Vegas 2006 - Day 1
Nov 6, 2006
Today was relatively uneventful in terms of travel. I would, however, like to share from my “lessons learned” folder. No matter how hungry you are at the airport, never, ever, ever stop at that first place that has a catchy name, and offers “fine Chinese cuisine”. The Chinese cuisine at the “Wok and Roll” was “fine” in the way blind dates are described as “nice”. It was definitely the worst Chinese food ever. The beef felt over-boiled (and it was supposed to be stir-fried), basically mushy and tasteless. Too bad for me, both of the items I picked had beef in them. To add insult to injury, there were lots of much better restaurants on the way to our gate, like McDonald’s and Subway.
Things did look up quite a bit food-wise after we arrived in Vegas and Nicole took us to Osaka, a Japanese restaurant just north of the strip, the wedding chapels, the pawn shops, and the payday loan places. It has a lot of distinctions going for it, including being voted the best Japanese restaurant in Vegas several years going. The place itself was very unpretentious. Though we stayed in the sushi area near the front and didn’t look in the tatami rooms, as we have to have something to do on our next trip to Vegas.
The food itself was absolutely spectacular. We ordered a couple of things off the menu and shared them. We stayed away from a dish called the "Screaming Orgasm", but tried the sushi pizza, sushi lagasane, gyoza, and other relatively common dishes you would find in a sushi restaurant. One hint though, folks. The avocado in Vegas is much, much better than the avocado in Toronto, or from what Nicole tells us, Des Moines.
Then we hit dessert, and tried 3 items - mochi ice cream, tempura ice cream, and green tea custard. And to quote Meatloaf, two out of three isn't bad.
According to Wikipedia, mochi is "a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape". It's soft and sticky. Mochi ice cream is the rice cake wrapped around a ball of ice cream. Unfortunately, in this case, it was still frozen. It was good enough that we still ate it before had a chance to thaw.
Tempura is deep fried Japanese food, usually seafood (like shrimp) and vegetables. So, what exactly is tempura ice cream? Ice cream dipped in batter and deep fried for 2 - 3 minutes would give you, well, deep fried batter. If I remember what I read on the menu correctly, the ice cream is wrapped in cake and then lightly dipped in tempura batter and deep fried. This was very, very, very good. I'm drooling right now, just thinking about it.
But even the tempura ice cream was nothing compared to the green tea custard. They should have called this the "Screaming Orgasm" because .. well, y'know, the weak knees, the lost of speech, the weird "mmmmm" noises, the rolling back of the eyes. It was sooooo creamy, and green tea sweet. This was the best food I've ever had in Vegas, and definitely the best dessert ever. This bowl of green heaven, was definitely the culinary highlight of this trip.
After dinner, Nicole dropped us off at the Stratosphere. We were barely three steps onto the casino floor (because in Vegas, you can't actually get to anything important like the hotel front desk, the monorail, the bathroom, etc without making a trek through the casino floor) when a lady came over and wondered if we were going to be in town long, and whether or not we wanted to have free dinner and a show. For cripe sakes, we just wanted to check in! We promised to come back after we had checked in. We never did, but we would run into her kind again and again, and her kind would become the lowlight of Vegas on this trip. I'll rant about this in the day 2 post, as at this point of the trip, we just thought she was a helpful hotel employee. I suspect the latter is true, but the former definitely was not.
At the check-in, they asked if I wanted two queens or a king. I said that a king would be nice, but they were out, so somehow, we ended up with a suite that had a king size bed, for $50 more. The suite was really nice (though no coffee maker), and it was still cheaper than a room at most Holiday Inns I've been in. As I was roaming around the room, I found a sign that sans-spin said, "We've counted everything in the room, so don't you be stealing nothing, ya varmit". Oh, and high speed internet was $10 a day.
Today was relatively uneventful in terms of travel. I would, however, like to share from my “lessons learned” folder. No matter how hungry you are at the airport, never, ever, ever stop at that first place that has a catchy name, and offers “fine Chinese cuisine”. The Chinese cuisine at the “Wok and Roll” was “fine” in the way blind dates are described as “nice”. It was definitely the worst Chinese food ever. The beef felt over-boiled (and it was supposed to be stir-fried), basically mushy and tasteless. Too bad for me, both of the items I picked had beef in them. To add insult to injury, there were lots of much better restaurants on the way to our gate, like McDonald’s and Subway.
Things did look up quite a bit food-wise after we arrived in Vegas and Nicole took us to Osaka, a Japanese restaurant just north of the strip, the wedding chapels, the pawn shops, and the payday loan places. It has a lot of distinctions going for it, including being voted the best Japanese restaurant in Vegas several years going. The place itself was very unpretentious. Though we stayed in the sushi area near the front and didn’t look in the tatami rooms, as we have to have something to do on our next trip to Vegas.
The food itself was absolutely spectacular. We ordered a couple of things off the menu and shared them. We stayed away from a dish called the "Screaming Orgasm", but tried the sushi pizza, sushi lagasane, gyoza, and other relatively common dishes you would find in a sushi restaurant. One hint though, folks. The avocado in Vegas is much, much better than the avocado in Toronto, or from what Nicole tells us, Des Moines.
Then we hit dessert, and tried 3 items - mochi ice cream, tempura ice cream, and green tea custard. And to quote Meatloaf, two out of three isn't bad.
According to Wikipedia, mochi is "a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape". It's soft and sticky. Mochi ice cream is the rice cake wrapped around a ball of ice cream. Unfortunately, in this case, it was still frozen. It was good enough that we still ate it before had a chance to thaw.
Tempura is deep fried Japanese food, usually seafood (like shrimp) and vegetables. So, what exactly is tempura ice cream? Ice cream dipped in batter and deep fried for 2 - 3 minutes would give you, well, deep fried batter. If I remember what I read on the menu correctly, the ice cream is wrapped in cake and then lightly dipped in tempura batter and deep fried. This was very, very, very good. I'm drooling right now, just thinking about it.
But even the tempura ice cream was nothing compared to the green tea custard. They should have called this the "Screaming Orgasm" because .. well, y'know, the weak knees, the lost of speech, the weird "mmmmm" noises, the rolling back of the eyes. It was sooooo creamy, and green tea sweet. This was the best food I've ever had in Vegas, and definitely the best dessert ever. This bowl of green heaven, was definitely the culinary highlight of this trip.
After dinner, Nicole dropped us off at the Stratosphere. We were barely three steps onto the casino floor (because in Vegas, you can't actually get to anything important like the hotel front desk, the monorail, the bathroom, etc without making a trek through the casino floor) when a lady came over and wondered if we were going to be in town long, and whether or not we wanted to have free dinner and a show. For cripe sakes, we just wanted to check in! We promised to come back after we had checked in. We never did, but we would run into her kind again and again, and her kind would become the lowlight of Vegas on this trip. I'll rant about this in the day 2 post, as at this point of the trip, we just thought she was a helpful hotel employee. I suspect the latter is true, but the former definitely was not.
At the check-in, they asked if I wanted two queens or a king. I said that a king would be nice, but they were out, so somehow, we ended up with a suite that had a king size bed, for $50 more. The suite was really nice (though no coffee maker), and it was still cheaper than a room at most Holiday Inns I've been in. As I was roaming around the room, I found a sign that sans-spin said, "We've counted everything in the room, so don't you be stealing nothing, ya varmit". Oh, and high speed internet was $10 a day.
posted by Frank Yao | 9:18 AM
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