Get toothpick cumin lamb + boiled fish in whatever spicy sauce you prefer and you'll be happy

Cumin lamb was unique but also kind of pedestrian. I won't crave it. Would eat a lot of it, and it was good, but I probably won't order it again if I'm just ordering for me. Spice: mild
shredded pork in garlic sauce was delicious, don't know what else to say. It's got zucchini "noodles" in there, tons of garlic, and good spice level. spice:mild-medium
Wontons in red chili oil were also super good, though not my fav version of the dish I've ever had. Spice:medium

Wife and I preferred Mian Noodles in all, and we preferred mian's dumplings in red chili oil, but there's something magical about that dish. Burning spice but also a nice sweetness. It's like crack-level addictive.

Wanted to order the boiled fish in red chili sauce but there were only two of us and pregnant wife wasn't feeling fish today. A couple times was sad I didn't have mung bean soup. I did order hot tea but ended up pouring the tea over my cup of ice. The tea was v good.

going to Gallagher’s Steakhouse, thoughts? spending around $50 or so for a new york strip maximum.

Looks good Wyman, thanks for pics + review

Egg & I on Sahara is now in the running for greatest eggs/bacon/toast/potatoes i’ve ever had. only a time at Grand Lux 4 years ago with fluffiest sunny eggs seems comparable. that is all.

It is very good, very reasonably priced, and very different from most buffets because it embraces the small plate concept, so you are not getting the standard buffet fare, with a smaller but higher quality selection.

I'm not a huge fan of duck, but I seem to recall liking the duck cassoulet.

I love the Egg & I. Every time I am in LV I go there several times. They have so many good things on their menu.

+1 to Egg & I. Also great place to eat if you're cutting carbs, you can swap out your hash browns/toast for more meat for like $2 extra.

Egg and I is okay...problem is I like every other breakfast place in Vegas better. Cracked Egg for instance is much better...try the coffee cake, which comes with your meal instead of toast. It’s better than Egg and I’s banana nut muffin by a sizable margin.

The Egg and I's corned beef hash made me sad. If you are from the northeast or Midwest, it just isn't what you expect. The corned beef is shredded instead of cubed, the potatoes and it is kind of a congealed mass with crust only on the outside of said mass.

It isn't actually bad, just unexpected. Kind of like ordering a steak and getting a pot roast. Sure, pot roast is great, but when you are expecting something different it is off-putting. From what I have noticed this form of corned beef hash is a west-coast thing.

I have been too afraid to try their biscuits and gravy or eggs benedict because I have too high of an internal bar set for those dishes and I don't really need to gain any weight.

Oh, and the Italian American Club Restaurant really sucks. I meant to write a review of it a while back, but I had trouble finding the words for it.

The ambiance is 1950s Chicago mob. Shiny suits. 1950 retro party dresses. A parking spot "Reserved for Mario." Random waiter begging for his life when an older gentleman bumped into him* "I'm sooooorrryyy, Pauley! Don't be like that. I didn't see you there. Let me get you a towel and some soda water. It won't stain. Come on, I'm a good guy. I always treat you right. You know that. Please, Pauley, don't be like that." Tables too close together and too close to the bar. A few women wearing extremely large sunglasses to hide obvious black eyes.***

I (very obviously not Italian to everyone who has sight) and my friend (also fairly obviously not Italian to everyone who has sight) sat at the bar. The bartender made drinks directly in front of us. He didn't make eye contact. He just made drinks 18" away from us.** He did this for some indeterminant amount of time. Several orders of drinks. No acknowledgment of our existence.

After this uncomfortable situation of having drinks made at us, he looked directly at me and said, "I'm sorry, but I can't serve you or your friend."

(to be continued)

*I didn't write that backward. Waiter got bumped into from behind by a very shiny suit suits that was filled with a somewhat wobbly old man, and the waiter apologized for being bumped into after the shiny wobbly suit man whispered something into his ear.

**I had a tape measure with me. The bar top is 2" less deep than most. This, interestingly now, and uncomfortably then, made it feel like he was making drinks in our faces.

***I made that bit up, but it would have fit the general milieu.

That's the strangest post I've read in awhile.

I thought that it was just me.

It was a strange dining experience. Anyway, to continue:

After a while the bartender said that the reason why he couldn't serve us was that he was only making drinks for the tables and that the bartender who makes drinks for those at the bar would be around shortly. This made me feel a little bit better that it wasn't simply because we were clearly not card-carrying members of the Italian American Social Club.

The bar bartender eventually showed up and I got a gin and tonic. It tasted, unsurprisingly, exactly like a gin and tonic. My friend ordered some drink, but I can't remember what. He didn't complain, so I assume it was acceptable. We asked the bar bartender for menus. He, interestingly, brought us menus. We, as you'd suspect, perused the menus. You probably didn't immediately suspect that we'd settle on Caprese salad, meatballs and sautéed calamari since I did no foreshadowing that would make you suspect such a thing, but that is exactly what we did.

The Caprese Salad was well-constructed. Clearly they paid attention to presentation. If it weren't for the under-ripe tomatoes and excessively sharp onions, it would have been an excellent dish.

The meatballs tasted like meatballs. Maybe a little bit under-seasoned, but tender. Given that the clientele was, on average, not exactly spring chickens, this was not unexpected. Definitely no plot twist here. The sauce was definitely not made in-house, unless they also have an in-house Prego or Ragu factory. Upon tasting the dish, you'd likely excitedly exclaim (on the inside, since you are presumably not the sort of person to just excitedly exclaim things out loud in a restaurant), "just like Mom used to make!" if you were raised in a single-parent household and Mom had to work two full-time jobs to make ends meet.

The sautéed calamari, when it was brought out appeared (we couldn't see it before it was brought out, of course) to be what most people would call "fried calamari swimming in some sort of sauce." Definitely breaded. Definitely fried. Definitely in some sort of sauce. Possibly sautéed in said sauce, but definitely not what you'd expect after ordering something called "sautéed calamari" unless you had never had sautéed calamari. In that particular case, you'd have no expectations at all. After my friend insisted to one bartender (the bar bartender, not the table bartender) that it was "not sautéed calamari," the bartender brought over the other bartender and they retorted with "it is sautéed calamari." This argument of contradiction went on for quite a while.

This would seem unfair since there were two of them and only one of my friend, but he is a ferocious arguer. To avoid you thinking that I made a new paragraph simply because the last one was getting too long, think of a jaguar, and then imagine that instead of ferociously biting a gazelle on the neck until it dies, it instead keeps contradicting the bartenders who are saying that the calamari is indeed sautéed. The bartenders, for their part, just kept contradicting the reality of it not being even remotely a dish that could possibly be called sautéed calamari, and by extension, my friend. Like all chess games between gazelle and jaguar it ended in a stalemate.

After my friend made it abundantly clear that we did not want fried calamari that had then possibly been sautéed, the bartenders took the dish a few feet away down the bar and ate it aggressively in our general direction while making yummy noises at us. Unlike an argumentative jaguar (since they do not have thumbs and cannot work a smart phone properly), my friend spent the next 20 minutes googling pictures of sautéed calamari to show the bartenders, but they were not particularly interested. The bartenders declined to acknowledge that we existed from that point forth, which was probably best for everyone.

Overall, a ten out of ten experience.

The try hard is very strong with this one.

You don't like horrible over-the-top writing style with abundant clichés and nonsensical metaphors?

No.

I agree. I never read my drivel unless I am feeling a self-flagellation is necessary.

On the other hand, it was a fairly accurate review.

Having dinner at Esther’s Kitchen Wednesday night with the GF. We love that place.

Should we ask Brian The Mick write the review?

Heard that chengdu taste is selling up. Not sure if they’re moving or closing or selling out, but someone I know had the realtor flyer through the mail.

Best gelato in Vegas: Gelato di Milano, they also do the best coffee in Vegas.


Laughing at ALL the breakfast suggestions, the only thing that I don’t classify as nasty cheap diner crap here is Bouchon at Venetian. I also recall an excellent breakfast on the terrace at Morels at palazzo.

Everything else is just so bad and plastic tasting. Black bear diner, mamas, egg works, all just weird sloppy rubbish with terrible coffee and carton juice.

For fun, next time you’re at egg works order a cappuccino and see what you get.... we actually thought it was a hot chocolate it was so sweet “it comes in the packet like that” is the answer you get

god no

he should be banned from the internet

Oh and whoever said pizza rev was good owes me $25.

They’re not even pizzas, they’re more like flatbreads or quesadillas then pizzas.

This is the casual dining thread. You order hash or sausage gravy and biscuits or something that requires they crack some eggs and/or fry up some sausage or bacon, MAYBE pancakes or crepes (aka anorexic pancakes).

You don't (EVER!!!!) order something that includes hollandaise or something that requires that they have a espresso machine unless you are introduced to the guy with the whisk (in the first example) or the guy who assembles/disassembles the espresso machine. Literally everyone else other than you knows this.

Well, not being american I can live with that. I consider any place I can walk into in flip flops and shorts casual, so to me Bouchon is casual dining.

its actually making me think how lucky we are in europe when it comes to decent mid range breakfasts. I look at that photo of egg and I above, and it looks like the standard junk on a plate from any one of the interchangeable diners in town. A place that would be out of business pretty much anywhere in europe or australia within a month (unless its near a construction yard).

Here breakfast is either utter crap, or very good but expensive. I'm sort of feeling its just a vegas thing, in LA and NYC there's loads of great little breakfast spots, so I dont really understand it.