7 Great Cheap Eats in Offbeat Las Vegas

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Viva Las Arepas owner Felix Arellano delivers some awesome Venezuelan areas near downtown Las Vegas

This is from my new ebook Marathon Mouth, available to purchase from online booksellers Amazon (Amazon Canada), iTunes, Kobo and Chapters/Indigo.

Las Vegas  has plentiful fine cuisine in the top-end hotels/casinos. But you have to venture off The Strip to find the best cheap eats. The bonus is these places are often in far more colourful, less sanitized parts of town.

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The most colourful area of Las Vegas is just a few minutes drive removed from The Strip

Only a five-minute drive removed from the tourist hordes is a decidedly more downbeat neighbourhood with colourful signs reminiscent of the 1950s. Here, you’ll find the fabulous Viva Las Arepas, where friendly owner Felix Arellano can often be found cooking chicken and beef over a mesquite-fired grill and then stuffing the meats inside cornmeal Venezuelan pockets splashed with house-made hot sauce.

Not far away, chef Josh Clark is making innovative, epic sandwiches (like seared bratloaf and smoked whitefish) at The Goodwich and charging less than you’d tip a bellhop at a strip hotel. Note: The Goodrich is currently moving to a new location, so check the website for the opening and hours of operation. In the meantime, their old food truck, next door to Viva Las Arepas, is now an incubator for a rotating series of talented young chefs and is definitely worth checking out.

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Best BLT I’ve ever eaten, thanks to the house-cured bacon at The Goodwich

More culinary adventures await in an even less polished part of downtown. Inside the marvelous, new LGBTQ Center, with its impressively landscaped front patio, is the Bronze Café. While much of its creative fare is vegan, there’s a maple-glazed bacon sandwich, slathered in bacon jam, worthy of a carnivore’s trek.

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The Bronze Cafe serves up some great vegan and carnivore meals

Away from the city center, Bachi Burger brings an Asian twist to American classics. Would you believe fabulous oxtail chile fries, wagyu burgers with caramelized bacon and Peking duck sliders, all washed down with a unique black milk tea or yuzu soda? To the near west, Chile Verde Express is a one-man show, pumping out inexpensive burritos, tacos and the like, inside a gas station.

There are more fantastic cross-cultural things happening at Komex Fusion. Throw some Korean, American and Mexican cuisine into the blender and what emerges is, say, bulgogi fries topped with melted mozza, meat, pico de gallo and Korean hot sauce—a big, tasty plate of food at a most affordable price.

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Hungry for a multinational dish? How about bulgogi fries at Komex Fusion?

If you’re looking for a good caffeine fix, visit Sambalatte Torrefazione at two cafes in the Vegas hinterlands and one in the Monte Carlo Casino on The Strip. It small-batch roasts beans and turns them into fine espressos, pour-overs and ice coffees.

 

Las Vegas

 

Viva Las Arepas
1616 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Suite 120
Daily 8 am-midnight
702-366-9696

The Goodwich
900 South Las Vegas Boulevard (upcoming location. Check for hours)
702-910-8681

Bronze Cafe
401 South Maryland Parkway
Weekdays 7 am-10 pm, weekends 10 am-8 pm
702-202-3100

Bachi Burger
470 East Windmill Lane, Suite 100 (two other Las Vegas locations)
Sunday-Monday 11 am-11 pm, Tuesday to Thursday 11 am-midnight, Friday-Saturday 11 am-1 am
702-242-2244

Chile Verde Express
8095 South Rainbow Boulevard (Choice Sinclair Gas Station)
Monday to Thursday 8 am-7 pm, Friday-Saturday 8 am-6 pm. Closed Sunday
702-260-7758

 KoMex Fusion
633 North Decatur Boulevard (one other Las Vegas location)
Monday to Saturday 11 am-8 pm. Closed Sunday
702-646-1612

 Sambalatte Torrefazione
3770 South Las Vegas Boulevard (two other Las Vegas locations)
Daily 7 am-10 pm
702-730-6789

Monogram Diagrams the Way to Create a Fine Calgary Coffeehouse

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Words at the bottom of the enamel mugs are one of the many nice touches at Calgary's Monogram Coffee.

Words at the bottom of the enamel mugs are one of the many nice touches at Calgary’s Monogram Coffee.

Build it splendidly, and they will come.

That’s certainly the case at Monogram Coffee, situated in an isolated strip mall in Calgary’s Altadore neighbourhood, miles from any centre of commerce. Yet the obscure location hasn’t stopped local java aficionados from finding and frequenting this little cafe, which has already expanded since opening last year. It doesn’t hurt that it’s handy to a dog park, with space outside to hitch the pooch while getting your caffeine fix. Continue reading →

Calgary Baker’s Sandwiches Are No Croque

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The brioche bread makes this scintillating croque monsieur at Calgary's Manuel Latruwe bakery

The brioche bread makes this scintillating croque monsieur at Calgary’s Manuel Latruwe bakery

The conventional image of a croque monsieur is a béchamel-soaked ham sandwich, baked till the blanketing cheese (say a Gruyere) bubbles over.

But it took a trip to Calgary Belgian baker Manuel Latruwe for me to realize the essence of this caloric confection is the bread. Which in this case is a wonderfully soft, house-made brioche, offsetting the sandwich’s crunch (croque) and adding a layer of richness to this French standard. Continue reading →

Yelp! Restaurant Reviewers Say the Darndest Things

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Everyone's a critic when it comes to online restaurant reviews. Which can lead to some hilarious bloopers

Everyone’s a critic when it comes to online restaurant reviews. Which can lead to some hilarious bloopers

When researching potential places to eat and drink during my long, intensive road-food trips, I spend considerable time reading online reviews from TripAdvisor, Yelp, Zomato (nee Urbanspoon) and their ilk.

Occasionally, I run across some unintended zingers, often the result of a fortuitous spelling mistake, no doubt committed while typing with thick thumbs on a smartphone with a mind of its own. So here, for your consuming pleasure, are some of my favourite online reviews. The sources shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty. Comments in italics are mine.

The coffee here is excellent, which is likely the most important thing about a coffee shop (lol)… for me personally, I’m not a coffee drinker.

I only had iced tea (preceding a six-paragraph, five-star review).

Full disclosure (after a lengthy review): I did not eat here.

The hours are kind of strange, as they close before a person under 60 would even consider eating dinner….I wish this place were a Filiberto’s style late-night place, but alas, I’ll be forced to eat here sober.

I don’t feel right writing about a bakery because I rarely eat bread and don’t have much of a sweet tooth (in the midst of a five-paragraph review). Continue reading →

My Favourite Workout Songs

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I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t simply exercise your way to weight loss. Indeed, calories consumed (or not consumed) are much more important than calories burned. For example, if I reward a 40-minute run (475 calories burned) with a cheeseburger, fries and pint of beer (1,150 calories consumed), I have a net gain of 675 calories. Gulp!

But there are obvious reasons for exercising. It leads to better fitness for strenuous activities I enjoy like hiking, mountaineering and backcountry skiing. And from a weight-loss perspective, exercise makes me feel better and less likely to a) eat bad things and b) excessively snack, primarily out of boredom. So in a roundabout way, exercise does help me eat better and keep the pounds at bay.

The problem is that in the dead of winter, I’m not inclined (too lazy) to run outside. The trick, then, is finding sufficient motivation to run around a gym track, hamster style, for dozens of laps. The solution, for me, is listening to tunes, on an iPod and headphones, sufficiently upbeat to keep my legs churning for 40 minutes.

So here’s a favourite workout soundtrack, all based on songs released in 2015. No tedious classic rock for this aging boomer.

1. Grimes: Kill V Maim
This is pure fun from my favourite 2015 album. Wakes me from the dead.

2. Kurt Vile: Pretty Pimpin
A great song for propelling me around the track.

3. Sharon Van Etten: I Don’t Want to Let You Down
Rhythmically hypnotic. Continue reading →

Favourite Road-Trip Dining Spots: The CBC Listeners Weigh In

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Listeners to CBC Radio's Alberta noon program weighed in on their favourite road-trip food picks

Listeners to CBC Radio’s Alberta noon program weighed in on their favourite road-trip food picks

I was on CBC Radio’s Alberta at Noon show the other day, talking about my new Marathon Mouth ebook on great road-trip eats in the western U.S./Canada.

But the real stars were the province-wide listeners who called in or tweeted to champion their favourite food stops near or far from their homes. And despite my extensive research trips, many of their picks were places I’d never heard of. So this post is dedicated to their suggestions (I hope my spelling guesses of their names is reasonably accurate).

Bernie won a free download of the book for suggesting The Last Straw in Libby, Montana. How often do you find hand-pressed, fresh burgers made from your choice of Angus or longhorn beef or bison? Or, at breakfast, corn beef hash for under $7? It’s apparently great stuff, especially for a small town off the beaten path on Highway 2, between Bonners Ferry and Kalispell.

Continue reading →