ottawa foodies

Had fun in Vegas this past weekend with a couple of friends and stayed at Planet Hollywood on the strip. Got to cross off one of my fast food bucket list items when I had the Spicy Deluxe Sandwich combo at the Philadelphia International Airport Chick-fil-A. It's my new favourite fast food chicken burger by far!

The combo included lemonade and waffle fries. The ketchup packet for the fries had 2 tabs: one that let you squirt ketchup on the fries, and another that let you dip the fries in the packet. The USA is LIGHT YEARS ahead of us.

I based my Vegas restaurant choices on certain eGullet forum posts and the recently closed down Eating Las Vegas blog. The 3 choices were all off-strip, and were accessed via Uber rides from our hotel. All meals, including Uber fares and tips, came out to between $65-$75 USD for 3 people, which is amazing when compared to the menu item prices at comparable restaurants on the strip.

First restaurant was Yun nan Garden which serves Sichuan food.

It was a clean place with kind service, and had a cool take out counter with delicacies like duck heads, shredded tofu, etc.

The 1st of 3 entrees was cumin lamb, with loads of dried red chili flakes, scorched dried chilies, and fresh green chilies. This was outstanding.

Just as good was the dry fried green beans with pork.

The garlic eggplant was also delicious, with a sweet-sour-spicy sauce that went great with steamed rice. Our group were the only gweilos in the restaurant during our meal.

Yum! A friend of mine swears by Chick-fil-a but I've yet to make it.

A must when dining in Vegas is Lotus of Siam - bar none the best thai food in the whole USA and I might say the best outside of Thailand.

It moved but it's off strip, used to be in a strip mall and I think it just moved to another one.

Pretty much exactly what Anthony Bourdain said when he ate there on Parts Unknown.

Tried to go to Lotus, but they were booked solid for dinner until April 19th. Went to Chada instead, which is run by an ex-Lotus chef, and was awesome.

We had the spicy herbs spring roll (not pictured), Beef panang curry, deep fried prawn with Chu-chee curry (also not pictured), and pad kee mao with crispy duck (our favourite dish). Everything was delicious and well-spiced, having been ordered at the "medium" level. Service was great and the atmosphere was casual-cool.

Final restaurant was Ping Pang Pong (!) at the Gold Coast Hotel & Casino for some old school dim sum. We shared soy sauce chow mein, har gow, siu mai, spring rolls, lo mai gai, cha siu bao, and fun guo, and it was all at least as good as anything that I've eaten in Vancouver. It almost brought a tear to my eye to be able to feast on this in a super-clean Chinese restaurant with nice decor as well as kind service. The restaurant is adjacent to the casino, though, so there was a faint background aroma of cigarette smoke inside, but I didn't mind.

Oh, and there was a lot of this during the weekend, too (blurry photo is appropriate)!