Vegas: The Shorter the Skirt, The Worse The Food

Spent a week in Vegas earlier this month. In classic stick-in-the-mud form, I spent that time shuttling between a Root Cause Analysis course in the Flamingo conference center and my hotel room in the Westin, catching up on work and attending 5AM conference calls.



I did manage to do a little wide eyed tourist browsing (particularly impressed with the attention to detail at Paris), and a little fancy-dancy eating. Between Ceasar's, Paris, and the Bellagio, here's the major rule I discovered:

The showier the waitress, the more blase the food.

Shortest skirt was at Yellow Tail, the sushi place at the Bellagio. Even before the outrageous price per piece ($60 for 12-piece chef's selection), this was some of the sloppiest, most tasteless sushi I've eaten.

Next up, Le Burger Brasserie, featuring Le Waffle Fries. This was a not-bad tourist burger positively shellacked with a French sheen. $19 gets you a burger. For a side of the afore mentioned extra-french french fries, another $4.

On the third night, I made it over to Ceasar's, and found Mesa Grill. My waitress was a perfectly normal person, wearing actual pants. And it was - by far - the best meal I had on the trip. It's a beautiful space (as they all are), but unlike the other two, the minute you walk in, it's clear that it's run as a restaurant. Service was impeccable and crisp. I had a glass of California Syrah that was to die for (custom label for Mesa).



The best thing I ate here, and the best thing I ate on the trip, was a Gala Apple Salad. Primarily this is perfectly crisp chilled cubes of apple, with a few leaves of baby spinach, candied pecans and blue cheese in a chili-orange vinaigrette. Strange combination, beautifully executed. I could have had three of these, skipped the entree, and been a very happy guy.




Slightly less impressive, but still tasty was the Pork Tenderloin. Portioned for two, maybe three large people, this was delicately cooked tenderloin in a mild mole sauce. On the side, which was the best thing on the plate, was a sweet potato tamale. The mole was a bit on the bland side, though beautifully presented, but the tamale was heavenly.

All that being said, Vegas was truly a ball. Just walking down the strip is an education of what the human race can build given the raw ambition, unconstrained by anything. Eating mediocre there is still a good time. But through all the overscaled hugeness of the place, the food there is a subtle reminder that good food is made one plate at a time, by people who know what they're doing, regardless of the glitz around them.

Mysteriously Tasty Treats in ATL

There are few culinary wastelands that can match the domain beyond the security checkpoint in sheer food hopelessness. Maybe it's the captive audience, but airports seem completely set on finding the lowest common denominator in the American diet and seeing if they can inch that bar just a little bit lower.

There are a few bright spots: Austin's commitment to local food in the airport yields decent and improving results; Pappadeux in the E terminal at IAH is consistently good; Columbus, OH and Portland, OR both have fully functioning espresso places (Joe's and EspressoPeople, respectively). And, this week, I've got a new one: Cafe Intermezzo at ATL.

Granted, these places don't tend to age all that well, and Intermezzo is a new-comer, but from what I've seen so far, this place has real promise.

Intermezzo is located in the bookstore at the center of Terminal B, the flagship terminal in Atlanta's behemoth Hartsfield International airport. It's on the less traveled side, across the hallway from the major food court.

You walk in greeted by a massive pastry case. And these are legit pastries, super lush, super rich. The espresso machine is a force to be reckoned with, though as with most of the spit-shined bronze monster machines, this one's mostly show. The tables are scattered throughout - several in front in sort of a sidewalk cafe format, and several back in the bookstore, with a view of the planes outside.

I've eaten there a couple of times. This last time, I ordered a pot of coffee and a spinach artichoke crepe. I've been on kind of a crepe kick lately, and while this wasn't the best I've had it was really simple, and really tasty. Essentially, this was a two-ingredient deal: baby spinach leaves and artichoke hearts. No bechamel. No cream. No goop at all. The spinach was just wilted - perfectly done, I expect simply from the heat of the crepe. The artichokes (full disclosure - I am an artichoke fiend) could have been a bit higher quality and a bit better trimmed, but they were tender and a nice compliment to the spinach. The coffee was lovely as well, nice full body, light roast, delivered in a little pot with a ceramic mug. It's a small thing, but ceramic mugs in an airport deserve some kudos.

This place is not the speediest of options, but thankfully in this case at least, ATL is not the speediest of airports. I highly recommend it next time you've got a flight delayed out until the far edges of the evening as an escape from the ATL terminal B zoo.

Hell's Burger

In DC this week, catching up on some training and strolling through a few bits of my old stomping ground. The days have been autumnal and perfectly clear; even just the walk from my hotel to the Rosslyn metro has involved tromping through freshly fallen brightly colored leaves.

But really what I've been doing here, when it comes down to the memorable stuff, is eating.

Last night, delicious, crisp, light pizza from Pizzeria Paradiso in Georgetown. Tonight, the pure decadence of Ray's Hell Burger. Ray's is as unassuming as dives get, and if it wasn't for the line-out-the-door Tuesday night crowd and the Obama visits and the 40 pages of Yelp raves, you'd hardly notice it. In fact, they don't even really have a sign.

But they do have a burger. Man oh man do they have a burger. 10 oz. Indescribably tender. Charred just a bit on the outside. Toasted brioche bun. This beast borders on the obscene, juicier and richer and more decadent than any burger I've ever had. I went as plain as possible on this go - cheddar cheese, grilled onions, dill pickles, mustard, lettuce, tomato. I won't try to recall all the burger variations, but I will say that by plain I mean that the particular cheese I chose was one of more than a dozen available.

And it's good that the burger is so outlandishly amazing, because Ray's is a one-trick pony. They do fries, and coleslaw, but as a total afterthought, almost the way salad bars include the decorative kale.

Now, if I just jog back to Austin, I should be about able to burn this baby off and return to my pre-Ray's self. But then again, maybe the Persephone rule applies; when you take a bite in Hell, you can't ever go back.