Viva Las Vegas

During the rest of my business trip to Las Vegas the week before last I was busy during the day at CES but I had some opportunities to eat some great food outside of work.

On Wednesday morning I had the special treat of being able to get breakfast with a friend of mine from undergrad, Lee, who was also in town for CES. It was great to be able to catch up and hear how his quickly growing family was doing. We went to Bouchon at the Venetian, which was fantastic. I had the Bouchon French Toast which was in a bread pudding style with layers of brioche, custard and apples. Wonderful company and wonderful food is a great way to start the day.

After breakfast I headed to the conference center for another full and busy day. At the end of the day I had a work dinner with a supplier at Smith & Wollensky for fabulous steak. I started with the Wollensky salad which had bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fried potato cubes on a bed of lettuce. For dinner I tried the beef tenderloin trio with three filet medallions featuring a fig demi-glace, Cajun seasoning and my favorite of the three, a gorgonzola crust with applewood smoked bacon. We were stuffed after the steaks but I just couldn't resist ordering the apple tart for dessert. Delicious!

 
My friend from work got us invitations to the iHeartRadio party DJed by will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas so we headed there after dinner. The party was held at Haze Nightclub in the Aria and was awesome. Will.i.am played great music and the lighting effects were really cool. You could definitely tell there was a large nerd contingent there since everyone (including me) was unabashedly taking tons of cell phone pictures.

On Thursday night after I was done with work for the day I had a supplier dinner at Zeffirino in the Venetian with colleagues.  The restaurant had a nice atmosphere overlooking the Grand Canal and it was a fun evening. To start we had carpaccio with shaved parmigiano and rucola sprouts followed by a salad of mixed sprouts, toasted almonds and smoked tofu. For my main I choose sea bass with capers and then we had a trio of mini pastries for dessert. Everything was great but my favorite by far was the carpaccio.

Friday morning I headed to the airport for my flight to LAX since I had to spend the weekend in Pasadena for work. Even after all the times I have been in the Las Vegas airport it always cracks me up that there are slot machines throughout the airport. That is some serious dedication to gambling!

If you are interested, check out the first part of my Las Vegas trip here: Hello From Las Vegas