A Winter in Vegas

It's become a given at this point.

Every January Bryan and I pack our bags and head out to sunny Las Vegas in the middle of Boston's frigid winter. Usually, it's a welcomed relief from the cold East coast weather. This year, oddly enough, Las Vegas got a horrible cold spell, and, I kid you not, it was warmer in Cambridge than in Las Vegas on the day I flew back.

Despite the cold front that had attacked Las Vegas, we still had a great time. We spent our days checking out the Consumer Electronic Show (cool new TVs, tablets, 3D printers, and even a toy you control with your brain waves!). At night, we visited the incredible restaurants in Las Vegas.

They had on display my new travel-sized food camera, broken down into its parts!

 Here's a peek at some of the places we visited!

We may have figured out the secret to nabbing one of those hard-to-get Riserva steaks at Bryan's favorite steak restaurant in Vegas: go during lunch. We scored two Riserva steaks (Bryan was thrilled), and I tried their burger, which was fantastic (how can you go wrong when they are grinding up their own 60-day dry aged beef for this burger?)

We enjoyed paella at a popular Spanish tapas restaurant inside Aria.

This really unusual, off the menu, "secret" drink ("just ask for the "flower" drink) from the bar at the Cosmopolitan comes with these mysterious yellow flowers. Once you chew the flower, the drink begins to taste really really different. It's a wild tongue "trip" that you just have to try to get the full experience.

We were treated to an absolutely stunning, over-the-top meal at one of the nicest restaurants on the Strip, complete with this sugar spun dessert that just blew us away.

This wild, intimate tasting menu consists of 20 courses and incorporates everything from dry ice to blue flames in a 2-hour dinner. It very well may be one of my new favorite restaurants in all of Vegas.

One of the biggest shockers of the whole trip - running into an ex-US president at Mesa Grill. He actually said "hi" to all of us before sitting down at a table really really close to us. Yes, there were tons of secret servicemen around. Apparently he had given a keynote speech at CES earlier that day.
You can't beat this: gorgeous views of the Grand Canyon on my flight out of Vegas.

Stay tuned for detailed posts on many of these restaurants above!

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