Day 2 Las Vegas

I promise that my gastronomical excursions became more exciting as the week wore on, so bear with me.

We woke up Friday morning to a typical bright, sunny, and soon-to-be warm day in the late winter desert. I had plans for us to visit Hoover Dam, so lunch had to be quick and not too heavy, so we headed for the food bar at the local Whole Foods. The food bar is $7.99 per pound so you have to be smart about what you load up on. Also, it's hard to shove bite-size portions of foods you want to try in the recyclable containers they provide, but I managed. I got about a $5.00 salad--a little heavy thanks to some chunks of feta, but everything I got was tasty. The SO? He's not a frequenter of food bars and got (what I thought) was far more than he could eat. It weighed in at a whopping $12.00. He finished it off, though (with a little help from me). Whole Foods bar: thumbs up.

After the visit to Hoover Dam, we came back to Las Vegas via I-15 along the north side. I remembered seeing a thread on chowhound.com about a frozen custard stand in that area (that was difficult to find), so I entered the info into the SO's GPS and it took us right to Luv-It (I wonder how often this establishment is confused for some other type of business considering its location). I can't recall the name of the sundae we got, but it included caramel, bananas and "jimmies." I had to ask what jimmies were and was told they're chocolate sprinkles (apparently this was a topic over at Slashfood). Now I know. You crazy Yankees and your weird words. Anyhoo, this stuff was just as good as I'd heard. Smooth, creamy, and ridiculoulsly rick like a good frozen custard should be. Luv-It: thumbs up.

Later on, for dinner we headed over to Chinatown (Spring Mountain & Valley View) because we have a lack of good Chinese food here in Nashville that's vegetarian friendly. There were several dim sum places but I couldn't get any good information on how much there would be for me to eat, so I went with a recommendation I read on the Happy Cow directory for Las Vegas, KungFu Plaza. Though I found a lot of things that looked good on the menu, I wanted to go with Chinese instead of Thai, so I chose the stir-fried black fungus and tofu in ginger sauce. Sounds appetizing, no? Silly me, I just thought "black fungus" was just an odd translation of some type of mushroom. But what arrived on my plate was indeed a fungus. It looked like something scraped off the top of month-old soup sitting in the back of the refrigerator and had the consistency of pudding skin. Knowing that anything and everything is fair game for the dinner table in China--including many things I would never, ever eat--I tried it anyway. And it was delicious! Black fungus--I now know--is like tofu in that it typically has no taste of its own. Both the fungus and the tofu were then perfect centerpieces for the very delicious ginger sauce. The portion was quite large, which was a good thing as the SO happily finished it off after being somewhat disappointed in a bland chicken dish. Slowly but surely he's learning that vegetarian food is not boring and can sometimes be a lot better than non-vegetarian food! If only I'd convinced him to order the Tom Ka soup with tofu instead of chicken...though I would have left miserably full. The soup comes in a huge metal vessel resembling a bundt pan that has a sterno heater to keep it warm. It's a large amount--easily enough soup for four people. The SO hated to leave it behind, but we were headed downtown to Fremont Street. KungFu Plaza: thumbs up.

Fremont Street is where the older casinos are located. It's a little more old-school and not quite as family-friendly as the Strip. Our trip coincided with a race, so Fremont Street was packed with NASCAR fans who were quite rowdy. We walked around a bit and did some peoplewatching as well as seeing a couple of the light shows going on overhead every half hour but as the night wore on, I found myself getting a small case of the munchies. Hey, luckily enough the Mermaids Casino had a snack bar. Fried Twinkies! Fried Oreos! Frozen chocolate banana on a stick! All for 99¢ each! Yes, please! Sadly, we were informed there would be at least a 15-minute wait for the deep-fried goodies and we were dead tired, so we settled for just one frozen chocolate banana on a stick (also rolled in walnuts--yum!). For whatever reason, I did not get a picture of my late-night treat, but it wasn't terribly photogenic anyway. But it was tasty. Mermaids Casino: thumbs up.

So that was what we ate during our first full day of vacation. Next up: Spago and Mario Batali's B&B Ristorante.