Happy Valentine’s Day y’all! Panu and I spent most of today in our rental Dodge Charger, hurtling our way from Vegas to LA. It was a pretty awesome drive… for me anyways because I napped most of the way *heh* We arrived in LA this afternoon, had (another) nap and went out for an impromptu v-day dinner. We ate sushi, sashimi and a tofu salad, a welcome detox from all the crap we ate in Vegas, which started on our very first morning when my friend Sophie took us to Hash House a Go Go.
agedashi tofu with nameko mushrooms
I’m FINALLY HOME! As y’all probably know, I was stranded in NYC because of the stupid snow (which now that I’m home, I kinda hope it buckets so that I can at least enjoy the fun side of snow) and had to fly out to Vegas just to get back to London in time for Christmas. I know right? Flying 5 hours backwards to go 10 hours forwards. Makes no sense, but I did it.
The Grand Canyon. Ze Grande Canyone. You know what, if Starbucks had its way, this would be called the Venti Canyon, because yes it’s the absolute equivalent of a two litre coffee. It’s so mammoth that you don’t really believe someone’s actually drinking that, are they insane? Do they realise the number of hairs they’ll pull out from fidgeting and the carpet which will be worn thin by the constant pacing?! Clearly not. And unless you can handle your shit, don’t order it because those who can’t *coughguywhositsrightnearmecough*, coffee buzzes are so not cool to the people around you.
But anyway, vented (ah, hah, vented the venti, I am so not funny).
Now, the Grand Canyon. Without doubt the absolute highlight of my little American sojourn, and my only regret is that we weren’t able to spend more time down in the gaping big hole, contemplating life and our seriously insignifcant contribution towards this magnificent world of ours.
Law enforced by the Native Americans mandate that we (terrible folk who are destroying the natural beauty one gravel at a time) can only touch down for 30 minutes, and so we touch, we click-click-click away and we’re off. It’s that fast, but wait! This being the tour that I joined, we also had lunch inside the Grand Canyon. I mean, what’s life without food, right? High five!
Las Vegas is, in a word, immense. Everything is larger than life, from the sprawling Strip, with one gargantuan Vegas block the size of several regular city blocks and lights that can be seen from space, to colossal resorts like Caesar’s Palace which span I don’t know like five blocks? I shit you not, you kinda walk along Las Vegas Blvd and oh, we’re still at Caesar’s Palace. Ten minutes later, oh look we’re still at Caesar’s Palace. It’s really like that.
The life is big, the food is big, the people are big (no doubt a consequence of the big food) and the Grand Canyon, well that’s just f**king mammoth, so mammoth that it deserves its own post. Las Vegans (I know, ironic because they are anything but vegans) know not of portion size, be it in relation to blocks or food. I didn’t so much mind ginormous blocks but the food. I had to re-learn how to not complete my meals, for fear that I would be rolling (and not high rolling, which would also have been ok) out of Vegas.
Anyway, after flicking through my hundreds upon hundreds of photos from Las Vegas, I came to the disturbing conclusion that I don’t want to waste time and precious real estate posting photos of all the crap we ate. I know, disturbing because (a) I said food was crap? really? me?! and (b) this real estate, it’s free.
So ok fine, you got me ~ we’ll talk a little bit about food.
I’m trying to write a blog post about the food in Vegas. The excess of food in Vegas, I should say, but it’s been hard going because every time I look at my photos, just like that, like magic, my muffin top pops out above the waist of my far-too-skinny 7 for all Mankind jeans, and at the same time, I’m salivating over all the food we ate. That’s a double whammy if you haven’t already worked it out. Muffin top’s gone wild, and I’m still hungry. So you see, it’s hazardous for me to write about Vegas right now.
But I do have to write about Vegas (because I can be a little obsessive compulsive and everything needs to be chronological), so I’m gonna focus on the one healthy meal we had ~ healthy as in Asian, as opposed to mammoth burgers and such devilish temptations as white chocolate brioche french toast.
Asian we wanted, and boy did we get. Pan-Asian, to be precise, not fusion, but traditional fanfare from the vast reaches of the far east, brought together by Chinese-Thai chef Jet Tila, who heads up the kitchen of Wazuzu in The Strip’s newest resort hotel, the Wynn Encore.