Hey all,

Have only had a little time for live poker these past few months, with a couple of short trips to LA to play at the Bike and one day of 40/80 mix in Vegas while tour guiding some friends. I've also had some tasty food/wine and thrown in a trip to Toronto for a few Raps vs. 76ers games. This week the wifey and I are headed off on a world tour for June, followed by a return to Vegas at the end of June/early July for some pokers.

Here's a quick recap of the past few months.

March

Food/Wine - Skip ahead if not interested in wine chat
We started off March with a napa cab tasting in Calgary and a visit up to Edmonton to meet with our wine friends there.



Napa Cab Tasting - A mix of some mostly new and old Napa cabs. Stylistically I love the old low alcohol classics like Diamond Creek and Ridge, both sub 13.5% while maintaining excellent fruit quality and ripeness. Being a 1998, the Diamond Creek was probably better a few years ago, but that's more a function of the vintage than the wine IMO. These can generally go 20-30 years with ease.
The 05 Shafer HSS was excellent, just starting to integrate that massive amount of new oak that it always sees. I tend to like these minimum 15 years old, and 20+ is much better. It was my first time having the Lail, which I thought was very impressive, a powerful but well balanced young cab. The 2013 Lokoya Mount Veeder was outstanding and the WOTN for me, a truly brilliant wine. Too bad the Lokoya prices have gone nuts the past few years. I'll have to nurse my last 2003.
As for the others, the 2015 Memento Mori is a big sloppy napa cab, unbalanced, overtly alcoholic, and a total miss for me. The Bevan cellars is good, but the residual sugar is again so high, these 15-17% alcohol cabs of the past 10 years are just completely out of whack. California does a fantastic job when alcohol is kept in check, but these newer producers that release their wines at $500 a bottle and pretty much have bottled jam turn me off. Stormy Weather is another over the top wine, not my style, but good value if you like monsters.
Outpost was solid.

All in all, a very informative tasting, and re-affirmed some of my previously held thoughts on Cali cabs.

Next we headed up to Edmonton for a few tastings:



On the first night we did a Cayuse tasting. Cayuse is one of my favorite wineries, and Christophe Baron is an amazing winemaker. We did a horizontal of the single vineyard wines from En Cerise, En Chamberlin, Cailloux and Armada, along with the flagship Bionic Frog and a group of other Baron wines (Horsepower and No Girls labels) We did this single blind to be a bit more objective, and the results were very interesting. The Frog definitely sees more oak and has more sweetness than the rest, and the Armada is really fabulous stuff. Horsepower and No Girls seemed more delicate than the Cayuse's, and a bit less intense. I could go on with the notes, but let's just say it was a phenomenal tasting and very impressive.







Night 2 was peking duck and Riesling/Pinot Noir/Grenache. This whole lineup impressed and paired great with the duck at Golden Rice Bowl in Edmonton.





On the afternoon of day 3, we headed to a friend's house for a wine and champagne date. This is a tradition we've created with them, where we bring our coloring books and some champagne and just chill out for a few hours. They are great friends and champagne-a-holics, but after they had kids, it became a lot tougher for them to ever find time to have a glass of wine. So we came up with these Sunday afternoon coloring dates and they are a hit. It's actually super relaxing and great for the mind to just zone out and color.

The 96 Dom Perignon is probably my favorite Dom, and is in a great spot right now. Lemon and apple, massive biscuit/toast still, firing on all cylinders, laser acidity and focus. The key with Dom is you need to give it that 20+ years. The 96 is probably my favorite still, and that includes the 82/85/88/90 renditions.

The 90 Krug Clos de Mesnil is a true legend of champagne, and was unfortunately an off bottle. Aiyaaaa, that is truly a bad beat.

LA Trip
After all that copious wine drinking, needed to head down to LA to chill out and play a little mix.

First off, wifey decided that the Wofford Terriers were gonna win March Madness, so we had an online site add them to the futures picks for the bracket.



Wofford +10000 one time!

We then went to the dog park to find some rungood terriers, came up with these.



After winning their first round game, unfortunately Fletch went cold as ice vs. Kentucky, missing 100% of his 3s and we lost

So much for our rungood terriers.

Next up we got to put in a little mix session at the Bike. I think I played two sessions over a couple of days and I must say, the 30/60 at the Bike is infinitely softer than the 40/80 game at the Bellagio. At the Bike it runs as a 25/50 or a 30/60 depending on the day, and the action is great. It would be so nice if I didn't have to drive an hour from Van Nuys to get in the game each day, but free accomodation is free.



In the first session of 30/60, I played bad, playing too many starting hands in Drawmaha which was my undoing. Ended up -1120 over an 8 hour session. That said, having not played mix in a solid 3 months, it wasn't too bad of a loss.



The second session went significantly better and after a quick $600 hit and run at 5/5 NL while on the waitlist for mix, I got a solid session in and cashed out up about $1500 in the second session.



After the mix game broke, I hopped in the 40/80 LHE because there was this really nice lady who used to be on Saved by the Bell (the second one, new class or something) that was drinking and blind raising every hand. I'm no LHE player, but when the game is good, the game is good. As a poker player, it would be a disservice not to hop in this game. The bad news was she was not only blind capping every street, she was hitting too. It was pretty outrageous, she won an entire orbit consecutively and just crushed the game. Fortunately/Unfortunately I was card dead except for one hand that she actually folded. Won a small pot and took my $300 profit in 20 minutes in the game




We also got a chance to hop in the LAPC $570 Archie event, my first Archie tournament. Actually the first Archie tournament I've ever seen. Had a super fun table with Frankie O'Dell, Ken "Teach" Aldridge and a few other ppl. Unfortunately we were card dead when blinds started getting big, so only lasted about 4 hours.

The best part was probably playing with Teach though, just a super nice guy, everyone in the room came up to say hi to him and he was incredibly polite to all the players. I really like the older poker players who are nice to the all the recs, and really know how to make people feel welcome in a game. Cindy Violette is the same at the Bellagio 40/80 mix, it's a skill that young players of today (me) all need to take note of. Being nice at the table and not being on your cell phone the entire time really makes for a much better experience, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Overall on this trip ended up about $1400 over two days of poker, -$20 on Wofford though!

I also found a phenomenal sushi place up in Van Nuys. For anyone who lives there, it's called sushi Shin and is run by a native of Tokyo who's dad owned the famous sushi Shin in Tokyo. It is a small restaurant up on Encino blvd, and will run you about $150 for the 16-18 piece omakase. I can show all the sushi pics if people are interested. His monkfish liver marinade is really outstanding, ask for that if you go. We actually went back to this place on back to back nights it was so good. We also met a couple who incidentally had also gone to Masuda in Tokyo, which was a pretty funny coincidence.

Most of the trip was spent eating tacos 2-3 times daily though. When down in LA, I love eating tacos, as Mexicans don't travel north of the 49th parallel. Too damn cold. Mexican food is hella expensive up in Canada and the quality is garbage. So I just hit taco trucks repeatedly every time I'm in Cali. Since I stay with my brother up in the San Fernando valley, these trucks are on every corner. I also have countless taco pics, but not sure people want to see those.

During the trip we also headed off to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center since there was a dressage show that day. Bought a little stuffed horse to put on wifey's big horse's head.



Will update with April LA Trip and Toronto trip for NBA playoffs next time.

April

After working for a couple of weeks, it felt like time to head back down to LA and get some more of that juicy mix game action. But the first thing to do in LA is to go to my favorite spa and get a little rejuvenation.



Love that vaginal rejuvenation, lol. Like John McClane said in Die Hard, "F@ckin California"

Next step, grab a few tacos at El Taco Llama before making the hour drive down to the Bike





Rungood greyhound, RIP Gavin Smith.

Back to the Bike for some more mix. Today it's 25/50 instead of 30/60, and the action is great. I yoyo my stack a few times up and down about 1K, before deciding to finally cash out up about $1200. It's been a while since this trip, so I can't remember too many HHs. Also, the player pool in mix games is pretty small, so I don't want to comment too much on individual play.

That said, overall play at these stakes is bad. This is the entry level game for LA, with the Commerce games usually starting at 100/200. Many of the people in the game have played less than 5 sessions lifetime, and barely understand the rules, let alone any of the math. There is usually at least one player per night who is playing their first or second session ever of these games. Needless to say, these games are amazing. I ended up playing 3 handed both nights I played this trip, for at least 4-5 hours.

On the 2nd day of play, I run a little better and am in the game for 1K, out for...



Overall I like the mix at the Bike a lot, the players are generally nice, comp/valet situation is good, and it's profitable. It's also much niver than the Commerce. The big downsides to LA are the commute and the player treatment of dealers. The behavior of the players towards dealers is downright horrendous, with constant swearing, throwing of cards, etc. I'm pretty sure every player in the mix at the Bike would be 86'd from any Vegas poker room. TBH, maybe they all are already.



Oh, one more thing about the Bike. I absolutely love that they call the BJ/Baccarat pit the "Asian Games Pavilion"

That's raycess lol!

True enough though, I think I was the only white person in there out of a few hundred people, so maybe they're onto something.


You can also get your own wine storage locker at the Bike. Fine wines under bright lights, hope it's UV proof glass

Food



Back to Sushi Shin for Round 3! This time with pics. There is only one menu which is the omakase containing one appetizer course, nigiri and a dessert.



This is the appetizer course the first time you go. It has oyster, baby squid (ika) and a conch. The ika and oyster are fantastic, conch is good but not great.



On subsequent visits, he changed it up for us and we had the appetizer course with his excellent marinated monkfish liver (Ankimo) and oyster.



There are a few unique pieces at Sushi shin, our first time having them as nigiri in either Japan or anywhere else. The first is bamboo (takenoko). When in season, bamboos is an unbelievable ingredient, and this was no different, such amazing crunchiness, a perfect contrast to the rice.

Here are most if not all of the remaining fish, cannot recall all names at this time, will try my best.


Kinmedai (Golden eye snapper) and Tai (Red snapper)






Hotate (scallop) - Shin has one of the sweetest and best prepared scallops we've ever tasted.


Akami tuna


Seared tuna


Ebi miso - Excellent


Kohada - Shad. This was a very strongly flavored piece of shad, not my favorite.


Aori-ika - King squid, very well prepared, great texture and sweetness


Another seared tuna, chu-toro. I would prefer this not seared.


Ikura - The best pairing with a beer. So perfect together.






This uni is from British Columbia, Canada. My first time having Canadian uni and I must say it was very good.


Another of the unique pieces at Shin, the baby chive nigiri. This is really great, these chives came in the fanciest packaging I've ever seen, with a tiny little box with just enough chives for a few pieces of nigiri. Really different but good.


Anago - Great piece


Tofu dessert. This might be the single best item at Sushi Shin, and the fish is excellent. He prepares this tofu himself and it is incredibly light, creamy, airy and the base is a molasses/brown sugar type sauce. This is a literally perfect 10/10 unbelievably amazing dessert.

Overall, Sushi Shin is very good and much better than most places in North America. That said the service is a significant weakness. It is a small family run operation, just the chef and one server. Despite us only being a max of 8 people on any of my visits, there were simple things like chopstick bands not being picked up, miso bowls not being cleared in a timely fashion, water not refilled, etc. These aren't really acceptable at a place that costs around $150 per person for dinner. Also, if there are only 4 of us there, this becomes extra problematic.

But if you're living up in the valley, this is a great spot, probably the best you'll find.




We also hit Park's BBQ in K-town while in LA. Since we're heading off to Korea in a few weeks, we decided to try out the famed K-town scene of LA as a baseline for comparison. We tried one place up in the valley which was solid, and Park's, which was much better. It seems like the fancy foo-foo version of Korean BBQ, but all the meat and sides were excellent. I think the main criticism of this place is that people want more food for less money. IMO there's already way too much food, how much do you really need to eat. It's like AYCE sushi, who needs this?





Toronto

Two weeks after this LA trip, wifey was presenting at a conference in Toronto, so we got a chance to go check out the 6ix. I was the conference husband, meaning sleeping in and buying Stubhub tickets for Raps games. Conveniently, the Raps were hosting games 1+2 of the second round while we were in town. Bink!

We also got a chance to eat at some of the best restaurants in Canada, including Canoe, DaiLo, Buca and Bar Raval.





The first stop after landing was Canoe. This is one of the old, well-respected restaurants of Canada, and this week they were doing a tasting menu of their most famous dishes since their inception. Situated on the 54th floor of the TD building downtown, it was definitely different from what we expected. I was thinking it would be a stuffy place with an older clientele, and what we found was just the opposite. This place was all young people, we might have been the oldest in the restaurant. It was a Friday, which always gives a skewed perception of a restaurant's clientele, but this was all date night with young girls in short skirts and guys who still had acne. Super surprising.

In keeping with this, the service was incredibly casual for a restaurant of this reputation/caliber. Our server at one point was talking to us while pouring drinks at another table. Wifey and I had to stare at each other dumbfounded by this one. That's OG level of service right there (OG=Olive Garden).

Onto the food. This is the Nostalgia Menu from Canoe's Past.


Cocktails

2002
2002 - Alberta beef tartare + p.e.i. oysters, salsify + hazelnuts - A solid but unspectacular start, the fried oyster needed to be a little bit lighter/crunchier, and not sure the bresaola added much to the dish.


2012 - Duck ‘tongue to tail’ - dodine of Muscovy duck, foie gras parfait + quince vinaigrette
Excellent dish, foie gras parfait had outstanding texture, great balance and no hint of being overly heavy


2011 - smoked boudin noir + sweetbreads
Jerusalem artichoke risotto, black walnuts + morels
Another very good dish, the well prepared artichoke risotto kept some toothiness that acted as an interesting contrast to the boudin noir and sweetbreads.


2001
roasted + braised hen
whipped garlic, cipollini onions, maple bacon + tarragon

This was great as well. All the sauces in this meal were rich and delicious and the hen was perfectly moist and tender. Cipollini's in a good sauce are always amazing, pretty hard to screw them up


2000
warm apple confit
quince ice cream, vanilla mousse + macadamia nut

Again very good. Not overly sweet, the tartness of the quince balanced the sweet apple and mousse nicely.

Wines


After chatting with the Somm, we found a couple of off list bottles of interest. The first was this Comando G Vino de Paraje Rozas. This is old vines Grenache from Madrid, meaning super f@ucking weird. Madrid isn't much of a wine growing region, so this was definitely something we had never seen or heard of before. It had a very neat funk, strawberries, white florals and black currant on the nose. Also some black pepper. The palate showed dried fruit character with medium high acid and low alcohol. It paired fabulously with all of our courses. Really neat stuff.


For dessert, we found a Wegeler Bernkasteler Doctor Auslese, one of our favorite vineyards. This was just singing, explosive fruit, laser beam acidity, tremendous balance and finish. He wanted to coravin us each a glass, but after trying it, we just had to have the whole thing. This was awesome.

Overall Canoe was very good. It's not Michelin star quality in terms of service, but the food is very good and super reasonable at $115 Canadian for a 6 course tasting menu. That's like $80 USD right now, lol.

On day 2 we got up early and went for a walkabout, hitting up a couple of nice Belgian waffles for breakfast.



For dinner pre-game we went to Buca (original location), an Italian restaurant.


They have their own charcuterie program at Buca, and unfortunately, it was quite disappointing. The chunks of fat in these meats are too large, look at the finocchiona in the far frame, about 70% fat and sliced too thick. Total disaster. This is why wifey is taking an 8 month charcuterie course next year, to combat this ****.


Pastas were good but nothing special. I will give them credit for cooking it properly al dente, but these are nothing to go out of your way for.


The pistachio/morello cherry millefeuille dessert was very good, best part of the meal.

Now that we're done with Buca, it's time to head over to ACC (for some reason I can't call it scotiabank arena) and watch game 1 of Raps vs. Sixers.

Doing the GTO Stubhubbing, we were able to get some nice tix for about 2/3 face value when someone panicked around 3:30 pm. Tix were all gonna sell, but some people are just huge stubhub fish.



Let's gooooooo! #Wethenorth I prefer #Wedanorf



Drizzy wearing that lol sweater.



I found a fun guy!



Tipoff!

Overall super fun game and raps crushed 108-95. I was surprised that the atmosphere wasn't more insane, especially for Round 2, game 1. That said, the crowd would get way better in game 2!

Will post more later about the last couple of days in Toronto, more food, Raps game 2 and Vladdy Guerrero Jr's debut weekend.

Cheers,

TF

Enjoying the pics and writeup

Caught up with the whole thread, really enjoyed, thank you. Will keep up to date with your adventures!

So glad you're pokering, eating, drinking, and sharing it all with us again!

The way you can be so descriptive of food and wine, I figured y'all were at least 50 years old

...I meant that as a compliment

Lol, thx. Turning the big 35 soon. Food adventures have been a staple of life since age 20 though, so we’ve been around the block.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else, or maybe it was mentioned upthread,

Aren't you an MD also? What's your specialty?

I too am 34 years old and working in health care! I'm a med/surg nurse on a cardiac telemetry and kidney dialysis floor

Yup. ER doc in Canada. The land of milk and honey . Prolly same person.


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Well done sir. Thanks for the TR!

Toronto Part 2

We started day 3 by grabbing some tickets to the Jays vs. A's game and got to see the 3rd game of Vlad Guerrero Jr's career. It's early season, meaningless baseball and the Jays are awful, but chilling out at any sporting event is still great in my book.

When we were parking before the game, found this super sweet car in the parking lot.



Here's Vladdy!



I will say, compared with his dad, this Vlad is one thick milkshake!



Being a thick milkshake won't stop you and the 3rd base umpire from getting crushed though.

We showed up in the 3rd inning just in time to see the A's score the tying run at 1-1. The game remained a pitching duel and went to extra innings so we got some extra value and 9 innings even by showing up an hour late

In the top of the 11th, Oakland scored 3 to go up 4-1 and most of the small crowd that remained gave up hope and headed for the exits. This was all I could think of:



In the bottom of the 11th, the Jays got a 3-run homer by Brandon Drury to tie it up and then Justin Smoak singled in the winning run for the epic comeback and 5-4 win.



We then walked up to College street for our reservation at DaiLo, a restaurant that blends a variety of asian cuisines in a beautiful and delicious way. This ended up being our favorite restaurant in Toronto.



We went with the chef's choice menu for $65 per person, an absolute steal. Unfortunately I think I only took two pictures of the meal, probably because I was gorging myself and everything was phenomenally good.

We started with the crispy octopus tacos, with red braised pork belly, sambal aioli, jicama shell. These were great bites (no pic). We also had the sweet and sour pork hock, which was fantastic as well.


Next up was fried Watermelon, bean sprouts, basil leaves, pickled melon rind, pork floss.
So fresh and explosive with the watermelon and basil flavor, I actually don't even need the pork floss, but regardless could eat loads of these.


Whole Fried Giggie Trout, nahm jim, green curry aioli, soy glaze
Amazing, but the soy glaze is definitely the best of the three sauces, didn't really need the other two.

I wish I had more pics from this place, but cocktails were great, the sommelier did some great, esoteric pairings with the meal and we got out of there for somewhere around $200 CAD with more than enough excellent food and wine. This place is a huge win, highly recommended.

Since we were on college street, we decided to walk next door to Bar Raval, another on the list of the top 100 restaurants in Canada. Why not go bang bang and just get them all done in one night

Bar Raval is an absolutely beautiful space, one of the coolest roofs I've ever seen. Unfortunately, we ordered a couple of cocktails and they were awful. Two of the worst cocktails I can recall in the past years, and we were already half cut from DaiLo. We weren't even able to finish them, so we decided to just call it a night and head home, since wifey had to present the next day at conference. Boo Bar Raval.

I'd say we went 2-2 with restaurants in Toronto, DaiLo was awesome, Canoe very good, Buca mediocre (though much better if you skipped charcuterie) and Bar Raval turrible (cocktails only, food not tried)

During the conference the next day, I got some amazing 6th row seats for half face for Raps game 2. Again Stubhub fishing, seemed like people hit the panic button around 330 PM, then tickets jacked up leading to game time. Got these at absolute lowest price for seats this good.

With these you're supposed to get platinum club entry like 90 minutes before game time, but the problem is unless you've made a reservation for dinner by calling, you still can't get in until an hour before. It's stupid and frustrating, especially cause Canada isn't very nice outside, even in April.

The good news is the drink lineups and food in the platinum club are super short, and the roast beef place is actually really damn good. Despite my love of all things taco, I did not try the Tacos del Norte.









After game 1, we asked the usher which seats were best for game 2, he told us rows 5-6 are optimal, so we went with that. Lower down sometimes view gets a bit obstructed. These were great seats for sure.



Oh hai Marc!



From the outset, game 2 had a stellar atmosphere, super loud right from the tip. The D-fense chants were on right off the bat and everyone was crazy pumped. Unfortunately the Raps came out shooting like hot garbage and were down 13 at the half. They made it close after the 3rd, but the sixers closed em out with Reddick shooting too well in the 4th.

Regardless, awesome time and wish I could be there for the finals! #Wedanorf!
All in all, a great trip to Toronto.

Vegas
After making a quick stop at home to shave the p*ssy (my cat you sickos), it was time to head off to Vegas.



On this trip, I was actually enlisted by a group of 12 female ER docs in our department to take them around and arrange dinners etc. So it was mostly a tour guiding trip where I would try to fit in a little bit of poker/gambling. I also got a cold and lost my voice completely on day 2, so became a semi useless tour guide. That sucked.

The first night we ended up drinking vodka-vodkas in one of the girls Aria sky suites (these are super nice value btw) and getting wrecked before heading to Marquee. Despite being assigned to get mix and booze before us arriving, she just got straight vodka and no mix, so we were drinking vodka mixed with vodka lol. Pretty damn rough, but I will say there is almost no hangover when you just have vodka and the occasional water.

After going to Marquee, no one liked it so we just stumbled out to the Chandelier bar and kept drinking. After a few hours, I'd lost my voice, so one of the other girls convinced us to all go roll craps. I kind of despise craps, but did it for the group. Started off down a quick $500, but we finally got a hot shooter and made it all back. I then proceeded to play some super drunken blackjack and VP before falling asleep at about 6 AM.





The second night we hit Jaleo for dinner and it was actually fantastic. No pics, but an awesome spot for a large group of girls to share all the items, get sangria, gin&tonics, etc. And 13 of us got out of there for $800 after tip, which is pretty awesome for on strip. Highly recommend the endive dish (pictured in a previous TR) as well as jamon iberico with pan con tomate. It was also a lot less loud than expected for being such an open restaurant.

After dinner everyone was pretty much dead from the excess of night one, so it was the early night. Again played some craps with a friend and we saw 9 consecutive rolls between Aria and Cosmo without a single point. Aiyaaaa!

After they all went to bed, I saw 80/160 mix running at Bellagio so headed over to see if I could get in the crazy mike game. It was all full, but they had a $4/8 mix running for the first time I'd ever seen. It usually runs at Aria, never seen it at Bellagio. I was in the mood to play, so I hopped in and played 3-5 handed for a few hours of relaxing fun. The 80/160 had two seats open and then broke immediately, so we would have to wait til another day for that.

On day 3, we went to Rose Rabbit Lie for dinner. My first time there and it is definitely a unique place for Vegas. The dinner theater is entertaining, but it is loud! It is def the type of place to take a girl you want to impress but don't want to talk to If you want to have a conversation, probably not the best place for you.

Also, the food was actually very good at RRL. We had a set menu with a few options and I went with the beef tartare, branzino and dessert was chocolate. There were also a few shared items for the table. Everything was very good 8/10 quality.


Tartare with shrimp cracker


Branzino


Dessert

After dinner it was off to the Chandelier bar for more drinks. For those that go, it's important to know all 3 levels have different cocktail menus, so you have to explore. Overall the Chandelier Bar is beautiful and the cocktails are very good. Spent a lot of time there this trip and really enjoyed it.

After the Chandelier bar we headed to the former Mandarin Bar, now Waldorf-Astoria bar. Still a beautiful spot and most drinks were good, except the cucumber one that tasted like lawn clippings. Don't get that one.

We finished the night back in a sky suite drinking more vodka-vodkas and having a dance party. By 4 AM it was off to bed.

The next day, most of the group was leaving, so with a smaller group I lucked out into going to 3 of my favorite restaurants in one day. I took 3 of the girls to Lotus of Siam for lunch. Still awesome as always, no pics tho.

Then after most of the group left, it was just me and two of the girls in the evening and we got into Kabuto for dinner and then hit Raku late night. Both were great, with Raku still being my preference. We also played about 6 hours of BJ between TI and the Wynncore, and lost $25 each over this time while getting a ton of drinks. Good value.

Regarding Kabuto, some people had commented they thought pieces were getting smaller, and I must agree. Also, have they changed all the chefs, I don't think I recognized any of them this time.





2 of the 3 nigiri flights, missed the middle one. The first two are part of the $48 nigiri menu, the 3rd was our custom order. Everything was excellent flavor wise, but I think the pieces have shrunk.

The other great news of this trip was that my room for 5 nights at Cosmo was comped, and I used my CC to pay for all the meals for 13 people at a time, so at 5 points per $1 spent, I got almost 40K points on the trip (50K for platinum). Super sweet.
Interestingly though, for those of you that eat at Cosmo and care about status, the restaurants are sticklers for only wanting to let you take the points for your portion of the meal. Eg. At Jaleo on the first night, we had an $800 bill, but when I checked my Identity points they only gave me 400 points for $80 instead of 4000 for $800. I fortunately had kept all receipts, so took it to Identity desk and had corrected. On the second meal at Rose Rabbit Lie, it was $1700 before tax/tip, but I only got points for $900 of it for some reason. Again had to correct it, and they actually then double comped it for me and I got like 18K points for that meal. Bink!

On the last day, after all the girls had left, I got a chance to play a session of mix games. The 40/80 was running at Bellagio, so after waiting a few hours playing mind numbing NLHE and a bit of fun 20/40 LHE with an aggro maniac, I got in the 40/80 game. In the early hours of the day, the game was decent but reggy. There was one maniac who punted off a few racks, then it was down to me, a rec and Cyndy Violette playing 3 handed for a while. Cyndy is super nice, but also crafty, suggesting we play double stakes in stud games only. Lol, nice try person who has a Stud8 bracelet.



In for $1500.

After playing 3 handed for about 1-2 hours, the game filled back up and we had 2 rec players, one of whom was capping with an A up in 2-7 razz and other crazy **** like that. The game was amazing. Time to grab a rungood greyhound and make money.





This kind of action was routine in this game, almost every hand had capped streets 3 or 4 ways.



Keeping on that grind.

Eventually I cashed out for about 5K, a nice little $3500 win. Bink!

With that it was time for one Royal draw on VP and the trip was over.





Back home, I decided to go shopping with the wifey since I had left her alone working while I was living it up in Vegas. Found her a sweet purse, but also found myself a nice backpack to use for this year's WSOP.

Here is my previous WSOP backpack collection:



And the new addition. I love cats



Also great news, the 2008 champagnes are rolling in with the Dom Perignon and Winston Churchill orders having arrived. For anyone who likes champagne, just buy all the 2008s you can find. They are gonna be legends. Like 96/90/88 good. Buy buy buy.



Tuna sitting on her 2008 Dom tower.

Thanks for reading. If everyone is still enjoying, we're off on a big eating trip starting tomorrow. First we head to France to visit Paris, Champagne and the Rhone valley. Then it's France direct to Seoul for 5 days, then Hokkaido and Tokyo for a week, then back to Vegas for a week. If you want food/wine reports for the next three weeks, I'll try to do my best. If you're all sick of the food/wine, I'll just do the poker once I get back to Vegas.

Cheers,

TF

Great updates. Disappointed to hear about Kabuto changes.
I am trying Kame next week and was still going to make a Kabuto trip. Maybe not now.

Probably going to play some mix this year also. LHE waits are brutal and sometimes i like a beak from the PLO at Aria.

You’re from Calgary? Play some of the great PLO games up there?

awesome TR and fantastic pictures! I really appreciate the effort and time. I am a big NBA fan; so really cool to see those pics.

Raps with the game 1 win against the dubs last night; really hope they can pull it off! I also love to read TRs with mixed game action; so between the food, alcohol, NBA, and poker; those TRs are the stone cold nuts.

I might have to pick your brain on some wines and champagnes; I was thinking about spending $500-1000 to get some bottles; not to save; just to drink.

Please continue all kinds of reporting. Thanks!

Love the TR and yes please keep going. Especially with Japan, sounds awesome!

Thanks, will try to keep this going through the next month. Gonna be visiting several champagne houses and wineries in the Rhône valley over the coming week, plus a few fancy and not so fancy restaurants.

Raps game 1 win woot! Wedanorf! Gonna have to wake up at 2 am in France and pirate live streams to watch rest of the series.

Always happy to chat about wine

Yup I’m from Calgary and the great game of PLO is alive and well up here.

Time to pack, heading to airport in 4 hours and it’s off to CDG and hopefully we can avoid those gilets jaunes riots on the Saturday we land. Don’t get me started on French riots.

Cheers

TF




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About that car: should've checked the trunk. Maybe it was the Canadian Reggie Hammond's car.

Wow, run better on that straight flush. Pulled 4 of those vs. 2 of all the other flush cards combined??

Great report as always. I live in LA so always happy to have new recs.

Glad I had food in front of me while reading!

Haha. Yes I ran absurdly good on that straight flush draw. It’s so crazy that straight flushes are only worth the same as quads though. Argh.

3 days into the France trip and some great meals and stories so far. Taking the train the champagne today, hopefully will get some free time to post an update soon.

TF


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France-Korea-Japan-Vegas Trip June 2019

In an effort to continue chronicling my travels, as well as bring you all lots of food and wine pics/info, I’ll try to post pics and comments from a big round the world trip from the past month. Maybe it will help some of you plan your travels/dining. Gambling wise, the only bit was a short BJ session in Korea at the Seven Luck Seoul COEX Casino. In Japan, gambling is still a no-no (though I’ll probably snap move there if poker gets legalized in the next few years). Rules were not the greatest and basically got rekt there. Also the only alcohol they serve there is Johnnie Walker red label or bad wine. Both are free, but aiyaaaa!

Currently I’m sitting on an Air Canada flight back home, and after a day layover in Calgary, will head down to Vegas for a week of WSOP before going back to work. So there will be some gambling and poker content finally, but for now it’s going to be a wall of food/wine, with the occasional countryside etc.

Serious survey questions for all, please respond:
1-Should this TR now be moved to some other forum and does the title require changing to “ongoing travel blog of Turd Ferguson”?
2-How are others uploading images so that they don’t take forever to upload. For those using photobucket, what resolution are you uploading at? 800x640? I’m at 1024 currently, but maybe need to switch.

This whole ridiculous trip got planned because I found a conference in Seoul and wifey and I also wanted to make a trip to France. Aside from poker, wine and food, I love luxury travel and using rewards miles/credit card churning etc. After finding a great business class redemption with Avianca to fly direct from Paris-Seoul on Asiana (an 11.5 hour flight), I decided to book that and then an Air Canada biz class flight home from Tokyo direct to Calgary. I much prefer using the extra miles to fly ANA 1st class (best airline/service/food I’ve ever flown), but you have to fly to a US City (eg. SFO/LAX) then connect back to Calgary. Wifey and I had flown the amazing ANA 1st the last two trips to Japan, but settled for the direct Air Canada flight this time. Wifey wanted to decimate the duty free (sake!!), so direct back to Calgary would be much easier than a connecting flight.

The only downside was that I couldn’t find any reasonable one way direct flight to Paris, so had to take Westjet’s economy. Boo! That said it was a new 787 and had a pretty decent hard product, and is the only direct flight from YYC-CDG.

And yes, I pretty much have all the vices, gambling, luxury travel, Michelin dining, wine… but I don’t buy cars or watches, so yay for moderation. That said, we’re all degens here, and moderation sucks, YOLO.

Enough preamble, let’s get to it.

France
I’m just going to go through my pics and do this day-by-day or a few days at a time.

Day 1 - Paris

We arrived in Paris on time and a little tired, headed over to the Louvre Piemont hotel (French-Italian?) and checked in. Despite speaking French decently and being in immersion my whole schooling, I hadn’t spoken much in the past 20 years, so it would be interesting to see what I could remember and how much the French would talk **** about us. Also, my French is not as good as I think, lol.

The biggest thing I learned in France was that I recommend Americans say you’re Canadian or something non-American when you visit. As soon as we told people we were Canadian, they pretty much immediately started talking ***** about Americans, it was hilarious. When we checked into the hotel (a nice 4 star place that I’d highly recommend), the front desk guy starting talking about how all Americans are fat and eat plates of French fries for breakfast. We were laughing our asses off. Whether it was a waiter, a janitor, whatever, they just unleashed constantly. Funny enough it was also D-Day while we were there, so as an American you could just go walking around saying “you’re welcome” that day, lol. Regardless, I love being Canadian.

Our dinner the first night would be at Le Clarence, a 2 Michelin Star restaurant in Paris. Given that I’m traveling for 35 days, I decided to only do a few truly fancy meals and try to not spend so much. Also, after Saison a few years back, we significantly curtailed our Michelin dining. That said, we tallied up the restaurants and stars and we’re sitting at 54 Michelin restaurants and 98 stars total now, so I guess we should break 100.

Le Clarence is the restaurant of former Chateau Haut-Brion owner Clarence Dillon, an American. It is located inside his former home in Paris, and is an absolutely stunning place. A multi-story house, we were first met by the maître D and decided to go to the bar for a drink before our meal. The bar is not so much a bar as a spectacularly beautiful salon with a bar in an adjoining room. This room transported you to another era, a place of excess and luxury. Ornate chairs, tapestries hanging from the walls, amazing. I don’t think enough people take advantage of this (we were only one of 3 couples who did), so I strongly recommend you do.

They brought us our amuse-bouche courses in the salon, and also made a fine house cocktail which was a variation of a sidecar.

Bar, lol.


Grissini, escargot, gougere and warm cheese puff. All very good, with the cheese puff being best. Champagne would have been the obvious choice if pairing.





Given that it is the home of Clarence Dillon, this restaurant has the largest list of Chateau Haut-Brion and its second wines of anywhere on earth, and provenance should be perfect for those who can afford it. There is one 23 page wine list just for Haut-Brion white and red!!! Then a second wine list for non-Haut Brion wines. This is probably the most insane thing about the whole meal. An analogy to this is like showing up at the Ferrari dealer and being given a list of every model ever made for purchase. Or something like that, basically completely mind boggling in what was available.


Tempura avocado with strawberry
Avocado had amazing soft richness enveloped perfectly by the light and crispy tempura. Black pepper was a great foil for the sweetness of the strawberry. Pea shoots and basil leaf added texture and vegetal quality to the sweetness of the strawberry.


Brioche
Very rich, served warm, incredible.

Butter
Brittany butter, incredibly creamy with rich flavor but a balancing acidity/tang on the finish. Reminiscent of heavy cream from the top of Jersey whole milk before it is separated in to heavy cream, cream, milk.



-Mackerel, tempura leek, squid, as well as a side dish mackerel with tomato and seaweed.
Very well balanced. Mackerel was incredible, fresh and had great texture. Leek was tender and sweet, tempura again gave crunch. There was also a balancing acidity from lemon pudding and chive blossom. A piece of squid acted as a veil, a perfect thin cut, this was a very creative use of ika.
Tomatoes were dense, but intense and slightly sweet with salty seaweed and feta. This was a top tier cross between Greek and Italian tomato salads.


-Turbot with zucchini flower, baby peas, fresh anchovy
Anchovy was incredibly fresh, so much better than the preserved version but still with very fine bones. Fresh peas were like the garden ones you steal as a kid, sweet and bursting with flavor. Creamy base to the dish had a neutral flavor but balanced the fish. The fish itself was cooked very well, but the density of Turbot is so thick, like John Dory or halibut, has never been my favorite.


-Poached oyster, light smoking, nasturtium flower
Flower added pepperiness, and light smoke enriched the dish.


-White asparagus sabayon with pig ear wrapped asparagus
Pigs ear- I prefer crunchy (Purple Pig in Chicago does a great job with pig’s ear), in this case the soft ear did not add anything to the dish.
Asparagus was cooked perfectly. The sauce incredibly smooth and velvety, the work of an expert craftsman/woman.


-Lamb
Great sauce, but no better than wifey’s (she’s Michelin 3* tho).Two types of sauce, a dense dark vegetable ash sauce and a lighter lamb demi glace. The lamb itself was mild in flavor and very tender.


-Beef and beef liver with fried artichoke
The liver slices were alternated with beef and the liver was very rich. The sauce was sweet and delicious. Artichoke was fried, and had a great depth of flavor. Would love to eat more artichoke prepared this way.


-Mussels and herb stuffed pasta
My god the tiny herb pasta was amazing. Buttery sauce, perfect cooked pasta with fresh herb flavor. Muscles were excellent, very well prepared. This probably speaks to where the mussels came from, unlikely cultivated though not sure of origin. Sea beans added great salinity. Really enjoyed this dish.


-Lamb with wild asparagus
Fattier cut, good sauce, similar as the lighter sauce before I think. The wild asparagus has very intense flavor for such tiny stalks. Despite the very potent flavor the wild asparagus, itES has a much tougher texture than the larger cultivated varieties. Given the season, asparagus would become a theme of the trip and we had both of these versions again later in Japan.



-Cheese cart
The French do not f@ck around with cheese. The strawberry sauce was amazing, so potent and ultra-strawberry flavor. All cheeses were exquisite, save for the mimolette which was a bit old. We had 9 in total.







-Strawberry sorbet, goat panna cotta with tomato jelly, raspberry pudding with fresh raspberries, fresh cherries
The sorbet was super intense, great texture, not grainy, and the tart aciditiy of the raspberries balanced the sorbet sweetness.
The panna cotta was interesting, as the tomato jelly on top made it more savory. I liked this but is was different for sure as a dessert. Could also act as an appetizer.

https://i1380.photobucket.com/albums...sgewv3pwm.jpeg
-Fresh raspberries and radishes. The raspberries were amazing.


-Strawberries with meringue, cream
Rich jersey cow cream flavor again, super ripe, in season strawberries. Outstanding.


-Chocolate mousse with gold leaf
Good as far as chocolate mousse goes. A small herb on top didn’t add tremendously, chocolate has to be pretty incredible for us to get excited.


Macaron – A perfect almond macaron.


Pic of the restaurant within the rooms of the home.



Overall Le Clarence is easily deserving of it's two star status. There were a few dishes that were not misses, but were also not at the level of greatness of 3 star restaurants. At 3* you shouldn't ever have a mediocre dish. Service was very good, only once was a course not served/cleared in unison, plating of the mimolette was done tableside and a bit messy, but overall very good. Also no regular crumbing done.

Regardless, a great first meal in Paris.

Again, please answer the survey questions above if you read this ongoing TR.

Thanks for reading.

100% keep it going. I don't care if you change the title or move the location; as long as I can still read about your travels.

Thank you for taking the time to put this together.

Keep posting!

If it isn’t too much effort, for those of us who don’t know as much about wine, for ones just named by location could you stick the primary grape varietal in as well so we have some reference point?

Sure thing. Wine content will get very heavy in the next posts as we head to champagne and the Rhône to visit a bunch of wineries.


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Keep it in this one. This has been a great thread to date as it is a solid mix of gambling and food stories.


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survey:

1) I suppose it should go in the travel forum. I'm assuming that would mess up everyone's subscriptions though, as some thread id would change, so maybe it's best to leave it here.
2) Don't use photobucket. They suck for a lot of reasons. I've moved to google images. As Bluegrassplayer has helped me update previous posts' image URLs, I've noticed a definite speed-up in page load times on my thread. Not sure what resolution I'm at though.