The Intrepid McKenna's: Ballin' on a Budget

It's very true that once you actually live in Las Vegas, you never go down to the strip. In the few months I've lived here we have only gone down a handfull of times. Mostly when we have friends in town.

Every Friday and Saturday night in our apartment complex tells a slightly different story though. At least for the apartment of guido's upstairs. Around 9 o'clock you can hear them rouse and get ready for the clubs. The leave around 1030 and you can sometimes hear them come back at 4 or 5am. We are always wondering what they do when they go out. We have investigated the clubs on the strip and find it way out of our price range. While I can afford to pay $15 for a martini at Lavo, I refuse too. That's just silly. And bottle service? Don't get me started. As a veteran server the whole idea of only serving bottles is very appealing. I mean, it's a lot less work for the servers and they get an automatic 20% on a $250 bottle of Smirnoff. But as a customer? Sure you don't have to wait in line for drinks anymore, but $250 for a bottle of vodka? No way.

As a local Las Vegan there are promotions to get you going out nearly everywhere. A big one is the Station Casino Family. They are all off-strip casinos that cater specifically to locals. Since we still aren't banking in this state, I cash my checks there every other Friday. You get points on your members card or prizes for cashing your paycheck there. I often get vouchers for a free well drink or a dining credit. So when we go out we usually go to Red Rock Casino, way off the strip. Two weeks ago we went out to Green Valley Ranch (another Station Casino). We had so much fun! We had a wonderful dinner at Terra Verde. I was drunk on $6 martini's and when our server said " Oh our new Chef moved here from Milan. He went to school there." I very sarcasticly replied with..

" Oh really? Did he go to the Olive Garden Culinary Institute?"

I can't believe I said that. But I've been in the business and I know what's what.

But this weekend we headed down to the strip. I'm also an avid Groupon-er and we had a voucher for dinner at Holsteins at The Cosmopolitan that was set to expire soon. I've been looking forward to going to Holsteins for a some time. Vegas really does have some fantastic restaurants, on and off-strip.

Holsteins was no exception. We loved it. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was cool. Chris and I both love this graffiti style of artwork. The artists name is Juan Muniz. My favorite painting is below. I had a burger called the Gold Standard. It was beef, goat chedder cheese, smoked bacon, tomato confit, and arugula heaven. Minus the bun of course...

We loved this painting. It's Chris, mourning the loss of hamburger buns from his diet. Chris is the no-bun boy now. Their buns contained eggs :( It's a sad day in McKennaland. What we are discovering from Chris's allergy is this: quality foods tend to contain egg. Egg is an expensive ingredient. Yes, he can still eat Wonderbread, but we don't eat Wonderbread and we're not going to start now. When the server said they make the buns fresh and they contain egg he looked so deflated. It's bad enough that several of the burger varieties had fried eggs on them ( which he loves) but the buns are off limit too. So he ordered a chef salad. Then the server came back and the only dressing or sauce in the house he could have was red wine vinegar. Oh man. He looked like she stole his puppy. So he had a lamb burger, with no bun, and tzatziki sauce. I went bunless too and skipped my aoili in solidarity.

But the main appeal of this restaurant to me was the desert menu. Oh man. It's so creative. I went in with a plan of ordering a homemade blueberry poptart with roasted corn ice cream ( Sounds awesome right?) but I decided on the homemade candy bar. There server said most of the desert menu was off limits for Chris. They had a lot of ice creams and Chris can't have ice cream anymore. ( Well real ice cream anyway. Quality ice creams are made with eggs. He's now stuck with the crappy nestle variety that aren't made with real ingredients. Like Dibs or ice cream sandwhiches.)

My solidarity ended right here at homemade candy bar. What you see is a chocolate mousse and caramel candy bar in dark chocolate with a salted pretzel crust, a chocolate dipped potato chip, homemade marshmallows, and a butter sauce. And yes, it was heavenly. And yes, Chris stole my marshmallows.

And yes, I did make Chris take my picture in the giant shoe. I really wanted to sit in the shoe like a race car driver but he was having none of that. Plus there was line of women waiting to photograph the giant shoe.

This was my first trip to The Cosmopolitan and I liked the atmosphere. However, when we crossed into the Aria and Crystals shopping center, I felt very out of place. I felt so cute when I left the house in my Liberty of London dress, then I felt like a pauper walking past Balenciaga. Oh well. Looking at this picture, I did look cute. And for a lot less.

We also went to The Bellagio to see the new exhibit at the Conservatory. This is one of my favorite places in Vegas. And seeing the exhibit is free. It changes every few months and I have seen 4 now. The current theme is New England and they recycled a lot of elements from the Dutch exhibit but it's still gorgeous. I encourage all of you to come see these installations if you are ever in Vegas. A lot of work goes into this. And as always, you can click on any of the pictures to see them larger.