A short guide to eating in other places
I am returned from my travels and have learned Much. One thing I'd like to share concerns the food one can get in two states adjoining California.I was in Las Vegas two weeks ago and spent a great deal of money on food whenever I had the chance to eat some. The $120 my brother and I spent for dinner at Margaritaville on the Strip (chairs are forced to face big screens with Jimmy Buffett or Jimmy Buffett-approved music videos on them, then characters vaguely dressed in nautical attire on stilts walk by and attempt to interact with diners) wasn't something that surprised me.
Before I'd ever visited Las Vegas I was impressed to hear that casinos would subsidize food in the hope of luring gamblers. Since I don't gamble anything but my affections, Las Vegas to me seemed to be a place I could happily live and die fat on just pennies a day.
Unfortunately, now that the desert paradise has so much more to offer a visitor than just gambling (being hit by a car, for example), the casinos no longer see the need to price dinner cheaply to attract customers.
That is why I was shocked when a friend invited three of us to dinner at the Ellis Island Casino.
The Ellis Island is a one-story casino/karaoke bar/restaurant way off the Strip that looks like a truck stop. It is patronized by locals and I and my friends had fun making the overweight security guards run around trying to capture strips of bacon.
Each of us ordered a drink or two and some variant of the steak special. I got a filet, mashed potatoes, and green beans. All were very good, and definitely better than any dinner I'd yet had in my several trips to Las Vegas.
Then the bill came.
My friend passed around the check and we thought there had to be some mistake. The total came to just over $28. We left a generous tip.
I can't imagine that place will be there, or the prices intact, the next time I go to Las Vegas. I feel I lucked out. But I'll even drop some money in the slot machines there if by so doing I can still get a steak for five bucks.
Last week I went to Arizona to visit my in-laws.
I gave my mother in-law a computer almost two years ago and she is taking small steps to taking advantage of its many uses. She has not yet ordered Internet service, for example, because there is something to do with moving some disused furniture from one uninhabited part of the house to another. I'm still not clear on it.
Anyway, she said that the town of Tempe now offered two hours of free wireless service a day, so I suggested we go to the Apple Store to pick up a wireless card and find out the real news. The Apple Store was a bust because the clerks didn't know what I was talking about regarding the rumor of free wireless services in Tempe and furthermore scoffed at the idea of selling a piece of equipment for a computer more than three months old.
But that's not the real story.
On the ride to the store, I asked, casually, "Babs (I call her Babs; it took her a while to adjust to this, as her name is Audrey), what part of Arizona do you like the most?"
She has lived in AZ for 33 years. "None, really," she said. She repeated the question to me.
"None, really," I said. I believe that the presence of New Mexico makes Arizona redundant, and that the government should just move the Grand Canyon to another state, like they did in Poltergeist.
It was in this dark mood that TAARG, ACI, and I traveled out past the GM Proving Grounds to the Mesa home of Mike and Lora Powers and our friend Ken."This was all unincorporated when I was growing up," TAARG said, but now there were little planned communities stretching toward the Superstition Mountains. I was afraid.
The Powers home was low and large, like the Ellis Island casino but with a much better audio/visual setup (He sells real estate and each major sale he accompanies with a huge purchase for his own home. One time it was a wall-length television, the next it was a weapons-grade barbecue, and next time it will be the Los Angeles Clippers). Drinks were deployed immediately and food followed, like a version of the Book of Genesis in a church I wouldn't distrust.
We had steaks and potatoes and vegetables and portobello mushrooms (which combine all three) and, if ACI weren't jet-lagged and in need of sleep, we would have stayed for s'mores.
In the onslaught of such food, the only gift I could provide was to teach Meghan, the delightful eighth grade daughter of Ken's girlfriend, to say "You're dead to me" to her teachers (variant: "I'm talking to a dead man.")
Anyway, I'd made my own plans, but Mike Powers saved Arizona that night.
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by Marty Barrett at Monday, January 16, 2006
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