Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Oh man everyone loves in n out. I jst don't like it. 5 guys is better but not my cup of tea either. But I am not much for over the top food.
and I think everyone has a right to their opinion. That is why food is so subjective. I know a few who do not like In&Out. it isn't for everyone. I think the draw, at least for us is the freshness of everything they use and the cost. If I were comparing it to a $8 or even $5 burger I might feel differently, but for less than $2 I can't think of a better burger bargain.
I've been savaging the average Las Vegan recently. But when it comes to restaurants, it is justified. This is the city that votes Olive Garden as the reader's choice for Best Italian Restaurant every year. I don't read online reviews of our restaurants because they are written by locals, who time and again prove that they don't know anything about food.
The only time the average resident visits the great restaurants in town is for Restaurant Week -- and only then because the great restaurants are losing their shirts on food cost in the name of charity. It isn't even a loss leader because the typical Restaurant Week patron doesn't return until next year for Restaurant Week. (Unless the cost of a prix fixe meal is around $50, it's dismissed as too much money for a meal.) Don't get me wrong. I'm glad people experience our great restaurants -- even if annually.
At the end of the day, the best off-strip restaurants are low-end. Not low-end quality, mind you, just low-end for prices. Because that's the kind of business the public demands. There are great cheap restaurants dotted around the valley. And there are great expensive restaurants on the strip. There isn't much in between worth mentioning.
We don't always agree on issues but I do on this one: when Olive Garden makes the list of bests, you know many people really do not know quality or what is good. Not long ago my husbands cousins were visiting for a few days: the wife made the comment their favorite place to eat was Olive Garden and their favorite food was the all you can eat salad. I am not saying it is bad, but "favorite" no way. Of course these are the same cousins that joined us in Vegas for a few days a couple of years ago. One afternoon we decided to go out for lunch: where did they want to go? Because her idea of a good time is shopping at discount malls, they wanted to go to the one on the strip, do some shopping and grab a hot dog at the food court.
You're crossing a couple of issues here, mainly trademarking and quality. These are two vastly different things.
I have no doubt that a vintner in Napa Valley can make better sparkling wine than some of the "real" stuff coming out of the Champagne region of France. But someone (maybe a French trade group) has trademarked the name Champagne, so the Napa guy can't call it that, even though it's the same style of wine, and could very well be better (however you want to define that with wine.) It doesn't matter that the word Champagne has come to describe a style of wine, more than a geographical source.
Apparently there's an effort afoot to ban the use of the name "Parmesan", for any cheese that doesn't come from Parma Italy. Given how this term has come to used generically for this type of cheese, I think this is completely wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoopLV
If some Brazilian company made a second-rate whiskey and called it "bourbon," Americans would be hopping mad about that. Americans absolutely own bourbon. It's our whiskey, damn it. So don't go making some brown swill and call it bourbon.
But we're hunky-dory doing just that with champagne, port and sherry. It isn't right. And it also isn't right what we do to pizza.
At the end of the day, I'm not saying that I get to decide what is and isn't pizza. I'm saying the Italians hold exclusive right to that. Just like Americans (and particularly Kentuckians) hold exclusive right to bourbon.
We are far too cavalier about what we call food. And that's why imposter prime beef is passed off on ignorant shoppers in every supermarket in America.
You're crossing a couple of issues here, mainly trademarking and quality. 1) These are two vastly different things.
2) I have no doubt that a vintner in Napa Valley can make better sparkling wine than some of the "real" stuff coming out of the Champagne region of France. But someone (maybe a French trade group) has trademarked the name Champagne, so the Napa guy can't call it that, even though it's the same style of wine, and could very well be better (however you want to define that with wine.) It doesn't matter that the word Champagne has come to describe a style of wine, more than a geographical source.
3) Apparently there's an effort afoot to ban the use of the name "Parmesan", for any cheese that doesn't come from Parma Italy. Given how this term has come to used generically for this type of cheese, I think this is completely wrong.
I have added numbers to the quote for brevity.
1) These are the exactly the same, not "vastly different." Hatch chile peppers come from New Mexico. No place else. When you take an Anaheim pepper and grow it in that area of New Mexico, it is a remarkably different thing. Hatch, NM is the best place on earth to grow Anaheim peppers. And that's why people ask for Hatch chiles by name. If some numbnutz in San Antonio grows them, and they don't taste anything like a Hatch chile, it ruins the brand/trademark/region to call it a Hatch chile.
2) The best sparkling wine in Napa is produced by Schramsberg. That's the wine that Nixon brought with him when he went to China for the first time. They don't call their wine champagne because it isn't. It's a sparkling wine. It's a damned GOOD sparkling wine. But it's not champagne. For the same reason that Hatch chiles come from a specific area in New Mexico, champagne comes from a specific area in France. Go there and ask them. I assure you that they agree with my assessment.
3) Thank GOD they are trying to ban bogus parm. Most people have no idea how real parmesan tastes -- the real-deal cheese runs more than $20/pound. The only places in Las Vegas where I know a buyer can reliably get real-deal parm are Costco and Whole Foods. And at both places, the cheese hovers in the $20/pound range. We don't even use real parm at the froo-froo restaurant where I work. It's simply too expensive. We use Grana Padano instead. (It's a fine cheese. But it ain't parm.) Calling some BS cheese "parmesan" and selling it for $5/pound does nothing but insult the cheesemakers in Parma, Italy. It's THEIR damned cheese. They (and ONLY they) get to decide what is and isn't parmesan.
A separate thread debating the merits of pizza, champagne, Lamborghini, etc would be a good thing.
Agreed! Yet another thread has been ruined by a pissing contest. This started as a fun and useful thread about restaurant recommendations.
Can't you guys just accept the fact that people have different opinions and it's not your responsibility to prove them wrong. Or prove that you're right. Guess what .... we don't care. We were just enjoying the restaurant recommendations.
Here's why I think it matters. But first, a little back story.
In my youth, I spent a summer in Germany. And much of that summer was spent in West Berlin, back when there was a West Berlin that a youth could spend his summers in. Before I left, I bought $100 worth of East German funny money. The exchange rate was 1,000 times better than in East Germany. But when I got to East Germany, I learned that there was next to nothing there worth buying.
But there was one exception. Every day, I would go through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin, and buy the one thing that country sold that was worth the trip -- Currywurst. For some reason, East Germany had a lot of curry, so they made the best of it and turned it into a sauce for sausages. My last day, I went to the currywurst joint near Unter den Linden and bought my final currywurst and then gave the rest of my East German funny-money to the currywurst guy. I kept a few thousand East German marks as a souvenir. The rest went to the currywurst dude.
I can go to Hofbrauhaus right now, and get a currywurst that tastes exactly like what I had Unter den Linden all those years ago. Not just authentic. Identical. It used to only be a special at Hofbrauhaus. But so many people asked for it that they added it to the menu, even though it's Berliner cuisine, not Bavarian.
So you can either believe me when I say that the German food at Hofbrauhaus is excellent. Or you can listen to this user's opinion:
Quote:
Originally Posted by beachhead
Do your tastebuds, and unfortunately, your stomach a big favor, and skip the food at this place. Tried it Saturday. Not only did it taste like last months bad leftovers, it was as just as painful! It had 3.5 stars on yelp..I guess you can't believe everything you read on the internet!
Over at the Hamburger thread, we have the guy who insists that nobody ate rare meat between the years of 1960 and 1979. How do you even respond to that kind of breathtaking ignorance?
I'm surprised Buzz123 hasn't mentioned Garduno's again. I went there based on his recommendation in an earlier thread. Why? Because if Buzz123 says it's authentic, it probably is. That's all the bona fide I need to try the place. Incidentally, it is excellent. My wife and I are planning a trip to New Mexico so we can really experience the local flavor.
I mention the lunch counter at Market 168 every time a thread like this pops up. The shu mai there is as good as you can get in this country, and it's dirt cheap. I haven't seen any indication that anyone on C-D besides myself has eaten there. And that's a shame, because it's one of the good things about Las Vegas.
So when some random user with absolutely no street cred when it comes to food suggests the pizza at Badabing is the best in town, I have two thoughts. 1) This person doesn't know what good pizza is. 2) This person doesn't even know the definition of pizza.
It is a bit of a shame that we cannot work the nonstrip food scene without going offf into the foodie war trenches.
I ate high on the hog for 25 years. For a few years my favorite restaurant was the Four Lanterns in London. The owner would cook the best thing he had for me when I made my reservation. Greek Cypriot and to die for.
I have had both the the ultimate Chinese and the ultimate Japanese feasts. I have eaten the best of the rustic cuisine of the Rhine in rural Holland where they cater to the Germans.
And I ate world class Italian once a week for 25 years brought by my wife the daughter of an Italian butcher and the grandaughter of a 50 year Italian restaurant cook. Her un cle was the Italian Baker. Had a brick oven in the base of the home.
The cooking was high northern Italian. Grandmother was blond and blue eyed.
And any of my children can womp up a basic spaghetti sauce from scratch without anything from a bottle.
So I got a reasonable set of credential as an eater not a cook.
My view is thqt we need not screw up the local scene by long diversions on the nature of pizza. In my long and lustrious Italian eating career pizza does not appear a sinle time....junk food in upper Italian circles.
I like any number of things that may not get universal support. I like good raw stuff even with some risk.
But why can't we have an open session on what is good and local?
And in a pinch Olive Garden will do...Or the Australian steak place. Some of their shrimp things ain't too bad.
Lamborghini most certainly DOES get to say what is and is not a Lamborghini. Those ridiculous kit cars, for instance, are not Lamborghinis, no matter how vocal the counterfeiter claims to the contrary.
And that's why we as a nation don't get what we pay for.
If some Brazilian company made a second-rate whiskey and called it "bourbon," Americans would be hopping mad about that. Americans absolutely own bourbon. It's our whiskey, damn it. So don't go making some brown swill and call it bourbon.
But we're hunky-dory doing just that with champagne, port and sherry. It isn't right. And it also isn't right what we do to pizza.
At the end of the day, I'm not saying that I get to decide what is and isn't pizza. I'm saying the Italians hold exclusive right to that. Just like Americans (and particularly Kentuckians) hold exclusive right to bourbon.
We are far too cavalier about what we call food. And that's why imposter prime beef is passed off on ignorant shoppers in every supermarket in America.
I agree they get to say what a Lamborghini is. They don't get to say what a car is. I put the word pizza in the same descriptive class as car, not Lamborghini.
The milk people are the real ones that should be offended. Soy milk and almond milk really aren't milk pretty much by definition but they're still called milk. If we can let that go, I'm ok with Chicago calling their unique take on pizza, pizza.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
