Richard Cheese in Vegas

The only celebrity I follow on Facebook is Richard Cheese and a while ago there was an updated posted that he would be doing a show in Las Vegas. We had seen him once in San Francisco and now was our chance to see him again. Justyn and I always said that if he ever performed in Las Vegas, that we'd go.

We booked a two night stay at Palace Station hotel. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the room before we messed it up but here's a view from our window. We got to stay in a nice suite on the 18th floor which was nice. I'm not a fan of the $15 a night charge in the fine print but oh well.

The first night and the day of the concert, I had forgotten my phone in the room so the only pictures I have are the day after. The show itself was pretty tame considering it was in Las Vegas and Richard Cheese was a lot more fun to watch in SF. We still had fun regardless. We had reserved a booth and the usher let us sit by ourselves since part of the stage was blocked off by the wall. We felt like high rollers having a booth to ourselves meanwhile everyone else was crammed together on crappy seats and boothes.

The next day we went to the Wynn for a buffet brunch. I'm not a fan of buffets and never have been but this was by far the best I've ever had. Some things were better than others such as the flank steak. It was juicy and perfectly cooked. The pickled herring was also decent. I think it would've been better if it were cold instead of room temperature though.

Thai beef salad, BBQ rib (not actually smoked or anything and rather bland), pulled pork on a fluffy cornbread topped with coleslaw, green bean stir-fry with beef, pad thai (bland), grilled mahi mahi with pineapple relish, flank steak, eggroll, potsticker, a bit of hashbrowns that Justyn gave me, pickled herring.

For the second round I got smoked duck salad, cheese pizza, more flank steak, pasta w/ shrimp, kimchee, tuna hand roll (gross), California roll, veggie roll and squid ceviche.

For dessert Justyn got an assortment of desserts. I can't remember exactly what he got but an honorable mention was the bread pudding. It was very custardy and served hot from the oven. I opted for a Snickerdoodle & a Bailey's panna cotta (blech).

We spent the rest of the day hanging out in our hotel room relaxing. Towards the afternoon and evening we played blackjack. I don't remember how long we played for but it quickly turned from noon to night. Since we gambled so much, I asked the pit boss if he could comp our meal at the Oyster Bar. I still haven't found out if the meal ever got comped but we charged it to our hotel room so we'll see.. Earlier while we were lounging in the room, I was watching an episode of Man vs. Food where he visited a place specializing in BBQ'ed shrimp. That instantly made me crave some seafood so I went on Yelp to see where the best seafood place was. The Oyster Bar jumped out with nearly a perfect 5 star rating. I remembered passing by the Oyster Bar the day before so that's how decided we were going there for a late dinner.

We ordered a bowl of clam chowder, oysters & etoufee. Everything was fantastic albeit the etoufee was extremely spicy. Justyn reminded me that I ordered it that way despite me having no memory of it heh. The food definitely lived up to the high rating on Yelp and I would be more than happy to pay for a meal there any day.

Needless to say that I'm thankful to be home and for bay area weather. The coolest temperature it got in Las Vegas was 90 something!

Weekend SF Trip w/ Friends

On Friday I met up with Erik & Justyn at their work to carpool over to SFO to pick up a couple friends. We then left the airport to our the Baldwin hotel to meet up with a few more people. Erik drove us all to Papalote which is a Mexican place featured on Bobby Flay's Throwdown on Food Network. To be honest, I was thrilled with the food. I ordered the chicken burrito but later found out that their specialty is their salsa and a burrito called the Triple Threat which has shrimp, fish & carne asada. I had a bite of their carne asada from someone else's burrito and it was more like a juicy fatty steak which was unlike any other carne asada that I've ever had.

After dinner we headed back over to the hotel and walked over to the Irish Bank across the street tucked behind an alleyway for some drinks. Some of us headed over to Chinatown for an after party and some stayed behind at the hotel. I'm not allowed to show those pictures or videos so you'll have to trust me that it was a damn good time.

It was getting pretty late but I got hungry so Justyn and I split off from the group and went to Lori's Diner for some food. We ended up getting just about the least healthy thing on the menu which was fish & chips. It was surprisingly delicious and it quickly filled my belly up.

The next morning, we went to The Liberty Cafe for breakfast & mimosas. I ordered the Breakfast Basket which featured a selection of delectable delights. It had two mini croissants, scones & an apple pastry (which was my favorite). Justyn had the sausage and spinach omelette which was equally as good. Our waitress, Kelly, was amazing and extremely helpful despite the large group she had to deal with. If you go to Liberty Cafe, make sure you say hi. She's super nice and made our breakfast a delight. (If this sounds like a yelp review, it is!)

After breakfast, Erik drove us all to the Golden Gate bridge for some touristy stuff. I was amazed by the view and was almost blown away, literally. It was super windy where we were but it made things more fun.

We then headed over to the Haight district for some shopping before going to Calzone’s for some Italian food. After dinner, everyone went back to the hotel to get ready for clubbing. Justyn and I didn’t end up going because we had to catch an early flight out to Vegas the next morning. Talk about a crazy vacation right? I miss everyone so much and wish we had more time to spend together but I know we’re just a flight away and we’ll hang out again soon. Erik deserves special props for being our designated taxi driver and for taking us all over SF. Thanks man! We had a blast!

BBQ w/ Friends

Last night I cooked stuff for friends which I mentioned in the previous post. I was so glad everything turned out well. Everyone enjoyed it so much which made all the stress and planning worth it. Kris took these pics from his iPhone 4. Not bad for a phone camera right?

Cooking: Potstickers & Thai Salad

This Tuesday I'll be hosting a dinner party but I needed to practice the recipes before serving them to guests. I always tend to pick new recipes to try when I cook for other people which isn't always smart because I don't know how the dishes will turn out. I planned on making Potstickers, Thai Cabbage Salad, Jasmine Scented Rice & Grilled Lemongrass Chicken.

I grabbed a generic Potsticker recipe and tweaked it. The recipe called for chopping half a Napa cabbage and squeezing the water out. That didn't make sense to me because there's no way you can squeeze water out of cabbage without salting it first. When I used to help my mom make potstickers, she would add salt to the chopped cabbage to draw the water out before squeezing it dry. I then added that to half a pound of ground pork, chopped green onions, ginger, sesame seed oil, soy sauce & pepper. I didn't add any additional salt to the mixture since the cabbage was already pretty salty. I took a shortcut by using premade potsticker skins. They turned out pretty damn good for my first time. They were definitely no where near as good as my mom's but I was pretty proud of myself.



The rice was something I had actually made before and it's super easy. I just prepared the rice as normal and added a couple splashes of coconut milk before popping it in the rice cooker.

As for the Thai Cabbage Salad, it was just a lot of prep work cutting up all the veggies & herbs and making the sauce. I chopped up the other half of the Napa cabbage from the Potsticker mixture and added julienned red bell pepper, carrot and cucumber. I actually bought a mandolin just for this salad but it was a crappy cheap one so it didn't work all that well. I also intended for this to be a green papaya salad but the mandolin botched that up. Oh well. I chopped up some mint, Thai basil & cilantro as well. For the sauce I combined Sriracha, lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, soy suace, grated garlic & peanut oil. I topped the salad off with some honey roasted peanuts. It turned out really complex with all the different things going on but I think I need to work on the dressing a little more before it'll be perfect.



I didn't get a good picture of the chicken but that was just some drumsticks marinated in peanut oil, lime juice, lime zest, green onions, cilantro, garlic, ginger, soy sauce & fish sauce.

Wish me luck this Tuesday! I hope it all turns out good :D