eating las vegas

Lots of famous chefs who have restaurants in other parts of the U.S. also have restaurants in Vegas: Michael Mina, Hubert Keller, Thomas Keller, Charlie Palmer, etc.

Unfortunately, none of these places fit into my Vegas budget for last weekend. So I ended up eating at the worst restaurants (can you really call a disgusting 24-hour casino kitchen a restaurant?) ever. And of course, since nothing on the Strip is cheap, I also spent way too much on these terrible meals. (And I am so sad because I never made it to Del Taco. It was on the opposite end of the Strip from where we were staying!)

Case in point: Carnegie Deli at the Mirage. Everything about this place was awful. If you wanted a sandwich with meat on it, you'd have to fork over upwards of $12 (and when I looked at the sandwiches other tables had ordered, they scared me -- just big piles of greasy pink flesh). And if you wanted to eat vegetarian, well, the options were pretty much non-existant. I tried to order a baked potato (which was on the menu for $5, by the way -- $5 for a freaking potato!!), only to be told they didn't have any. (Why the hell would you put something on the menu if you don't have it?) So my other option (because I was afraid of getting food poisoning from the egg salad and I didn't want to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a pile of iceberg) was the potato knish, which cost $3.25 (yes, that's right -- $3.25 for something I've paid under a dollar for in the past). Thankfully, though, the knish was decent. And potatoes are always a good thing when you're trying to absorb alcohol.

Unfortunately, the grilled cheese sandwich was another story. One of the girls in our group ordered it. It was by far the saddest sandwich I have ever seen in my life. The slices weren't even facing the right direction! It looked like someone had dropped it on the floor and then just put it on a plate! And talk about a complete lack of presentation -- there wasn't a single garnish on the plate. Not even one sprig of parsley. Just the sad, soggy sandwich, with the bread facing the wrong way. And the really painful part: It was $7.95.

This meal was so bad that we actually found ourselves practically crying tears of joy when we ate at La Salsa, where I would never eat normally. (It's not good enough to be real Mexican and not trashy enough to have Del Taco status. And you know how I feel about mediocre food.) At least the service there was good. And they had Herradura.

Luckily, though, there was Battista's for dinner. For about $20, you got unlimited house wine (a nice, crisp, easy-drinking Pinot Grigio), soup or salad (I had the minestrone, and it was really, really tasty), garlic bread, an entree and a (fake) cappuccino. Now that was a welcome deal. Especially since the roulette wheel just wasn't spinning my way!