Enoteca San Marco

This post is part IV of the larger series: Celebrity Chef Dining in Las Vegas.  Other posts in this series include Part I: Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante and Part II: Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and Part III: Rao's

One of my favorite things to do in the summer in Boston is to enjoy a meal outside on a beautiful day. After visiting Las Vegas in July a few years ago, I realized why there is very little real outdoor dining in Las Vegas.

This desert is crazy hot in the summer, and outdoor dining would be no fun.

What I find amusing is how many of these huge casinos have built up these indoor spaces that almost feel like the outdoors. The most obvious ones are at Caesars Palace and the Venetian, where super high ceiling is painted to look like clouds against a blue sky. At the Venetian there are even canals in which gondolas float by every so often with opera singers inside. There’s also a fake St. Mark’s Square (modeled after Venice) and has both indoor and “outdoor” seats.

Enoteca San Marco is one of these restaurants, by Mario Batali, that sits in the Square. The benefits of these “outdoor” seats are that it never rains, the temperature is always perfect, and you might even catch some Italian singers putting on a show if you’re lucky (or maybe unlucky depending on how you feel about that kind of music!).

Here are detailed pictures of the relaxing lunch we enjoyed while attending CES (The Consumer Electronics Show) which was also held inside the Venetian.


Penne alla Norma tomato, eggplant, ricotta  $16

Rigatoni roasted cauliflower ragu, chili, rosemary  $16
I got the “roasted cauliflower ragu” which we both thought was excellent. A nice vegetarian dish that was just creamy enough to taste substantial without being a bit rich. I’m not sure how they made it, but after tasting the amazing flavors that come from cauliflower when you roast it, I would not be surprised if it were relatively simple!

3-vegetable sides

Solid food, and not a bad deal at $4 each. The roasted beets were good, although I actually like the ones I make better. The farro salad was healthy and tasty. Again, nothing show stopping, but the fresh ingredients made this dish good (farro is a whole grain, sort of like eating spelt or wheat berries). The third vegetable was Brussels sprouts. I was surprised when we received the dish, because essentially it was just a salad of finely sliced raw Brussels sprouts mixed with feta cheese. This was slightly disappointing, since I felt that the Brussels sprouts could have tasted so much better if they were just given a chance to be roasted a bit so they could caramelize. Oh well, at least it was healthy.

Although the veggie sides were good, they were not super interesting. Bryan kept saying we should have ordered the grilled radicchio and mozzarella salad (which we got last year and was excellent).

Wine was a bit ridiculously expensive. They do give various options for volume, and you can order a 2oz taste, 4 oz glass, etc. Bryan’s 4 oz glass of wine was $20, which I thought was a bit crazy. It’s even high for Las Vegas!

Pasta is dried pasta, as they are trying to keep this a more lower-priced restaurant. All in all, the food is pretty good here. Plus, sitting out on fake St. Mark’s Square is sort of fun.

Venetian
3355 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(702) 677-3390

Enoteca San Marco

This post is part IV of the larger series: Celebrity Chef Dining in Las Vegas.  Other posts in this series include Part I: Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante and Part II: Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and Part III: Rao's

One of my favorite things to do in the summer in Boston is to enjoy a meal outside on a beautiful day. After visiting Las Vegas in July a few years ago, I realized why there is very little real outdoor dining in Las Vegas.

This desert is crazy hot in the summer, and outdoor dining would be no fun.

What I find amusing is how many of these huge casinos have built up these indoor spaces that almost feel like the outdoors. The most obvious ones are at Caesars Palace and the Venetian, where super high ceiling is painted to look like clouds against a blue sky. At the Venetian there are even canals in which gondolas float by every so often with opera singers inside. There’s also a fake St. Mark’s Square (modeled after Venice) and has both indoor and “outdoor” seats.

Enoteca San Marco is one of these restaurants, by Mario Batali, that sits in the Square. The benefits of these “outdoor” seats are that it never rains, the temperature is always perfect, and you might even catch some Italian singers putting on a show if you’re lucky (or maybe unlucky depending on how you feel about that kind of music!).

Here are detailed pictures of the relaxing lunch we enjoyed while attending CES (The Consumer Electronics Show) which was also held inside the Venetian.


Penne alla Norma tomato, eggplant, ricotta  $16

Rigatoni roasted cauliflower ragu, chili, rosemary  $16
I got the “roasted cauliflower ragu” which we both thought was excellent. A nice vegetarian dish that was just creamy enough to taste substantial without being a bit rich. I’m not sure how they made it, but after tasting the amazing flavors that come from cauliflower when you roast it, I would not be surprised if it were relatively simple!

3-vegetable sides

Solid food, and not a bad deal at $4 each. The roasted beets were good, although I actually like the ones I make better. The farro salad was healthy and tasty. Again, nothing show stopping, but the fresh ingredients made this dish good (farro is a whole grain, sort of like eating spelt or wheat berries). The third vegetable was Brussels sprouts. I was surprised when we received the dish, because essentially it was just a salad of finely sliced raw Brussels sprouts mixed with feta cheese. This was slightly disappointing, since I felt that the Brussels sprouts could have tasted so much better if they were just given a chance to be roasted a bit so they could caramelize. Oh well, at least it was healthy.

Although the veggie sides were good, they were not super interesting. Bryan kept saying we should have ordered the grilled radicchio and mozzarella salad (which we got last year and was excellent).

Wine was a bit ridiculously expensive. They do give various options for volume, and you can order a 2oz taste, 4 oz glass, etc. Bryan’s 4 oz glass of wine was $20, which I thought was a bit crazy. It’s even high for Las Vegas!

Pasta is dried pasta, as they are trying to keep this a more lower-priced restaurant. All in all, the food is pretty good here. Plus, sitting out on fake St. Mark’s Square is sort of fun.

Venetian
3355 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(702) 677-3390

Rao's (Caesar's Palace)

This post is part III of the larger series: Celebrity Chef Dining in Las Vegas.  Other posts in this series include Part I: Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante and Part II: Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill.


Is it worth the hype? Does it really have the same menu as the New York establishment? What’s the food like?

These were all questions running through my mind as I considered what our meal at Rao’s would be like.

Just a bit of background. The original Rao’s is a tiny Italian restaurant in New York City and has been there for decades. It is soooo popular at this point that it almost seems like you have to know someone to get a reservation.  The tiny restaurant, which only has ten seats, only seats one reservation per evening.  Worse yet, seven of the ten seats are already reserved for regulars, many who have been coming for decades.  This leaves exactly three seats a night.  No wonder it's virtually impossible to get a reservation.

Two years ago, Frank Pellegrino, co-owner of Rao's, decided to open a new outpost in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace. This second location is run by Frank Pellegrino Jr., the owner’s son and his wife Carla, who is the executive chef.

Supposedly the menu is very similar, with many of the most popular dishes from the NYC establishment also available in Las Vegas.

I was very, very curious.




When you first enter, they have created a copy of the original NYC façade, and thus you feel like you are in a fake “outside” walking up to the entrance of the restaurant.

We were seated in the back “patio” section, which was actually surprisingly pleasant. It really felt like we were sitting in the outside patio, oddly enough. You could see the brick outside of the “restaurant” and above us vines hung throughout.

We enjoyed a very good 2006 Tuscan Tignaloto (sp?) wine highly recommended by the sommelier ($195). It was a delicious (albeit expensive!) wine. No complaints there.

The service was a bit spotty in the beginning. It took us FOREVER to receive our drink menus and even longer for the waiter to come by. The timing of things was a bit weird.  The bread came super early, and then the sommelier tried to serve the wine at the same time the waiter was describing dishes to us. A bit weird, but our waiter was so nice (after he eventually came) that we decided we could forgive the hiccupy service at the beginning of our meal.

And the food? Oh man, the food is really really good.

We ordered two starters. The Frutti di Mare is classic, and one of their most famous dishes in the NYC restaurant. This was really delicious. First off, the seafood used was very fresh and cooked perfectly. The shrimp was juicy, succulent, and “popped” the way properly cooked shrimp should. The calamari was soft and tender, and the lobster was absolutely divine. The seafood salad was tossed in a very light dressing of oil and mixed with some chopped celery, kalamata olives, and parsley and finished with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Even though it sounds so simple, the combination works perfectly and the final product is addictively good. The portions are surprisingly generous, and I was half full after our appetizers.

We also ordered the deep fried mozzarella with tomato sauce, which was very good. Bryan thought the mozzarella was very high quality, and it was perfectly fried. Although it was solid, it was less of a “WOW” dish compared to the frutti di mare.

Fore our entrees, .Bryan ordered the veal chop with cherry peppers, which was recommended by our waiter.  He also got a side of the special, which was pasta with proscuitto and peas in a light cream sauce.

The veal chops were AMAZING!!!!! Oh my goodness, it was definitely one of the best meat dishes we have ever had at an Italian restaurant, and that unfortunately includes all the restaurants we have tried in the North End in Boston. The combination of the juicy grilled veal chops with the tangy and spicy cherry peppers just worked incredibly well.  I don't know how else describe it except that you have to try this one.  A must-try.

The pasta was also good, although I thought they over-cooked the fresh pasta. A far cry from the super chewy amazing pasta at B&B Ristorante the other night, the pasta here was a tad soggy, not unlike the texture of the pasta of the lobster fra diavlo at Prezza. Neverthless, the flavors of this dish were solid, though nothing particularly exciting.

I ordered the marinara pasta because I really wanted to taste the quality of their tomato sauce. WOW. San Marzano tomatoes really do make a difference! I have had Rao’s jarred tomato sauce and their version of marinara is the best commercial jarred tomato sauce I have had.

This was many times better than the jarred version. Slightly spicy, this sauce had a deep rich tomato flavor that was sweet from the tomatoes themselves, not from the addition of sugar. I loved it - I felt like I could eat it forever.  Unfortunately, the fresh pasta, again, was overcooked. Still, the sauce was so incredibly beautiful that I didn’t care and ate the soft pasta regardless.

For dessert we split a ricotta cheesecake. I was curious how it would compare to the ricotta pies we have ordered at Mike’s Pastry in the North End.

Well, it was good, although I prefer the ricotta pies from Mike’s Pastry.

Over all, it was an excellent meal. There’s something to be said about a restaurant when everything is either good or amazing. Really, except for the slightly spotty service and the overcooked pasta, everything else was great.

If you go, definitely order the frutti di mare appetizer and the veal chops. I absolutely loved the tomato sauce as well, although maybe it’s not worth ordering the fresh pasta since they seem to over-cook it.

Yum . . wish I could try the one in New York. Oh well, at least we "Plebs" get a chance to try many of the dishes in Las Vegas.

Caesar's Palace
3570 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(702) 731-7110

Haiti

I know so many of you have donated to the Haiti Relief effort already.  Others, like me, may still be waiting.  Waiting to decide whether to give, how much to give, where to give . . .

If you feel moved to give, I urge you not to wait too long - it's easy to forget these things.  I still kick myself for doing the exact same thing after the earthquakes in China.  I waited . . and then I didn't give.

So, I have decided to join the Blog Away Hunger campaign.  This is a group of bloggers coming together and agreeing to donate a portion of their ad revenue towards the Haiti Relief effort.

I will be donating 5x my ad revenue for the months of January and February to the American Red Cross.  Furthermore, the company I work for has offered to match my donation dollar for dollar (if made by Feb. 12, 2010), resulting in a total effective donation amount of 10x my ad revenue for the months of January and February.*

If you have ever wanted to explore my old posts, now's a great time to do it, since ad revenue is counted by number of impressions (clicks).  I have put some links to my favorite posts after the jump.

If you are a blogger and want to donate your ad revenue as well, check out the Help Haiti Campaign over at Blog Away Hunger.

If you want to make a much more direct impact, please donate directly.  I urge you to give unrestricted funds (instead of earmarking them for Haiti specifically).  This allows the organizations as much flexibility as possible to use the funds where they needed most.
The American Red Cross
World Vision
Doctors Without Borders

Exploring Tiny Urban Kitchen
I often like to do series.  For example, you can check out some of my favorites restaurants in the Boston area or my favorites eats in Southern California.  Many of these series are based on the eating trips that I take, such as the Foodbuzz Festival in November, Camping at Yosemite, my birthday in New York City, Christmas in California, and the current series, celebrity chefs in Las Vegas.

There's the trusty Restaurant Index (which I try to keep as updated as possible), if you ever want to explore by region.

Of course, I don't eat out all the time.  There's plenty of cooking.  As a starting point, there's always the Recipe Index. Some of my favorite cooking posts:

Oven to Pan Seared Steak an awesome method for making steak in a tiny urban kitchen.

Sauteed Hollow Heart Greens I harvesting this "noxious weed" from my pastor's garden and cooked it!

 Ratatouille A simplified yet just as stunning version of Thomas Keller's famous dish

French Macarons I'm not a baker, so this felt like a rite of passage  - and they turned out ok!

Hi-Rise Vanilla Loaf  I was tickled to finally learn how to make my favorite loaf from my favorite bakery!

Mochi Sushi Part I and Part II These were just fun - wacky creative energy flowing

Wheatberry Salad: getting on a health kick lately!  See related posts on Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Roasted Cauliflower, and Green Mango Salad. 

Hello Kitty Rice Crispy Treats - my cousins loved these.  Check out related post about Rice Crispy Totoros.


The following are the recipes I use most often:
Taiwanese Meat Sauce over Rice (Lo Ba Bng)
Chinese Sticky Rice (Nuo mi fan)
Oven to Pan-Seared Steak 
Microwave Steamed Fish With Black Bean Sauce (Chilean Sea Bass)
Lion's Head Casserole
Stir Fried Baby Bok Choy
Cold Asian Cucumber Salad
Vietnamese Spring Rolls
Ro Gen Mian (Ban Genh) - Pork, Bamboo, and Mushroom Soup
Homemade Kettle Corn
Italian Biscotti 
Hi Rise Vanilla Loaf


I love doing the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 posts.  I've done three so far in 2009:

A Culinary Tour of Hot Pots Throughout Asia
A Stroll Through the Night Markets of Taiwan
and my personal favorite: Kyaraben On Steroids

Of course there are plenty more, but this post is getting long enough.  Enjoy exploring!

Jen

*Because of the Feb 12 deadline for the company match, I will have to do some guess-timating for the amount of revenue that will be generated in the second half of February.

Mesa Grill

This post is part II of the larger series: Celebrity Chef Dining in Las Vegas.  Other posts in this series include Part I: Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante.

Unlike many of the other Food Network celebrity chefs, Bobby Flay only has one restaurant in Vegas. That might be part of the reason why that restaurant is always SUPER crowded. It almost seems like it’s a given you have to wait if you don’t make a reservation.

What’s the draw?

Well, it does not hurt that this restaurant is in Caesar’s Palace, one of the most popular and crowded casinos, partly because it’s attached to the huge Forum Shops Shopping Plaza.

But that can’t just be it – Wolfgang Puck’s Spago (in the same complex) is not nearly as crowded. And even Rao’s is not crowded in quite the same hectic way.

Well, I don’t know the exact reason, but I can tell you that the food at Mesa Grill is amazing. Bobby Flay is truly a master of using interesting, bold flavors to spice up ordinary dishes. His dishes are nowhere ordinary, and everything has some creative kick to it. I love it.

This was my second time here, and Bryan’s third, so we tried to order some newer things, one of which became one of the best duck dishes Bryan has ever had in his entire life.  I’ll let you know what you should order if it’s your first time there at the end of the post.




Bread is awesome – I love blue/yellow corn jalapeno muffins.

For starters, I ordered the salmon and tuna tartare. Served with fried blue corn and plantain chips, I thought the dish was pretty good, although not my favorite. I felt that it was a bit too sweet and spicy for me, although Bryan liked it (he can handle more heat than I can). The raw fish pieces were marinated in some sort of sweet and tangy dressing, and then each one was paired with a different chili sauce.

Bryan got the fried calamari, which was paired with an avocado chili sauce that was amazing! Definitely we both liked Bryan’s appetizer better than mine, even though mine was still pretty good.

Bryan got the ancho chili duck, which he thought was incredible. He said it was one of the most enjoyable duck dishes he's ever had. That’s saying a lot, considering he’s had the famous Peking Duck at Celestial in Taiwan, the signature “Duck for Two” at Salts, and the pressed duck with fois gras terrine at Daniel  in NYC. The duck breast was juicy, flavorful, and paired immaculately with a sweet and spicy sauce that had hints of fruit and chili.

The duck came with a tamale filled with bacon - yum!

I ordered the "Tiger Shrimp and Roasted Garlic Corn Tamale" off of the appetizer menu as my entrée. The shrimp was perfectly cooked, and tasted delicious when combined with cornmeal of the tamale and the sweet, rich, and creamy corn sauce covering the entire dish. The tamale has a wonderfully strong sweet corn flavor. It’s definitely a rich dish, and is probably better shared as an appetizer!

We got a side of carrots, which was only OK. I’d order something else next time.

Dessert was freshly made cinnamon and anise churros dipped in dark chocolate. These were good, and the chocolate sauce was a fun touch. Compared to the monster-sized churros I like to get at Costco, these were more refined and had a lot more sugar on the outside. Honestly, I think I like the Costco ones better (shhhh!!!). These were still delicious though (especially after I brushed off about half of the excess sugar), and were immensely enjoyable with the dark chocolate sauce.

Over all, this place makes excellent Southwestern food with various creative kicks. If it’s your first time, you should order some of his signature dishes, which are all amazing. Definitely get the duck blue corn pancakes as an appetizer and the New Mexican rubbed pork tenderloin as an entrée.

Enjoy!
Caesar's Palace
3570 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(877) 346-4642