Between Spanish Meals in Vegas: Lotus of Siam

Chef Jose Andres has three restaurants in The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.  We ate at two of them - Jaleo and é - in March of 2013.  We could have eaten at the third one, China Roblano, but the idea of a Spanish rendition of Chinese-Mexican fusion food was too bizarre for me.  Two weeks later, our friends Arufa and M reported that their meal at China Roblano was excellent.  The steamed BBQ pork buns there had the fluffiest texture, and the taco with deep-fried slow cooked beef tendon and Kumamoto oyster was sublime.  Wow, who would have thought of tendon and oyster together in a taco?  We have missed out on that place, though we did eat two Asian lunches between our Spanish dinners.

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Our taxi took us from the Strip and its glam to Lotus of Siam (LOS from here on) in a local area that could not be any plainer.  The driver would have missed the restaurant if I had not spotted its name in green plastic letters bundling up on the back wall of a dreary strip mall.  The Thai restaurant was in plain sight once the taxi pulled into the huge and empty-looking parking lot.  From the outside LOS did not look much.  It was hard to imagine that this was one of the most popular and highly regarded eateries of Las Vegas.

Lotus of Siam

Even though the mall looked deserted, LOS was packed inside.  We were lucky to get a small table right away.  Soon a larger table for four opened up and our friendly waiter moved us over without hassle in spite of people waiting at the reception.  We ordered five items from the menu and two different glasses of German Riesling.  Our waiter warned us that some of our dishes would take a while because the kitchen was busy with making food for the popular lunch buffet.  He also made sure that we knew that the wines were sweet. 

It did not take long for tod mun plar (deep fried fish cake) and pork satay to arrive.  The fish cakes at LOS were seasoned with curry paste and they did not contain chopped long beans.  Their texture was on the firm side.  As my knowledge of Thai food was next to nothing, I had no idea whether the LOS version was any more traditional than the bouncy fluffy turmeric yellow ones that I had in the past.  The pork was marinated with fresh herbs and spices, grilled and served with peanut sauce.  The slightly charred meat was juicy and tender.  We liked both starters and finished them in no time.

tod mun plar

pork satay

 Mrs. A could not resist the classic tom yum koong soup.  The watery clear broth with shrimps and straw mushrooms was packed with flavor - sour (lime), hot (chili), spicy (galangal), aromatic (lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf) and umami (fish sauce, shrimp).  It whetted our appetite for what to come. 

Squid sautéed in garlic, cilantro and chili pepper sauce had a wonderful flavor.  But we were disappointed that the squid pieces were chewy.  They were not the tender Monterey Bay squids that we were used to.  

garlic squid

Our last dish was crispy duck on drunken noodle.  Hidden at the bottom of the plate was a small heap of pan-fried wide flat rice noodle (why the name “drunken noodle” is unclear to me as there is no alcohol involved in its preparation).  The noodle was completely covered by duck slices.  The meat tasted like Cantonese roasted duck, but the skin was crisp from deep frying.  A liberal amount of Thai basil, chili and salad leaves in a refreshing Thai dressing transformed the meat and noodle into a complex and satisfying dish.  The generous portion was also filling.  

crispy duck drunken noodle

Mrs. A finished her meal with an individual serving of fried banana and coconut ice cream.  We could not be happier with our leisure lunch.  Our wines paired well with the delicious food, our efficient waiters were polite and friendly despite the lunch rush, and the price was right. 

I have to mention that LOS has a superb 51-page wine list.  Its cellar has a large selection of German wine (over 150 Rieslings and 14 by the glass) as well as fine Old and New World red and white.  The selection is particularly amazing for an Asian restaurant.  The wines are very reasonable priced.  If I lived in or near Las Vegas, I would go to LOS regularly for its food and wine.

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For dim sum lunch I selected a Chinese restaurant based on reviews and photos on the online review website Yelp!   The restaurant, which will remain unnamed, was not quite half filled when we arrived.  That was not bad for a place in a drab area away from the Strip on a weekday.  The four ladies pushing dim sum carts were enthusiastic in selling us their food.  One of them even offered us a taste of the pan fried rice noodle rolls.  Unfortunately the food and the tea were mediocre.  A manager wandered around the dining room the whole time doing nothing and for sure not attending to the diners.  Our anemic waiter was inattentive and impersonal.  Upon paying our bill, he just walked away with the money in silence without any expression.  What a contrast in service between this place and LOS.   The poor dim sum lunch was very inexpensive; the taxi fare to the restaurant and back cost twice as much as the lunch. 

Dragon eel? 盤龍鱔

Eating eel can be an acquired taste.  I can remember being repulsed by the thought of this slithery worm like creature - why would I want to eat it?  And I didn't, not when I was growing up.  The eel my family had was usually served in a hot pot and was considered a specialty dish.  I have since outgrown this distaste and really enjoyed the eel I've tried in sushi houses (not the same kind of eel) and also in Chinese restaurants.  In fact, the highlight of our private room dinner at Delicious was for me, the steamed dragon eel with orange peel 陳皮蒸盤龍鱔.   It was the first time I have tried this dish and it was superb!  The eel meat was tender and tasty, not at all fishy or slithery and the black bean sauce lightly flavoured with orange peel enhanced the eel without overpowering the taste.  I loved it!

So then I became curious - what is this thing?  I'd seen live river eels on our trip to New Zealand when we visited one of the conservation parks near Wellington (Mt. Bruce Wildlife Centre).  As you can see below - these were huge!  I never thought then I'd be eating them!

 I found this video on Youtube that shows you how to cook a dragon eel.  It seems that the most difficult part was slicing up the eel into rings and still managing to keep it whole.  The chef in the video only showed the cut up eel but didn't demonstrate how to do it.  He did emphasize that the stomach should not be cut open in order to maintain the taste.  So the tricky part then is cleaning the stomach without opening it up and not cut through the spine so that the eel remains in one piece.  The rest seems really quite easy to do.

Prepare the sauce (basic ingredients of salt, sugar, oyster sauce, black bean sauce, sesame oil, pepper, etc.), roll the eel in it then arrange the eel curled up on the plate and steam.  The chef in the video also said that the best eel came from Australia near the river estuary as that's where there is a mix of freshwater and salt water giving the eel a distinct flavour and texture.  Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDCBK4142ww

A Custom Non-traditional Chinese banquet (私房菜)

Typically, banquets at Chinese restaurants have set courses that are pretty standard - two first courses with seafood, shark's fin or other seafood soup, chicken, lobster, fish, rice and noodles.  Some restaurants are willing to prepare custom dinners made up of non-traditional courses with special orders.  And you would order that if you want to try some specialty dishes that you wouldn't normally be able to try if you don't have enough people at the table.  So you organize a group (ten is the magic number) and place a special order for a 私房菜, literally translated as "private room/home dinner".  Historically, the "private home" would sometimes be the home of the cook and not necessarily in a restaurant.*  We did this at Delicious Restaurant, a very small restaurant with only 6 - 7 tables.  All ten courses were prepared by chef Patrick Chuang and they were all consistently excellent! 

We started with a tasty soup that was steamed in a ceramic pot.  There were goji berries, conch, chicken feet, mushrooms and other Chinese herbs in the soup.  Next came the appetizer, three different kinds of fish and taro deep-fried in a light batter.  My favourite was the taro.

This is nappa cooked with Chinese ham - the vegetables soaked up the taste from the ham

Deep-fried prawns and squash - almost like a tempura - cooked just right and so crispy you can eat the shell

Shanghai bokchoy with abalone mushrooms - lots of greens to balance off the fried foods

My all time favourite - the best Hainan chicken in town - even the breast meat is tender

HIghlight of the evening - steamed dragon eel - a really special dish done to perfection (more on this in the next post)

Braised pork trotters with dried vegetables served with Chinese steamed buns (see an earlier post on this melt-in-your-mouth specialty)

Fried dungeness crab - flavoured with lots of fried garlic and shallots

All these followed by home made red bean sweet soup (not the gooey kind standard in most restaurants) and the house special chrysanthemum gelatin.  The most amazing thing was there was hardly anything left over at the end of this - just some rice!

*A contact in Hong Kong indicated that this type of dinner was very trendy when there was an economic downturn in the late 1990's.  Some operate illegally in residential buildings but not much was done about them due to the economy.  They came in different grades, ranging from reasonable to pricey but it was not easy to keep up and many did not last very long.  

This was typical of the traditional 私房菜 which, according to the Chinese Wikipaedia originated from the late Ching Dynasty, again resulting from people falling on hard times and trying to make a living from their home.  Many of these were not chefs by profession (and in fact often came from formerly well off families with high positions in court) but were obviously good enough at it to make a name for themselves.  

Tapas - perfect for the adventurous!

What better way to try different things on the menu than to have tapas - small plates of food (like dim sum except they can be complete meals).  We tried them many years ago at Casa Barcelona in Bloor Street Village, then the real thing in Madrid.  Both were quite good but what overwhelmed us a little was the way the dishes were brought out all at once.  The mix of tastes confused the palette.  

Small plates restaurant have become very popular in North America.  We visited one when we were in California, The Basin in Saratoga.  Food was not great but we also shared the small plates between 5 people, too many, I think, to get a real taste of the food even if you ordered many plates - everyone wanted to try everything.  Ideally, a small plate should be shared between two, maximum three and if you have a larger group, order two of the same. 

We had an excellent small plate experience at Cava, in Toronto.  For good reasons, this has been rated one of the top ten restaurants in Toronto (by critic Joanne Kates) with Chef Chris Mcdonald at the helm.  We tried six dishes and they were served individually except for the last two when the asparagus was like a side dish for the almost "main" venison. We could have gotten by with four as the two big ones were really main courses - they were bigger than some "big plates" restaurants!  

   

Bruschetta of edamame, grilled green onions, moroccan olives and sicilian tomatoes  - love the ground edamame and the mix of the olives and tomatoes really enhanced the flavour!

Salt cod cake with piperade and chipotle crema - the piperade was a nice contrast to the salt cod in both taste and texture

Seared scallops done to perfection with ragout of artichokes,  cipollini and piquillo peppers - this is more like a "big plate"

Duck magret with trinxat and violet mustard sauce - duck tastes great,  no sauce needed although the sauce was quite interesting

Venison anticucho with a warm red cabbage salad and asparagus with lemon pepper aioli - again aioli hardly needed because the asparagus is so fresh and sweet.  But the venison was the best ever!  It was tender and tasty.  Not normally a cabbage fan, I enjoyed the flavour of this soft pickled red cabbage.

Lemon pistachio baked alaska with saffron-pepper cake and sherry-poached pears -  the pistachio ice cream is the best I have ever tasted - I can actually taste the pistachio!

Apparently Cava make their own desserts, which explains the long dessert list.  The baked alaska was the first item on a list of eleven items!  I just noticed a Valrhona chocolate souffle with Spanish coffee sauce - now why didn't I see that earlier?!  This definitely calls for repeat visits!

And to top it all off - there is free corkage (at least for now) on Sundays!  This really made this a good value restaurant in spite of complaints about the prices. 

Spring Goose - Epilogue

Undeniably, spring is here and immediate thoughts of spring goose came to mind.  It was a year ago that I wrote my first post on this blog with the title "Spring Goose".  That post had 137 page views, one of the more popular posts on this blog.  Is that an indication of the popularity of goose?  Hard to tell but it is certainly still one of my favourites, from way back in my youth when I would forgo sitting for hours with adults at a banquet to have a quiet evening at home in front of the TV.  My mom would give me money to go down the street to the local BBQ place for a BBQ goose leg for dinner - still one of my fondest childhood memories.

So it was with great anticipation that I planned today's shopping trip so we would end up at First Markham Place for lunch at Van's for roast goose.  To my utter disappointment, this was what greeted us when we got there - 

It was a bit of a shock but thinking back, we are not really surprised.  There is another BBQ place two stalls down and that place always has a lineup - because it's just marginally cheaper , has more variety and has a less picky owner.  Van was very good to us but he was also temperamental and had a bit of an ego - not your most customer friendly guy, if you didn't know him.  Far be it for me to judge what works and what doesn't for a business, but in my hierarchy of needs at 12:30 pm today, my greatest was for roast goose, failing that, I would take roast duck for a substitute.  So we joined the lineup at Van's competitor, with a mild (but easily overcome) sense of betrayal.

Our verdict - meat was tender and lean but skin was not crispy like Van's.  The redeeming grace was the al dente noodles - definitely one up on Van's.  So much for customer loyalty - well, we didn't have a choice in this case.  Here's to spring and a new start!