Vacation+ Salt lake City=Great Food

Over President's Day weekend Pat and I went to a boardgame convention in Salt Lake City, UT but took the opportunity to eat at some really good restaurants.

The first place we had dinner at was at the  Oasis Cafe.  You can see our selections for dinner below.
We had an amazing Salmon Bruschetta appetizer.

I had a grilled Salmon with a honey lavender polenta cake.  I thought the lavender might be overpowering but it had this great balance.  Pat had the wild mushroom risotto.  Both of our entrees were delicious and me with my sweet tooth was looking forward to dessert.

We ordered the apple cashew crumble.  A nutty take on an apple crisp that was warm and wonderful and topped with vanilla ice cream.

We also ordered the Lavender infused panna cotta.

While the presentation was wonderful:  the taste...not so much.  The overpowering lavender flavor was there and it was intense.  Eating it along with the berries made it palatable.  We highly recommend the Oasis Cafe(just steer clear of the panna cotta)...everything else we had was scrumptious!

Saturday, on our way to the Capital building we stopped at Wild Grape Bistro.  Pat had the Wild Beef Burger and I had the House Smoked Turkey Sandwich.  Pat's burger was very good.  My sandwich was good, although it definitely could have had a higher brie to everything else ratio.  The brie, one of my favorite cheeses, got a little lost in the sandwich.  We both splurged for the Parmesan truffle fries, which were well worth the extra dollar.

Sunday we had a hard time finding food.  The entire city practically closes down on Sunday mornings.  We waited until 11ish and tried to find an open Mexican restaurant without any luck.  While driving around searching for any type of food we happened across Caffe Molise.  An Italian restaurant that serves brunch.  Pat ordered the Salmone Benidictus(Eggs Benedict with smoked Salmon).  Unfortunately the eggs came overcooked.  The runny yoke that makes an egg benedict was a fully cooked yolk.  After eating one of the eggs we did finally tell our waiter who brought out two eggs cooked correctly.  Pat said it realy made a difference and enjoyed his second egg much better.  I ordered the Anacardi Tostata(an italian take ok French Toast).  The pieces of bread were crusted with chopped cashews and Frangelico.  It was served with a sweetened ricotta cream and maple syrup and it was delicious.  The chopped nuts got all toasted during the cooking and it was this rich nutty piece of bread.  The sweetened ricotta was a nice touch.

Sunday night we had dinner at Bambara.  We started with a local cheese plate.  It had a coffee crusted cheese that Pat really liked as well as goat cheese I thought was delicious.  There was also a parmesan and a blue cheese that were both good but not our favorites. For our entrees Pat had the Filet of Beef.  It was served with duck fat roasted fingerling potatoes and a leek puree.  It was a melt in your mouth steak and the mushrooms that were served alongside were the perfect accompaniment to the steak.  I got the venison with a wild Oregon huckleberry syrup.  It was served with a celery root puree, something I have had a couple times recently and have taken quite a likening to it.  The venison was paired with a cipollini, fingerling potato huckleberry hash.  The whole plate had a great balance to it.  Even Pat, who is not always a fan of sweet and savory being mixed thought it all melded together well.  We finished off the meal by sharing this:

 I know it's a little blurry but it's a turtle ice cream sandwich.  It was good but the ice cream was over frozen so it was really hard to cut off a bite without having the ice cream crumble.  I think if the ice cream had been that perfect creamy consistency then it would have been an A+ dessert.  Instead it was more of a B dessert, but we did eat it all, so obviously it was still tasty.

    Monday, we ate at one more Salt Lake City restaurant before heading back to Vegas.  We had lunch at Cedars of Lebanon.  It was a great middle eastern restaurant.  We had a very attentive server(possibly since we were the only ones in the restaurant).  We had their hummos as an appetizer, which was smooth and creamy.  I have yet to figure out how to make my hummos that creamy.  We both had the creamy red lentil soup.  Apparently a specialty that is only made a couple times a year.  It was very good, and I'm sometimes picky about my lentils.  Pat had a Chicken Curry dish.  The chicken was so tender and moist.  It was amazing.  I had the kafta Kabobs.  They were really good as well(although I think the winner of the better lunch went to Pat this time).  After our main entrees we did split a piece of baklava.  It was not the best baklava I have ever had.  It was homemade but it was the simple syrup the cook put on top that I did not like.  It had a strong citrus flavor, which just didn't enhance the flavor.  I also felt like the nut layer wasn't as toasty as I would have likied.

    So all in all Salt Lake City was a great place to go visit but more importantly eat!  Ok, ok, I like the Lake a lot too.

Tapas+Date Night=Nosh & Swig

Pat and I have tried a couple different tapas restaurants in Las Vegas.  Up until last night we hadn't been super impressed and felt like they were all just ok.  Last night we tried a new tapas place called Nosh & Swig.  Think modern tapas.  They are located in a shopping mall away from the strip so they were super easy to get to.  They recently opened so they didn't have the "swig" part up and running yet but if the "nosh" part is any indication of the future of this restaurant it will be amazing. The menu is broken up by protein and we picked one dish from many of the available proteins.

We started our meal with the sticky bun tacos.  These were tacos whose "shell" was an Asian sticky bun filled with fried pork belly, pickled cabbage, and a ginger soy sauce.  They were excellent.  The bun wasn't too sweet, something Pat was slightly worried about...he's not the biggest sweet person, the pickled cabbage was the perfect sour component to cut through the rich pork belly, which was perfectly crispy.  They were so good that we split the third taco since neither of us really wanted to give it up to the other person. 

The second dish we tried was the charred beef crostini.  It was a coffee dusted beef on top of a piece of Gruyere cheese on top of a toasty baguette finished with a horseradish mousse.  The coffee flavor was wonderful.  It paired perfectly with the horseradish.  The cheese was all melty goodness(I love cheese).  The only one small issue we had with this dish was that the beef was a little tough when you went to bite into it.

After the beef we opted to try the pretzel brats.  It was a chicken sausage on a pretzel roll covered in a cheese gravy with some sauerkraut on top.  The cheese sauce was amazing.  I could have licked it off the plate.  Pat was afraid this course would be too heavy but they really give you a perfect portion.  And the pretzel bread was great too.  I've really been into pretzel bread lately.

Our final non-sweet plate was the elote.  It was grilled corn with garlic butter, cayenne, and a cilantro pesto.  I am not the biggest cilantro fan but this was so good.  It wasn't overpowering cilantro.  The butter and cayenne really helped to tone the cilantro taste down.

After the elote I was craving dessert.  Pat said he was full and wasn't sure he would eat any of the dessert(little did he know how much he would enjoy it).  We asked our server what she would recommend and she suggested the cream cheese lote.  It was a Thai flat bread that they filled with cream cheese filling.  The flat bread is then rolled up and possibly grilled???  It was perfect.  Just the right amount of sweet(as our server suggested.  And finally it had a creme anglaise sauce on top.  Pat and I each ate half and it was delicious. 

And to top it all off the people running the restaurant really care about their diners.  When we got our check we noticed that they didn't charge us for the beef dish.  When we asked about it the waitress told us she took off the price because we had to wait so long for it.  We felt bad because we really didn't wait that long for the dish.  We actually enjoyed the relaxed pace of the dishes coming out.  Even if we had been charged for the plate the meal still was relatively inexpensive.  We were surprised at the low cost(especially after last week's extravagant date night).

We definitely recommend Nosh & Swig.  If you are in Vegas please, please, please GO to this restaurant(I really mean it).  We liked it a lot and want to see it do well.  It's in an easy area to get to, away from the strip.  You will not be disappointed.  I can't wait to go back.  I am excited to see what types of drinks(swigs) they will have on their menu....hopefully a fruity one I can enjoy!

Bubble Gum Sorbet+ Seafood=Anniversary dinner

So after Pat being sick for our anniversary week, me getting sick the following week, and then our reservation for the following week being cancelled because the restaurant was having a private party, we FINALLY got to celebrate our anniversary.  Our celebratory dinner took place at RM Seafood inside of Mandalay Bay.  The RM stands for Rick Moonen(yes the one that was on Top Chef Masters).

We arrived a little early and decided that we would explore Mandalay Bay to kill some time.  Next to RM Seafood is a Peter Lik gallery that you can walk through, and buy artwork at.  Peter Lik is a local to Vegas photographer.  He photographs nature and there were some awesome prints.  As a matter of fact there was one picture called Solace of the underneath of a pier in La Jolla, CA.  It was gorgeous.  Pat and I both could have stood there and looked at it for a long time.  And if it hadn't have been a couple thousand dollars for the print alone it would be hanging above our couch right now as I type this.  So if you are in Mandalay Bay you should check it out.  It was amazing, all misty and the waves were rolling in under the pier...just breathtaking.

So after the gallery and some other window shopping we arrived at RM Seafood.  They have an upstairs and downstairs.  The downstairs restaurant is more relaxed and casual.  The upstairs is more formal.  We had chosen to dine in the upstairs restaurant so we could do one of the tasting menus.

The meal started with a delicious pretzel roll along with a whitefish dip.  The roll was exactly what you would want in a pretzel roll.  Crusty pretzel outside, soft and chewy inside.  I'm not a huge fan of salt on pretzels so I was super happy that there was just a tiny sprinkling on the top.  The dip had a really nice flavor.  Not too fishy and complemented the roll perfectly.  It was even served in a cute tin with a custom label made to say RM caviar(the artist in me appreciates these touches).  Then we had the first of two amuse bouche appetizers.  The first was a duck pate with a purple mustard on top.  It was pretty good.  This amuse bouche was given to all dinners at the restaurant. Since we we ordered one of the tasting menus we got a second special amuse bouche.  It was an oyster on the half shell.  It was topped with a lemon juice and shaved coconut.  It had this really nice clean, ocean taste to it and was a great start to the meal.

The first course was tuna.  It was lightly seared, on top of a bed of lentils with a bacon foam...yes you read that right, bacon foam.  The tuna had that melt in your mouth consistency, the lentils were good(even though lentils aren't my favorite), and who wouldn't love bacon foam?  A great start to the courses.  The tuna was followed by a grilled octopus dish.  This was some of the best octopus I have ever had.  It was not chewy at all.  Just perfectly cooked.  The grill gave a perfect char.  On the plate was also some chorizo, which was also good, although may have competed some with the flavor of the octopus.  The third course was a cobia, a fish similar to swordfish.  A good dish but writing this a week after having it nothing memorable stands out about the dish. Following the cobia was both mine and Pat's favorite dish of the night.  The scallop was perfectly cooked.  It was served with a seared pork belly, which while very tasty was probably not needed, and a frisee salad, which helped cut through the fat of the pork belly.  Not only was the scallop great tasting it was the best presentation as well.  The plates were these upside down wide u shapes.  They were just really cool looking and helped elevate(literally) an already fabulous dish. 

The scallop/pork belly was the perfect bridge between the fish courses and the meat courses.  The next course was a trio of duck.  It had crispy duck confit, duck breast on red wine braised cabbage, and a duck sausage.  Pat and I first dug into the sausage and were both disappointed that it was not as flavorful as we thought it would be.  The duck confit was very good but the star of the dish for me was the duck breast over the red wine braised cabbage.  The duck breast was tender and not at all greasy.  The cabbage was the perfect sweet/sour addition to the plate.  It was a very solid dish.  The final course before dessert was a lamb osso bucco, on top of a celery root puree.  The lamb was fall off the bone delicious.  The celery root puree was creamy and sweet and perfect.  At this point we were both glad that the main dishes of the meal were done.  As amazing as they all were, we were getting rather full. 

Next out came the pre-dessert palate cleanser.  It was a vanilla ice cream with some mango or passion fruit little frozen balls...think dippin dots...they were delicious.  And then out came the main dessert.  I bet you were wondering when I was getting to the bubblegum sorbet.  So the main dessert was a marscapone cheesecake, with a bubblegum sorbet, caramel sauce, and graham cracker crumbles.  When the plate was first put in front of me I tasted the bubblegum sorbet.  And it was bubblegum tasting alright.  Like a frozen hubba bubba super sweet sugary sorbet.  I who love sweets, who have not met a dessert I don't like was not sure I would be able to finish the sorbet.  So I tasted the rest of the dish.  The cheesecake and caramel sauce were delicious.  They were rich and dense and went great with the graham cracker crumbles.  But before I gave up on the bubblegum sorbet I thought I should really try one bite of everything all together.  After all the chef put all the elements on the plate.  And when I took that bite the most amazing thing happened.  The bubblegum flavor disappeared.  That bubblegum sweet flavor cut through the rich dense cheesecake part.  And you just got sweet.  Everything meshed perfectly.  I never thought it would work.  It shouldn't have worked and yet it did.  It was the perfect ending to a great dinner.

And yet the meal didn't end there.  After our server cleared the table Pat asked me what I thought about a vessel on our table.  He thought it was a modern decoration and I looked at it and really thought it was a carafe to hold some type of liquid.  Well score one for Jen because I won.  Not more than five minutes after our conversation the waiter came out and poured some red liquid into the vessel and said he would be back.  A couple minutes later he reappeared with two small glasses and what looked to be a stainless steel water jug, except it wasn't a water jug but a liquid nitrogen jug.  The waiter poured the liquid nitrogen into the red liquid, causing the surface to freeze and lots of cool smoke to come spilling out of the vessel and crawl all over our table.  It was very cool.  The red liquid was actually an after dinner digestive tea that they cooled down table side with the liquid nitrogen.  Very cool.  The tea was very fruity and as such I enjoyed it a lot.  It was a great ending to a nice two and a half hour long dinner experience.

So if you are in Mandalay bay, I definitely recommend RM Seafood.  It did not disappoint. 

Shabu Shabu=Bland Bland

Last week I was trying to find a place to get take-out from and happened to stumble across the restaurant Shabu Shabu on Yelp.  The restaurant was categorized under both fondue and Japanese.  I like fondue.  I LOVE Japanese(even if I wasn't too sure of it on one of mine and Pat's early dates...I'm so glad back then I was trying to impress him and went with him to a Japanese restaurant even if I didn't think I would like it...but I digress).  So I love Japanese and I really like fondue, so what would there not to love about a Japanese fondue place?  And EVERYONE on Yelp loved it!  All I could find was raves about the place.  As a matter of fact the place sounded so awesome that Pat and I decided we should go there for dinner and forgo getting takeout.

So we walked into a very tiny restaurant in a strip mall.  It looked cool.  It had burners built into the table, just like a fondue place.  Pat and I each ordered a platter that came with two proteins, salad, and veggies.  The salads arrived first.  They were pretty good.  We really couldn't put our finger on what exactly the dressing was but it tasted pretty good.  During the salads the waitress, who was great, started our cooking pots.  We both went shabu shabu style, which was water with a piece of nori seaweed in it.  Shabu Shabu also includes three sauces:  a ponzu sauce, a peanut sauce, and a hot sauce(which was incredibly hot...although mixed with the peanut sauce pretty good). 

After our salads the waitress brought out our proteins.  Between Pat and myself we had scallops, shrimp, chicken, and pork.  The chicken and pork were sliced incredibly thin.  So thin I found myself wondering how they did it(I'm thinking they must have frozen the meat and then sliced on a deli slicer).  She also brought out two plates full of veggies, tofu, and soy noodles.

Then she showed us how to go about cooking our meal.  For the seafood you just drop it in and wait about 3 minutes, but for the chicken and pork you take a piece between your chopsticks, and while holding onto the meat you "swish swish" the meat for thirty seconds in the boiling water.  And so we did just this.  And after all that work the meal was ok.  The main problem was that the broth had zero flavor.  It was just bland.  One small piece of seaweed wasn't really able to flavor the broth well.  So thank goodness for the dipping sauces because without them I would have been thoroughly disappointed.  This way I was only somewhat disappointed.

 So the final verdict:  We will not be returning to Shaba Shaba and we don't really recommend it, unless of course you like bland food...in that case it would be a great restaurant for you.

Date Night +Restaurants=Reviews

     Welcome to our blog!  Pat and I are Mathematicians by day and foodies by night....well, some nights anyway...and the reason we started this blog is because as we are getting older our memories are getting worse.  For the past couple years we have been able to eat at some amazing restaurants and now it's hard to remember what we ate and why they were so amazing.  So we decided to FINALLY do something about that, especially since living in Las Vegas gives us some great opportunities to eat at a wide variety of restaurants...way too many for us to remember. 

    So just like you shouldn't grocery shop on an empty stomach, you probably shouldn't read our blog on an empty stomach either, as I can't promise reading won't make you more hungry.  Happy reading(Oh and if you have any restaurants we should try in the Vegas area let us know.)