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8.25.2011

an open letter to the mexican restaurant getting ready to open across the street.

Dear Mi Tierra Mexican Restaurant:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for planning to open a Mexican restaurant just a few steps away from my house. Thank you for taking over a pretty nice, pretty large space that has been empty for years in my neighborhood. Thank you for bringing another restaurant option to my nearest shopping center, which only contains a pub, a pizza shop, a noodle shop, a Subway and a Carl's Jr. I am not sure when you are planning to open, but your sign says "Coming Soon" and so I have to believe that is true. I appreciate your hard work and wish you the best of luck. I just have one simple request:

Please, please don't be shitty.

I generally don't subscribe to the widespread belief that there is no good Mexican food in Las Vegas. I think the best stuff can be found in little hole-in-the-wall taco shops and big, fancy, boundary-pushing restaurants on the Strip. In between, there are plenty of generic, family-style Mexican restaurants with chips and salsa and margaritas and enchiladas with lots of yellow cheese melted on top. These are, at best, okay. And these are the restaurants -- while popular -- that build on that belief that Vegas doesn't have high quality Mexican grub.

If that's what you're gonna be, Mi Tierra, I'll take it. Because out here in the northwest end of the valley, we don't have much Mexican food at all. A few significant good restaurants have opened up in recent years in the blocks surrounding your new business. We've got solid Italian food at Parma by Chef Marc and Thai food at Nittaya's. And we've got neighborhood standards that are some of the best in town, like the Bagel Cafe and Marche Bacchus. But we need good Mexican food. The best that could still be considered kinda nearby is Frank & Fina's Cocina, but we have to drive up to the Beltway and way out to West Flamingo for that stuff.

I love Frank & Fina's, and I don't expect you to outdo it. Just please, don't suck. Be as reliable as Ricardo's, a longtime Vegas family favorite on Decatur and Flamingo. Be as friendly as Vega's Cafe, another spot with a deep local history, unfortunately shuttered within the last year. Be at least as interesting as Galerias, the slightly eccentric restaurant your space used to be, where they served some authentic and just plain strange chile rellenos. Make fresh salsa, please. And guacamole. Cold beer. No yellow cheese would be nice.

I really want you to be good, Mi Tierra, so I can walk across the street after work and drink too many Modelos and eat a nice plate of chile verde and then stumble home and be happy. I want another reason to love my neighborhood. If you are good, I promise to tell everybody. Thanks, and again, best of luck.

8.07.2011

best of the best? the strip's top dining destinations.

First thing's first: this lovely image here is the badass benedict at ZoozaCrackers, the deli inside Wynn Las Vegas. Forget about an English muffin. This sucker is built on an authentic, savory potato latke, stacked with house-made pastrami and corned beef, then Swiss cheese, poached egg and Russian dressing. If you are skilled enough to get a bite with each component, it's a pretty amazing mouthful. It's just one of the specialty dishes at Zooza, one of the more overlooked restaurants at Wynn, and it's absolutely delicious. Even in a pair of resorts with spectacular brunch offerings, it's hard to imagine a better midmorning nosh than this satisfying benny.

So I'm thinking about (and eating at) Wynn and Encore lately, because there's been a lot of change 'round here, and a lot of talk that the dining at these two beautiful Strip resorts are slipping. The closure of Alex Stratta's restaurant Alex is the catalyst for this theory, but there have been other developments. Combined with the big foodie impact of the Cosmopolitan's opening in December, these changes have me returning to one of the great debates of the Vegas Strip: Which resort has the best restaurants? It's definitely a loaded question, but it's still fun to think about. And I don't think it's fair to limit this question to single hotels, because Wynn and Encore are the same, Venetian and Palazzo are the same, and CityCenter is essentially a single destination. So I'm grouping things together where they make sense.

What makes a great dining destination in Vegas terms? You must offer a diversity. Every casino has a top-notch steakhouse, but what about French and Asian food? Got Mexican? There must be great casual munchies as well as amazing high-end stuff, and the highest of the high-end needs to be a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience. This is Vegas; it's all or nothing. Quantity of good restaurants is not as important as quality of those restaurants.

And so with lots of "research" and a belly full of Wynn pastrami, I say behold: The Top 6 Dining Destinations on the Las Vegas Strip, according to me. Enjoy. Seriously, go enjoy. (Note: Sure, we can argue about this if you want.)

6. Cosmopolitan. Notable dining: Blue Ribbon, China Poblano, Comme Ca, D.O.C.G., Estiatorio Milos, Jaleo, Scarpetta, STK.

5. Wynn/Encore. Notable: Bartolotta, Country Club, Sinatra, Society Cafe, Stratta, SW Steakhouse, Tableau, Wazuzu, Wing Lei.

4. MGM Grand. Notable: Craftsteak, Fiamma, Joel Robuchon, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Nobhill Tavern, Seablue, Shibuya.

3. CityCenter. Notable: American Fish, Bar Masa, Jean Georges Steakhouse, Julian Serrano, Lemongrass, Mozen Bistro, Sage, Sirio, Social House, Twist.

2. Caesars Palace/Forum Shops. Notable: Beijing Noodle No. 9, Bradley Ogden, Joe's Stone Crab, Mesa Grill, Payard, Rao's, Restaurant Guy Savoy, Spago.

1. Bellagio. Notable: Circo, Jasmine, Le Cirque, Michael Mina, Noodles, Picasso, Prime Steakhouse, Sensi, Yellowtail.

8.01.2011

what i learned on my summer vacation.

I’m a bit of a shut-in. I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve lived in Oregon as a kid, in Reno as a student, and spent a lot of time in Southern California; briefly glimpsed Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Minnesota and Colorado. Went to Mexico once. That’s it. I’ve tried to figure out how my perceptions are altered or restricted by a life spent in Las Vegas without a lot of comparison. It’s hard to assess because, hey, I don’t know anything else.

Staying in Vegas may have some negative impact or produce some inefficiency in my development as a writer-human, but there’s at least one awesome upside: when I do go somewhere, I'm wide open. It’s like outer space travel. If it isn’t my beloved dry desert, my brain and body don’t know how to react. Super-cold temperatures inspire fear. Inches of snow might be a natural disaster. Sky-high mountains, thick rows of forest green, rivers and oceans are fantastic things straight out of the movies. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic.

In July, I was in Chicago for the first time ever. I crashed with and was guided around the city by family, a couple of jazz musicians/personal trainers. Seems like a perfectly normal dual vocation for people who live in Chicago. We walked a lot. We didn’t drive much. We rode a train. That was some outer space shit; in fact, moving from the subterranean airport corridor straight to the train made me feel kinda Total Recallish. We saw some touristy stuff and some art museum stuff, a really old and beautiful church, and some amazing, never-ending cityscapes. We ate deep dish pizza, great burgers from Kuma’s Corner, and jicama salad and duck enchiladas at Frontera. I fell in love, with a bar. It was five days and it went by too fast. But it was long enough to see a city, a real one, and long enough to gain a bit of that perspective I’ve been missing. And I return refreshed, with a healthy dose of appreciation for what we’ve got here that you just can’t find anywhere else. It’s also very easy to see what we don’t have in Vegas, but exploring this issue through comparison is a slippery and senseless slope.

There’s a lot of discussion going on these days about the state of Vegas, the culture and community of this place, and where we are headed. Our backbreaking shift from ultra-growth mode to cover-up-and-hide recession fuels the conversation, and conceals the fact that despite its size and population, this city is an adolescent. So Vegas cannot be legitimately compared to New York or L.A. or this crazy Chicago place I just discovered, or even to metropolitan areas with closer population like Houston or Philadelphia. We are just a baby, or maybe more appropriately, a whiny preteen.

One publication I write for recently did a package called What Las Vegas Really Needs. All the usual suspects were rolled out: A pro sports team. Cultural and economical diversity. Walkable, urban areas full of retail, restaurants, museums and fun shit. Public art. Public transportation that actually works and makes sense for the region. (A Vegas L-train would totally be like Total Recall.) In a demonstration of egotastical laziness, I declined to contribute to this package of articles. I didn’t want to beat a deaditorial horse. And I was disappointed, but not at all surprised, to see the vast majority of these suggestions are less What We Need and more Ways Vegas Could Be More Like Other Cities. That’s the way the collective Vegas brain operates because almost all of us are from some other place, and what we really want is all the convenience and sunshine of Vegas with the best amenities from back home. All we want is everything. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s fair. If you spend a lot of time wishing for these kind of things We Need, I think you should ask yourself why you want so much out of Vegas, which has done nothing but entertain you and make your life easy. Hasn’t it given you enough? I think so.

I’m going to go see more places. I don’t want to be such a shut-in. Other cities may expose the shortcomings of my home, or they might make me love Vegas more, but those are just instinctual, superficial reactions and they don’t mean anything. A larger understanding, a wider perspective … that’s the plan. My Vegas is going to grow up to be whatever it wants to be. There might not be a consciousness, a spirit or soul of this city that’s driving its development, steering growth and change, and that’s fine with me, too. Maybe Vegas doesn’t want. Did you ever consider that?