corporately wined & dined @ Market Restaurant, Del Mar: blogging on work-cation

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There are only really three things I want to say in this post:

1) I must seriously love you guys. Either that or I’m a complete blog nerd with no life because here I am, on a work-cation and again, I’m blogging from my hotel room. Say it with me now, de-di-ca-tion. Yeh.

2) The photos in this post are blurry. It wasn’t because the light was bad. We did have fairly dim mood lighting, but I’ve shot far better in far worse conditions. There’s no excuse really, the reason the photos are blurry is because I downed a spiced pear martini minutes before the food was served and Cadbury kid me, my heart was thumping so wildly I struggled to hold the camera, let alone hold it still. Apologiez.

3) I love being corporate-ly wined and dined.

Indeed I do.

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city of angels, city of food: the best of LA eating

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Sprinkles cupcakes; sweet potato chips from 25 Degrees, Roosevelt Hotel; Kyochon fried chicken; Umami burger

Los Angeles, the City of Angels. More appropriately (for me anyway), it was the City of Food, or rather, of amazing burgers, cupcakes and fried chicken. Love. Over the course of four days, we ate at a dozen supertacular places, but in light of keeping this post to a read-able length, I’m going to do some culling (wow this is hard, you realise this is like me culling my children) and touch on the best of LA eating.

[Note: I woke up this morning thinking about KyoChon fried chicken, hence I finally got my butt into gear to do this post]

So here goes, and in no particular order…

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a very small catty in a very Grand Canyon

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grand canyon 01

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!

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big lights, big food and mini donuts: the “bigness” of eating in Las Vegas

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las vegas

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.

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pan-Asian dining @ Wazuzu: one meal, five countries, all from the heart of Vegas

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entrance to Wazuzu; deep friend sweet shrimp; "dragon balls" (black sesame filled rice dumplings in ginger black tea broth)

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.

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i left my heart in san francisco (or i may have lost it in the clam chowder bread bowl)

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view of San Francisco

San Francisco. Our first port of call on what was to be ten days of leisure, pleasure and lots and lots of eating. Well, not so much in SF but Vegas? Holy crap I actually had to teach myself how not to finish every single meal, but that is another story and thankfully another post, because having just stepped off the 10 hour return flight today, I can barely manage to log onto netbank to check my funds balance (or maybe I just don’t want to) let alone even think about Vegas right now. The sheer enormity of the place gives me heart palpitations, so we’re just not gonna go there today ok? We’re just sticking to nice, safe San Fran.

San Francisco was always going to be a winner, with or without the gastronomous delights. And this is because a very special friend of mine from university, who I haven’t seen for almost ten years, lives there and in this time she’s gone and gotten married, had two kids and two dogs (ok so she didn’t have the dogs but you know what I mean) and I hadn’t met any of them! Not cool. So here I was in San Fran to see Anh and the crew, and like I said, had I not eaten for the whole three days (pffft, like that’s ever gonna happen), SF would still have been sweet.

But good golly, surprise surprise I did eat. I mean, why else would I be writing about San Fran in a food blog? Duh.

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