Las Vegas

My husband and I attended the International Real Estate Conference in Vegas last week.  The last time I was there was five years ago when we got married in The Venetian Hotel.  I felt it has changed a lot.  We stayed in the Paris Hotel this time because all the rooms in the Venetian hotel were booked.  Since we spent all day in the conference, dinner is the only time we had to enjoy a good meal and talk about the excitement of the show.  I didn’t do a lot of research before I left home, so this is a trial-and-error experience.

Our first dinner was at the Valetino in the Venetian Hotel.  It is located downstairs, near Delmonico.  It was not a pleasant dinning experience, neither the environment, nor the service or the food.  They had a big group that night, and our seats were right next to it with a metal curtain in between us and the party.  It was so loud that we couldn’t hear each other nor could the waiter hear us.  We waited so long for our waiter to come to our table.  He first asked my husband about the drink order (instead of asking the woman first), and when I told him what I want, he wouldn’t even bend his body to hear me so he says he can’t hear me.  I wanted him to ask the bartender to make a twist on the cosmo for me, but the waiter seemed not very up for it.

The food was not that great, compared to the price we paid.  We started with a crab salad with apple and potatoes.  I think the dressing doesn’t go with the salad, neither with the crab nor apple flavors.  If the apple was sliced would be better than being cut into strips.  The Gnocchi with meat sauce was good but not noteworthy.  I ordered the Halibut Steak with pan fried tomato and baked mini-potatoes.  The fish was good but not special, and I think if it was served with carrots or sweet potatoes or some greens it would be much better than baked mini-potatoes.

The second dinner was at Ah Sin in the Paris Hotel.  It serves Pacific rim food, which basically means a mix of Asian-style food.  The dinning environment and the service were nice but the food was not special.  As soon as I looked at the menu I knew we were not going to have something special because a good ‘real’ Chinese/Korean/Thai/Malaysian restaurant would have something better. 

The last dinner was at Enoteca San Marco in the Venetian Hotel.  It is located in the piazza and it is Mario Batali’s new restaurant, open for just six months.  This is the best meal we had in this trip, with a great dinning environment and good service.  We sat “outside”, at one of the marble-counter seats.  We could watch the appetizer chef preparing cheeses, prosciutto, olives, etc and could have a small talk with him.  We saw a tall hexagon shaped tank with clear glass windows standing in front of us.  We asked the appetizer chef about the contents and he told us they are curing their own meats such as salami and pancetta onsite by themselves in that hexagon-shaped tank. 

Our dinner started with Carne (sliced cured meats), so we had Prosciutto di Parma and Formaggi (cheeses) where we decided to have Pecorino Stagionato, Fontina Valle d’Aosta, and Robiola Bosina with house made bread and three different palate cleansers (black truffle honey, apricot with red pepper flakes, and cherry jam).  My favorite cheese was Pecorino Stagionato, a sheep’s milk that was aged 5-6 months from Toscana that was sharp and firm.  Our main courses were simple, a tomato, basil, bufala mozzarella thin crust pizza, and veal and ricotta meatballs on a bed of polenta.  They were delicious!