I'm torn between wanting to enjoy it fully since I was there over my weekend working my tail off and because oatmeal or a burger and fries delivered for room service were tallied up at $40, so how come I couldn't spend more than $60 when eating out? But that's what we did. Sigh.
The hotel of the convention was the Encore, so there were a good amount of us there. It was a really beautiful hotel and casino, the latter of which was way too rich for my blood to be gambling in. But they were highly decorated still for the new year which was pretty awesome to see.
We got there on a Thursday and needed to grab some food between arrival and heading to the convention center to do our first round of testing. There was a place just a hop down from our hotel called Stripburger which someone said was good so we went there. And it was surprisingly good even though we sat outside which ended up being freezing.
I got a blue cheese burger with fried onions which really was very satisfying. Or maybe since it was my first meal of the day and I was starving. But it sure seemed pretty good.
For dinner that night, someone recommended this old skool steak place, the Golden Steer. I've since read that other people recommend it and also Bon Appetit mentioned it in 2009 or something. It was interesting, for sure.
Those of us who were there early for testing and setup gathered for dinner. They put us in a private room even though the restaurant wasn't really that full. But our private room was lit whereas the rest of the restaurant was pretty seedy and dark. So I was thankful for that.
The menu was very classic style and all a la carte. It seemed like it would be really awesome or really horrible. I was hoping for the former.
They make each caesar salad tableside for $12/person. I love a good caesar, so I was looking forward to that. But the guy who came to make it stood at the far end of the room and looked as unhappy to be there as any employee I have ever seen. He mixed an insipid thin little sauce, added a tiny amount of parmesan cheese (you could not have called this sad cheese parmigiano), and mixed it all up.
While it was a large pile of salad that I got, it was sad and bland.
Everyone at the table got filet. Some people got filet with lobster or filet with king crab. The filets came out a beautiful medium as ordered. The seafood came out overcooked.
My prime, as they say it was, bone-in ribeye has a nice color. It had no seasoning. And I ordered it medium rare but it came medium to medium well. I was sad. If not for the juice at the bottom, it would have been inedible.
Of the collection of sides, the creamed spinach was good. Everything else was overcooked and bland.
The next morning, I walked around in the morning with Dan. If I had known then that it would be the only free time I had in my whole five-day trip, I might have enjoyed it more. We looked for breakfast for a while and ended up at Dal Toro in the Palazzo hotel. There was only one other table.
I got the eggs benedict with potatoes. It was cooked well, the eggs poached perfectly. The potatoes were more like chips, but they were not bad.
For lunch that day, we stayed on property and went to The Society. I got a steak salad which came with a well-cooked skirt steak, blue cheese, fried onions, and tomatoes. And two of these really good truffled deviled eggs. Mmmmm. The worstershire dressing went well. This was a satisfying salad.
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