It was a pleasant evening, so a table in their little patio was a great start to our meal.  The friendly waitress explained the menu to us in English and we all decided to go for the $49 4-course tasting menu since the a la carte would’ve costed more money.  The tasting menu consisted of an amuse bouche, an entree, a main and dessert.

For our amuse, we were served with blood pudding, cured duck breast, and pickeled mushrooms.  I have never tried blood pudding before, it looks just like the Chinese pig’s blood except it is seared.

For my entree, I picked the escargots with wild mushrooms.  It was very yummy.  My coworkers tried the foie gras terrine and it was very very smooth!

For my main, I got the Thazard with risotto.  The fish tastes kind of like tuna or mackerel.

I think the only disappointing part of the meal was the dessert.  I was supposed to get the blueberry and vanilla creme brulee, but they ran out and they gave us jasmine tea creme brulee instead.  It didn’t taste that good because the bitter tea taste was too overpowering, but my coworker got the bread pudding and it was awesome.

Chuck Hughes from Chuck’s Day Off owns this tiny little, unmarked restaurant.  They specialize in seafood and have a fresh menu daily.

I couldn’t say not to the lobster poutine appetizer, but I thought it would be too heavy to get another main, so I decided to go with the tomato salad with avacado and cheddar frit.  (Ok fine, their dishes were kind of pricey, so I decided to go with two appetizers instead!)

The tomato salad was very refreshing and very appetizing for a hot day.

The lobster poutine was less exciting than I expected.  There were a few chunks of lobster which I initially though tasted pretty sweet, but then I realized that it was actually the gravy that tasted sweet.  The fries were good, but the cheese curds were not as squeaky and chewy as I would have liked.  When comparing this poutine to another gourmet poutine like the foie gras poutine from Au Pied de Cochon, this is definitely the loser.

The table across from me ordered the seafood platter.  It was more like a huge toolbox full of seafood and it comes with a hefty price tag too, Small $45, Medium $85, and Large $150.

Three kinds of spreads for our bread, olive tapenade, butternut squash and humus.

Smoked salmon eggs benedict

Lobster mac & cheese

I went and checked the seller’s feedback and found out that they have 4 negative feedback comments in the last month and 10 negative feedback comments in the past 6 months.  All related to poor communication with the seller and not receiving items ordered through eBay!  I immediately opened a case with eBay customer support and a week later, I got my full refund.  Thanks to eBay, I got my money back and I’m a happy camper again.  I left negative feedback for bestbuykorea, but then realized that the comments box has a 50-character limit, so there wasn’t even enough room for me to bitch about them!

Black dress $310 $108.5

Capris $114 $56

Printed dress $196 $67

Satin pumps $226 $79

This tea house is very old English style indeed.  I actually think they should update their decor so that it is more classy than old looking.  We started off with a huge menu with over 80 different types of teas to choose from.  They have many different types of black, white and green teas, as well as some African and Asian teas.  I chose my go-to tea English Breakfast.  They served the ladies and gents with different styles of tea cups.  The ladies got floral-patterned tea cups and the gents got a more masculine design.

First came the finger sandwiches.  They tasted ok, but I was expecting some smoked salmon sandwiches but they didn’t have any…

After a long wait, we finally got the scones.  These tasted pretty good, but they were a lot flakier than normal scones which are usually more dense in texture.

Overall, it was a fun experience, but next time we’ll have to try the King Edward Hotel’s afternoon tea!

I wonder how long they have been in the business of gel nails because not only did the manicurist not have any pre-made designs for me to choose from, she didn’t have a big selection of colour gel or sparkles available either.  I decided to pick a darker purple colour with gold sparkles, very simple design, and just wanted her to get it over with so I could get out of there.  It took her several tries to get the colour gel the way I wanted it.  All the different colours that I tried on were very transparent and didn’t turn out opaque even after 2 coats. When I thought that hurdle was out of the way, the manicurist surprises me with another amazing act of trying to apply sparkles to my nails by using the same paint brush that she used for the gel!  Obviously this didn’t work as the sparkles wouldn’t stay on my nails, so I asked her if she had another type of brush, and when that didn’t work, she decided to just dip my whole nail into the jar of sparkles!!  I couldn’t believe how bad this experience was and how this store could possibly provide gel nail services to customers when they are so amateur.

The finished product turned out to be alright, but as you can see there are sparkles spread all over the nails instead of just at the tips.

This is such a cool new restaurant for enjoying a night out with friends and great food.  They have an extensive beer and cocktail menu and the food prices were quire affordable.

I loved my coriander and cucumber gin and tonic very much.

We ordered a bunch of appetizers to share.  BBQed octopus, charcuterie plate, foie gras terrine, and escargots with gnocchi, which I didn’t get a picture of, but they were all delicious.

For my main, I decided to give the BBQ carbonara a try.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the nice crispy piece of pork belly!  The dish also came with tuna, which I thought was kind of weird, but still tasted great overall.

For dessert, we went with the BBQ carrot cake, which came with yummy cream cheese icing, carrot confit and carrot jelly.  Dessert is always the greatest part of the meal!

We stayed at the Caesars Palace.  They had pretty decent rooms and the hotel did not seem old at all, considering the deal that we got on the rooms.

For our first meal in Vegas, we enjoyed some Mexican food at La Salsa just outside of the Forum Shops.  I really enjoyed my fish tacos and margarita!  Mexican tastes extra good when you are hungry!

On our first day, we explored the many different hotels along the strip.

The new Louis Vuitton store by Aria looks just like the ROM.

The first night of clubbing was spent at TAO at the Venetian.  This was a very Asian infused club with near-naked ladies dancing in bath tubs.  The girls enjoyed cabana hopping and free drinks all night long!

Second day was outlet shopping.  We visited the Las Vegas Premium Outlets and look at all my purchases:

Our splurge meal of the trip was at Bouchon Bistro at the Venetian.  A restaurant creation by the infamous Thomas Keller of the Michelin 3-star The French Laundry.

The food was wonderful and the staff was very attentive, but I wonder if it was because of the fact that the waiter couldn’t keep his eyes off of the 6 sexy Asian chicks all at one table.  We ordered the octopus appetizer, seared halibut, and trout served whole.

We tried to make our second night of clubbing a little easier by going to the club right below the Caesars called Pure, but it was totally an older crowd and pretty dead when we went at around 11pm, so we decided to go to XS at Encore.  I wish I could provide a more accurate description of how pretty the club was, but all I could remember was that the hotel was very red…red carpets and red walls everywhere…

I was surprised that everyone was able to wake up for our spa treatment at Qua the next morning at 9am.  I guess it’s true when they say Vegas never sleeps.  There was a promotion at Qua and we ended up paying only $99 for our 50min Swedish massage, while being able to enjoy the rest of the facilities for free.  Compared to spas in Toronto, the facilities at Qua are unparalleled.  They had a hot tub, a cold tub, a body temperature tub, another hot tub, a sauna room, a steam room, and an Artic ice room.  Very relaxing indeed.

Lunch was at Payard at the Caesars.  We each enjoyed a $19 3-course prix fixe lunch of lobster salad, salmon, and choice of dessert.

Our last night in Vegas was spent at the Wynn buffet and Le Reve.  I’m not a big fan of buffets but I must say that The Buffet is much better than the one at the Bellagio and exceeded my expectations.  Le Reve, however, did not.  I wasn’t sure if it was because I had just had a big meal or if Le Reve was just plain boring, but I found myself dozing off throughout the hour and a half synchronized swimming show and display of acrobatics.  Definitely would want to catch a real Cirque du Soleil show the next time around.

A third night of clubbing was too much for me, so I let the girls go off on their own and went back to the hotel to pack for our noon flight out.

When I saw that Le Chien Fumant (The Smoking Dog – not the cigarette kind of smoke, the flaming kind of smoke!) was mentioned in the magazine article, I decided to look it up for some reviews.  The reviews, the chalkboard menu, and the whole look of the restaurant looked promising.  Even the house cocktail of brandy, sugar water, sparkling wine and lemon juice boosted our expectations for a great meal.

I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed by the food, but more so by the long wait time for my food.  We ordered Cajun-style crab cakes to start, followed by baby-back ribs.  They also served dishes such as deep fried Cornish hen cooked Southern style, lamb filet, lamb shank with pasta, and clams in black bean sauce.  With our appetizer, we got a free order of Chinatown calamari.  Both tasted very good, but I didn’t get to snap a picture of the calamari.  The food doesn’t sound like conventional bistro food at all which gives this restaurant a distinctive twist in the menu.

While we waited impatiently for our mains to show up, they served us another free appetizer, the beef carpaccio cut thick.

Here’s my ribs served with tamali and corn.

The food was pretty good.  We had to wait but at least we got free food and enough food to pack lunch the next day!