My Side Of The Table

Caveat: This is only what I ate while in Las Vegas. If you want to know what Robert ate, nag him to update “Some Psychotic Ramblings”. Oh, and if you want non-food Vegas stories, scroll down to the next post. This one is all about the food.

Monday: Perfect eggs, with buttery Lyonnaise potatoes and spinach sautéed with minced shallots and whole garlic cloves and more butter. The croissant was lathered in gorgeous peach jam. Tart tropical fruit “salad”. That was breakfast. Later, a raspberry tart layered with pistachio mousse on a sable Breton, garnished with edible gold flakes. Dinner was shared, big-eye tuna tartare pizza, an amazing composed seaweed salad, pate made from monkfish livers, seared scallops on top of a surprisingly strong and delicious Dijon-potato puree, and meltingly soft -- not chewy at all -- octopus with crunchy tentacles, in a jalapeno vinaigrette with seasoned cucumber slices. Oh, I almost forgot the spicy sushi that had honest-to-God Pop Rocks™ candy mixed in. You heard crackling, then fishy goodness exploded in your mouth. Dessert came hours later, Venezuelan hot chocolate, and banana split waffles with vanilla bourbon ice cream, chocolate truffle bits, caramelized Rice Krispies™, caramelized toffee bananas, chocolate ganache and caramel sauce. For those of you who know me, yes, I ate chocolate which I normally dislike. This was that good. (Robert had the aptly titled Euphoria Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge Sundae. I wasn’t going to tell you, but you should know.)

Tuesday: Oeufs au gratin with spinach and tomato confit in a Mornay sauce, along with brioche toast and blackberry jam. Lunch was Maine lobster rolls, which were three little hot fresh-baked sweet-ish bread rolls filled to bursting with butter-poached fresh lobster and served alongside hand-cut potato chips and an onion slaw. Dinner began with Morro Bay oysters on the half shell with piquillo peppers and (seriously good) Tabasco sorbet, placed on top of a bowl of chunky salt and black peppercorns with star anise scattered for both aesthetics and aroma. The mini sourdough baguettes came with sweet butter the consistency of pudding and a bowl of salt chunks. Maine lobster ravioli with lemon- olive oil puree, summer corn, marscapone and asparagus. Crescenza cheese mezzaluna was a vegetarian delight with braised black kale, wild mushrooms and parsley emulsion. Sweet corn pannacotta with marinated apricots, crunchy dry corn kernels, caramel ice cream and a popcorn tuile. Vanilla-infused chocolate soup. One final snack of a dulce de leche brioche before bed.

Wednesday: Robert and I shared a pastry basket with cheese Danish, strawberry croissant and a banana nut muffin. More perfect eggs (poached, this time, with beurre sauce) with spinach, and cherry jam with the croissant. Later, a smoked salmon pizza with salmon caviar and a Caesar salad with the largest fresh anchovy I’ve ever seen on a parmesan crisp. After a long walk, there was Italian thick hot chocolate, the consistency of a sauce but much more delicious and a shared butterscotch chocolate cream milkshake with dulce de leche ice cream, chocolate chunks, toffee sauce and pure chocolate. Dinner was just a damned good cheese bagel.

Thursday: We came home after another glorious breakfast (see above). This time the jam was blackberry again, the toast was cranberry and the pastries were a pecan sticky bun, and a banana nut muffin. It took two different stops to get the hummos, tabbouleh and tiropita.

It’s Friday afternoon as I write this. Except for coffee and a lot of protein powder, I haven’t eaten since.