Vegas Baby - 40th Birthday Trip

Hey All,
David here again, my wonderful wife threw me a birthday party in Vegas, she invited my two favorite people, her and myself. hehe

I thought I would throw some of the pics up here.

We planned the trip, not being big gamblers as a food trip. We watch Food Network, Top Chef and many other shows incessantly and wanted to eat at a few restaurants we love to see and chefs we have watched cook.

Our first night we ate at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill.



It was fabulous. Mesa Grill is in the middle of Caesar's Palace. We made reservations and were glad we did. We met a nice couple sitting next to us that probably like food like we do.

Carrie ordered a Tiger Shrimp Corn Tamale for an appetizer. I am not a shrimp fan but the shrimp were the best I ever tasted. The sauce was incredible.



Here is a bigger picture of the resaurant, cool fire images throughout the whole place.



I had a pork tenderloin that was delicious and a sweet potato tamale with a pecan butter melted on top. Carrie had a crispy squash blossom also, squash blossoms are good if you get a chance, we should have just ordered a side of these. They were filled with a creamy cheese filling and lightly breaded. Soooooo nice.

The Sweet Potato Tamale was the big hit for me and I came home and found the recipe online for the one I think is it. Here's the link if you want to check it out.

Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Potato Tamale

and here is a link to look at a video of Bobby Flay making the Tiger Shrimp Appetizer Carrie had.

This is a great video on how to make tamales if you ever wondered.

The next day we ate at 'Wichcraft which is a sandwich place that is ran by Tom Colicchio that is the host and showrunner for Top Chef. He has a nice restaurant called Craft Steakhouse that we didn't go to because it was out of our budget to do both Bobby Flay's place and his place, so next time for sure! Wichcraft is delicious and he has many restaurants...link here

We ate there twice and had great food, from a blt (with like a 1/2 pound of apple smoked bacon) to roasted turkey (with an onion balsamic marmalade), and a grilled cheese sandwich made with Gruyere and caramelized onions. Such great food. The real find here was the cream'wich cookies. I would love to describe them but I would fail. They had three flavors, chocolate wafer cookies with a chocolate ganache inside, oatmeal wafers with an apple cinnamon cream and peanut butter with a peanut butter cream filling. They were so good. This link takes you to Tom Colicchio's book on sale at Amazon but if you scroll down he has been nice enough to put the recipe. I will make them, one day I swear. The roasted turkey sandwich recipe is there too.

Just a couple of other pics for fun...

MGM Grand has the best restaurants but they also have lions there...but what is wrong with this pic?



Shouldn't those guys be lion food! The lions meanwhile look like they are some drugged out movie star.

For those of you that read the glitter toes blog, here it is....



Here is one of two regrets from the trip, a trip to Vegas with only two regrets can't be all that bad.



I love mysteries and puzzles and would have loved this if it was a puzzle but literally you went from station to station and answered a multiple choice question. If I was a fan of the show maybe I would have liked it better but I doubt it.

Other regret was a restaurant called Fiamma that doesn't deserve reporting. Just pass on the place. Scallops were okay but they were in a risotto that was cooked in fish broth that smelled fishy in the bad way.

It was a fun trip just hangout with the love of my life. Eighteen of my forty years I have spent with her and if I could change time it would only be to make the other twenty-two years be with her as well. She is the reason I love life as much as I do.