48 Hours In Vegas

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The Big Rig Jig sculpture by artist Mike Ross on display in downtown Las Vegas.
The Big Rig Jig sculpture by artist Mike Ross on display in downtown Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS, NV — In the city that never sleeps, one can do major damage even if it’s only a 48-hour trip, and ostensibly to take in a Lady Gaga show. But one still has to eat, right? And boy, did my husband and I do just that.

Flock & Fowl

If you’ve never ventured beyond The Strip, you owe it to yourself to take a trek downtown. It’s arguably the city’s hippest neighborhood, with bold murals spanning two to three stories high on the sides of buildings, tongue-in-cheek sayings adorning old motel marquees, and a range of show-stopping public arts pieces.

Wit and wonder downtown.
Wit and wonder downtown.

Case in point, the Big Rig Jig at the Fergusons Downtown, an old motel that has been transformed into a venue of small local boutiques and eateries. The Big Rig Jig looks like something straight out of a “Transformers” movie. Composed of two massive tanker trucks bent and curved into an inexplicable “S,” it’s confounding, perplexing, and just plain amazing.

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The Best Chicken Soup You’ll Ever Make

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Loaded with chicken and vegetables, and an array of aromatics, this chicken soup is the best I've ever had.
Loaded with chicken and vegetables, and an array of aromatics, this chicken soup is the best I’ve ever had.

Forget any ifs, ands or buts, because this, my friends, is the tastiest chicken soup you’ll ever slurp up.

The kind that makes your eyes widen in unexpected pleasure from the first spoonful. The kind that boasts layers upon layers of deep, full, satisfying flavor. The kind that nourishes and comforts no matter if you’re ailing or just in need of something wonderfully warming.

The secret is that the chicken in the soup first gets roasted. In fact, the entire soup is mostly made in the oven, concentrating the flavors and leaving the chicken as tender and moist as your favorite rotisserie bird.

“Limon Omani Oven-Roasted Chicken Soup with Celery Seeds” may have a long name with an ingredient or two that may give you pause. But don’t let that put you off from what is essentially a quite easy recipe that delivers more than you’d ever expect.

The recipe is from the new “Mastering Spice: Recipes and Techniques to Transform Your Everyday Cooking” (Clarkson Potter), of which I received a review copy.

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My Top 10 Eats of 2019

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So many places opened in 2019; and so many places closed. Be it astronomical housing costs to an extremely tight labor pool and the rising price of ingredients, the Bay Area remains a challenging landscape for restaurants.

Still, they somehow manage to put their best forward day in and day out. Here are my favorite eats of the year (in no particular order) — the ones I still dream about, and the ones I’d race back for in a heartbeat. Enjoy! And cheers to even more delicious morsels in 2020.

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Does San Francisco Need Another Expensive Omakase Restaurant? It does — If It’s Sushi Nagai

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The uni "hot dog'' at Sushi Nagai.
The uni “hot dog” at Sushi Nagai

At his Sushi Nagai on Union Square in San Francisco, Chef Tomonori Nagai may specialize in Edomae-style, considered the purest and one of the oldest forms of sushi, developed hundreds of years ago as a way to preserve fish in salt, vinegar or seaweed.

But he is not above putting his own spin on it with flair, wit and technique, as I found out when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant earlier this month. After all, where else can you get a play on a hot dog that’s fashioned from uni? But more on that later.

The restaurant, which is across the street from Macy’s, opened quietly in spring but is now having its grand opening.

San Francisco has seen a number of high-end omakase restaurants of late. Sushi Nagai joins that roster with menus priced at $200, $250, and $350-plus. Each comprises about 18 courses, with the more expensive menus featuring more premium ingredients and intricate dishes. At the media dinner I attended, we were treated to the $350 menu.

Growing up in the small coastal town of Iwaki, Nagai had wanderlust and thought the best opportunity to explore more of the world was to become a French cuisine chef. But after a stint at a hotel in Tokyo, where he ended up working the sushi bar because they were short-handed, he found his voice in his native Japanese cuisine.

Calligraphy on the dining room wall.
Calligraphy on the dining room wall.
Chef Tomonori Nagai behind the sushi counter.
Chef Tomonori Nagai behind the sushi counter.

After working at Morimoto in Honolulu, where he ended up serving sushi to then-President Barack Obama, and the Michelin-starred Shinji by Kanesaka in Singapore, he was recruited to head the new sushi restaurant in San Francisco.

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Burma Superstar Launches Its Own Tea Leaf Salad Kit

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Make Burma Superstar's famous tea leaf salad -- in the comfort of your own home.
Make Burma Superstar’s famous tea leaf salad — in the comfort of your own home.

If you’re a fan of Burma Superstar’s signature Burmese tea leaf salad, you’ll be glad to know it’s never been easier to make a version at home now.

No more hunting around fruitlessly for fermented tea leaves or any of the other specialty ingredients needed. Burma Superstar’s new Burma Love Foods Company has put together a Fermented Tea Leaf Salad Kit. It’s vegan to boot.

The kit.
The kit.

The kit, which should be kept refrigerated until used, comes complete with the already made fermented tea leaf dressing made with organic tea leaves, as well as Burmese Crunchy Mix, which is a blend of crispy yellow split peas, toasted sunflower seeds, fried garlic chips, sesame seeds and roasted peanuts.

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