself a seat. Everyone was really friendly, which was a nice thing. The place was quite busy on a Sunday but not overly so. We didn't have to wait for a table and our food arrived pretty speedily.

On the way out, my Stunt Guy went and grabbed a fortune cookie out of the jar and was greeted with the most utterly random fortune either of us had ever seen.



In sum, this was a neat little brunch spot. I hear their Kale salad is really good, so I'll probably go back and try that when I get a chance. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you find yourself South East of the Vegas Strip.

So what is your must-have brunch menu item?