Why we don't review chains

As you've noticed we try to stick to local joints, places that we can chill at and not stress what is going down around us. We're pretty easy going kind of fatties. We eat at chains, we eat our fast food, normal things. We like Chile's and Applebeas, we don't mind some pancakes from IHOP.
When I'm in Arizona, I hit up Whataburger. We're not snobbish fatties. Now personally I don't see the point in reviewing a place everyone in the country can easily go to, or large parts of the country for that matter. But I do see a point in reviewing smaller places, or places not many people know about, all around the places that I happen to be.

As me and Rabbit are moving here soon, that will be another part of town, and it will lead to a whole new world of experiences.

To ramble around, today we hit Denny's for a quick sandwich. There are other places we could go for this, there was a Jersey Mikes right there, for example, but I like burgers and Ms. Rabbit likes patty melts. There was a lot wrong with our choice. Did you know Denny's is now expensive? It was, with an appetizer, $16 a person! I got a burger, seasoned fries, and an ice tea. Rabbit got her patty melt, seasoned fries, a coke, and we shared some cheese sticks. Now to me, this should be, at a chain like Denny's, maybe $25 total.. Nope, our drinks were freaking $2.30 each. Our food was crap. I would rather goto a place like Grind Burger, that we reviewed, and get a great burger for the same freaking price.

So yeah, we have become a bit snobbish. We'll spend the money for good food and service. But when the food sucks, and the service is only tolerable, it reminds us of why we don't review chains.

Because they are there for a convenience, but over all, kind of suck.

Beer, Beef and Brownies

Steiner's website proclaims that it "is a Nevada style pub and (...) is the best bet for cared-for service, inspired cuisine and an abundant selection of beer and spirits."



Kobold and I were wandering South on Las Vegas Boulevard, past the Town Square mall, past Fry's.. just sort of headed in a direction, when I saw the "Nevada style pub" sign and got curious. We pulled yet another shell world (are we seeing a pattern here?) and popped in. First, let me say: Staff.. you did an excellent job! Kobold gives you females extra points for being attractive, but his scale is a little different than mine. As far as ambiance and service go, you guys get an A+ from me.. or .. a smiley face sticker.. or a pony.

We skipped the appetizers, electing to try and save enough room for a listing on the desert menu that looked absolutely sumptuous. We did note that the prices throughout the menu were absolutely reasonable - and the menu is gigantic. There are 24 beers on tap and more in bottles, a whole page dedicated to sangwiches (hot and cold) and.. yeah. Foodgasm.

Kobold had a sandwich called "The Palms" which is best described as a patty melt, on marble rye with swiss, onions and a side of 1,000 island dressing - take note, restaurants: THIS IS THE ONLY WAY PATTY MELTS SHOULD BE PREPARED! Kobold likes his cow medium rare and that's exactly how it was prepared. He also elected for a side of the home-made potato chips. Yum-tastic, kids. I promise you this.

I had a PhilEly Melt (aka: philly cheesesteak), which was gigantic and had excellent quality of beef (you may also order it with chicken instead), filling, full of onions, peppers and REAL cheese served on a hoagie. I had the beer battered fries which were neither too big nor too small and were nice and crisp but not over done. I'm starting to sound like golide locks at this point, so I'll stop. Seriously, though. Amazing.


For dessert, we had been eyeballing the Hot Bourbon Brownie Sundae and were squeeing in our pants by the time we each had our first bites. Warm, soft brownie, hot fudge, vanilla bean bits on top of vanilla ice cream, smothered in a bourbon sauce? We were happy little fatties and devoured all that we could before the prospect of being carted out of the place on a hand truck presented itself.

Seriously, people. Go south on the boulevard. I promise it's absolutely worth the trip.

Burgers Part 2

CreAte. Just the name makes you think "Eat your Face." This place has custard, so it gets extra points in my book. It's another very modern place. I've spoken to the owner, who is a great, chill kind of guy, and I like a lot of what they are going for here. They are all for the environment, so the plates, utensils, and cups are all washable, the napkins are recycled, and they recycle what they can. As for atmosphere, it's almost like Starbucks meets Industrial. The walls are decorated, there is a lot of seating, and it's mostly chill to be at.

Walk in and look at the columns of burger choices, and things are happy to start with. I normally go with the Medieval, which is apple smoked bacon, burger, and BBQ sauce. I go sans tomatoes since I believe they are still, at least while uncooked, poisonous death apples.

Rabbit quite often makes her own, using their supplied paper with more circling of choices, to mix and match what ever is filling her pretty little head at the time. This often leads to interesting flavors and happiness, in her pants. Don't ask, she squees and I don't want details, most of the time.

Throw in some sweet potato fries, and fresh ice tea, and I'm good to dance and eat and eat and eat and eat.

The thing that wins this place over (besides the custard, because who doesn't love rich frozen custard!?), is just the pure amount of choices. Seriously this place has some 30+ choice of sauces alone. Throw on the 20+ choices of toppings, something like 8 cheeses, and you can make a LOT of decisions about something horribly simple: Charred Animal Flesh In your Mouth!

Up until I tried the Grind this was my favorite burger joint, and now it's a toss up between the two. CreAte loses out, for me, because it's across town off Lake Mead and Tenaya, way out in North West land, while I'm fairly central.

So far the sweet potato fries are beyond compare, and the staff is always happy and fun. Another great place to nom burgers and be a happy carnivore. Potatoes count as meat, don't forget it.

Mm burgers. or "Rock Paper Scissors FTW"

I'm going to do some back to back posting because I think these next two burger joints deserve their own love, for many different reasons.

Starting with the more recent of the two, "Grind Burgers."



Me and Ms. Rabbit were driving around looking for places to eat, and had to make a shell world (Mostly illegal lane change over multiple lanes of traffic in order to turn "Right now!") because we saw a wood fired pizza joint. Well, then we saw a place labeled "Burger Bar." Some quick rock, paper, scissors later, and we were rolling into the burger joint.

Very modern design with high and low tables, really fun filament light bulbs hanging low (Mmm techno lust), and a great logo on the wall (You know then one of the sexy naked lady with her body dotted out for portions of meat).

Sitting down, they bring us over a clip board with a pencil and a paper with dots to fill in and choices to circle. It was time for class!!! So me and Rabbit are good kids and right out name, period, and class at the top of the sheet and get going. Nerd, ho! Ahem. Their menu had a beef burger, turkey, chicken, and meatless. I had the beef. Rabbit being the communist/adventurer/food blogger she is had a turkey burger. Some pepper-jack cheese, peppercinis, and marinated onions later, and I was ready to pick some "sauce." I did roasted garlic mayo and dijon mustard. Rabbit had honey mustard and thousand island on her fancy turkey burger.

Lets talk sides. we got onion strings (a mountain of them. No, really, this stuff was piled 8 inches high), and with dinner fries/potato wedges. With descriptions like

Sweet and Neat (is just the treat)
Short and Thick (will do the trick)
Tall and Thin (easy to put in)

You just know we had to try them out.

They get our drinks out to us quickly, and we begin the game of oogling the place. Very modern industrial. Shiney metal, fun lights, as I've mentioned, and metal chairs. It didn't take long for us to get our onion strings (again, mountainous) with chipotle ranch sauce that was, as Rabbit says, Punch a Baby good. We made it a third of the way through this hike of a meal before our burgers got to us.

Ahh a good burger, it makes me happy. I'm a sucker for onions that are crisp, and these have great flavor and a bit of crunch on a burger that on it's own was flavorful. I'm not sure what they marinate or spice their meat with, but I think I might have to, at some point, slap a hobo to convince them to share their recipe. Rabbits turkey burger, for a turkey burger, was pretty darn good too. I was happy to eat our "short and thick" 'tato wedges with my garlic mayo and random dips in the onions chipotle. I finished my burger, and we ate most of the fries, poor Rabbit could only eat half of her turkey burger (she's a light weight!!!!). Ok to be fair, for $9 each, it's a fair price, these things are huge. My burger filled both of my hands when I ate it, and I have, what the ladies affectionately call "Gorilla Paws."

The part of this adventure that saddens me is two fold. First, we were too full to try ice cream sliders. This made me a sad panda. Second is they have shirts for sale, but in the maroon t-shirt, didn't have my fat-ass-size. I believe they were just out, as it looks like they normally carry a pretty good stock of these.

All and all it's a great place. Over on Tropicana between Las Vegas Boulevard and Paradise, off on the north side, tucked in with some random resort.
Totally worth the "Shell World," to get there.

Blue Fin Sushi

Ghryc and I are big fans of sushi - and on the rare occasion that Kobold is feeling adventurous and has it on good authority that the cross-contamination at that particular place is nonexistent, he'll try it too. On this occasion it was just myself and Ghryc, though and we went for some all-you-can-eat sushi at Blue Fin. It's on Sunset almost to Hender-tucky but still technically within the city limits. Also, apparently, it delivers. Oh, how I wish I were within range. You can find their website here .

Let me add this in here: Ghryc can put away some serious amounts of food in general, but watching him eat sushi and sashimi is... well, it's almost like watching a true master paint a portrait or listening to a musician really get into the groove. This man can eat when he wants to and on the occasion that you get him to a sushi place, there is no other choice than 'all you can eat' for him.

Myself, I'm content with one, maybe two rolls (the rice is filling, ok!) and I'm good for the while... never mind that I'll be hungry in an hour or two once everything has settled. So, to give you an idea of the general gist that we ate, I'll include the ones I remember myself eating and... well, I'll give you the rundown of what Ghryc said about the massive amounts of food he packed away.

I always have tempura-something (I'm not a fan of raw fish, I prefer the cooked or tempura-ed rolls), so this time I chose the tempura shrimp. They were light and crispy, not overcooked and generally wicked delicious. I also believe I had the crystal shrimp and/or a godzilla-type roll (shrimp, avocado, fish sauce, et all) which was also quite good. I'm a good kid when it comes to eating but also I want to mention the portions here were quite large, so for a normal fatty, 1-2 rolls just might do you in.

Ghryc is a fan of sashimi and ....whatever the little quail-egg-thingies-with-orange-balls-on-top.. things are, so he had those, as well as some spicy rolls and some cooked rolls, all of which he declared absolutely delicious. This is only one of the many sushi restaurants that he frequents but it is one of his favorites, as the price is decent and the portions large.

And to think I was so happy

So I think I posted too soon. See, it'd been a bit (December) since I'd been to Rebel Pizza when I wrote my review. Until now they were great. Let's just start from the basics..
They has an almost 50% increase in their cheese pizza prices. Now you have to wait for a $5 pizza, when you can walk into any Little Caesar's in town and get one hot and ready. Ok, I can deal with a wait, it's a better pizza and fresh. For this I am ok, though a little sad. So I call in my order before I leave work, like a good kid, get there a few minutes later (about 5, really) and pay. The guy on the phone said 15 minutes, so I'm cool. I chill, and I wait, and I watch. After the SECOND person that came in after me got their pizza, and by now it's almost 40 minutes since I called, with no "Hey dude, running behind, sorry" or a "Oh crap, sorry Mr. 6' 270lb hard to miss man, we forgot about you" I roll up to the counter. The lady looks at me, confused a second, and then remembers my name. She looks for the pizzas, and moves to two that have been sitting there for at least 10 minutes, both pepperoni. I called in a order for a cheese and a pepperoni, not a hard thing.

"Oh we're working on the cheese right now!" meaning, 'I'll give you this cold Pepperoni, and ha, oops.' Well, no, I have places to go. So I ask for my money back. She looks at me like I just slapped a midget. "Hold on a second," calls the next order up (I'm ok with this, dude's been waiting at least 20 minutes), and guess what?! His fries aren't ready! She runs out to put his fries in, and tells me, looks at me "You want just two pepperoni?" meaning 'Do you want these pepperoni pizza's that have been sitting here getting cold for now about 15 minutes?" I tell her no, I just want my money. "Well you'll have to wait. I need to get it signed for" what ever, I'll wait, more.

Interjecting: While I've been sitting here I've seen

• Cook wiping his mouth on the rag in his apron where he's wiping his hands off from the flour.
• Dude in the back scratching his nose and then putting food in boxes
• Old man in the back scratching his head and then handling food

Dude that was scratching his nose, during all this, asks if I needed help, girl interjects, says she's helping me. Finally old man comes, signs the note after she goes over the story in a condescending tone. I get my money and bail, 45 minutes after my initial call for an order I was told would take 15 minutes.

Now, these aren't the people I normally saw in there. We'd gone numerous nights of the week and saw the same people over and over, so maybe they've changed staff and what not, but as of now, I'm not going back. Between the bad hygiene habits and the crap-tastic service, why would I?

So, this is the first bad review of our loverly food blog, and I'm sad to say it's retracting a formally great review.

Hashing a Favorite

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Over all I think it was agreed that Hash House A Go Go would be something that needed multiple posts and opinions on, but after Rabbit's Rampages of Writing I think I need to play some catch up and express my undying love and adoration for this Urban Farm Food.

There is far too much food here. No, really. Every portion can pretty much feed two, if not a third. We've gone here, we being me, Rabbit, and my loverly girlfriend, at least three times, maybe more like four. The problem is eventually it all blurs into one big round of "OMFG I can't move, I eat too many."
Listing things off, I know we've tried

• HH Famous Meatloaf, roasted red peppers, fresh spinach and smoked mozzarella
• Andy's Sage Fried Chicken w/ maple reduction, 2 eggs, bacon mashed potatoes & biscuit
• Grilled portobello mushroom
• The Kokomo
• Hash House Quesadilla stuffed w/potatoes, jalapenos, eggs & tomato w/ chili cream

I wish I could remember everything, and I know I'm close. We've also had their breakfast drinks. They have a mimosa that is based of Aste' and Tangerine juice. Their bartenders mix a good drink. It's easy to get too much or not enough booze in a mimosa, especially first thing in the morning, but never has that happened yet. They hit it right on the money. I enjoy their Breakfast Martini, when I can get it. It's juices, and booze, and a cinnamon sugar rim. Ok it's a little foofy for my usual fare, but yeah first thing in the morning when you roll out of bed at 11:00am it's something that makes things better and right. It's sweet, and smooth, and has booze. what else is needed?! Good food.

Look above at those selections. I wish I could describe them all in their mouth watering evil fullness, but I can't, because I'm not verbose enough to give them adequate praise. The Quesadilla is a great breakfast treat. It's starch with a side of starch, and some eggs for good measure. It's well seasoned and FREAKING HUGE. If I haven't mentioned it yet (I think this is only the fourth time) their portions will make you ache. And it's worth it.

The Kokomo is a meatloaf sammich with mozzarella on milk bread. It's this monstrous sammich that comes on a large plate and stares at you, taunting you. The Portobello Mushroom burger is equally large, and almost good for you. These are both wonderful selections if you're not quite ready for breakfast, because it's lunch time when you get there like us.

The Chicken, eggs, and potatoes is a wonderful meal. The chicken breast had to be the Dolly Parton of Chicken's because it's ginormous. And there's this maple reduction that's drizzled along the plate that makes me gyrate my hips in anticipation. Ok for those of you that don't know (aka most of you at this point) I am a sucker for maple. It is my weakness. It's an addiction I keep in check by living in the Southwest so it's too expensive to live off of.

The meatloaf had to be a pound of meat. It's not like Mama cooked it, because Mama never cooked meatloaf this good. It's huge, and tasty, and goes really well between two slices of bread the next day at lunch because like everything else, I had left overs.

There is a downside to this now-chain of off the chain Twisted Tractor Treats. The service is always a bit slow. In their defense it's because we're always there when there are people eagerly and happily waiting upwards of an hour for a table in a town where you can walk five feet and probably find more food, but still, I get cranky waiting for drinks. At least the bar is fast. That makes a lot of things tolerable.

I haven't had a chance to do their dinner menu yet, but it's on my list of noms to try.