Vegas, Baby! Part 2: Encore and Italian Hotels

”Damn, it’s hot” is what my husband heard plenty of in Las Vegas, and with good reason. I’ve never experienced anything much over 30 degrees, and it’s minimum 35 degrees on a cool day. Day one in Las Vegas, and we decided to walk from Stratosphere  down the strip to the other hotels. Yeah, we’re apparently insane, but that sort of thing fits in around here.

Indoor canals in the Venetian

Teavana raspberry lemonade blended cold tea and a bag of tea leaves to take home

Darth Vader made of JELLY BEANS!!

After a bit of hotel hopping from Treasure Island to the Palazzo, we ended up in the Venetian, an Italian-themed hotel. These Las Vegas hotels are incredibly huge that it’s hard to believe that you’re in a hotel at all. The Venetian contains a shopping mall, indoor canals where you can hitch a ride on a gondola and be serenaded by a man in a striped shirt, and a magnificent vaulted ceiling painted to look like the sky to give guests the feeling of being outdoors. We were suckered into a tea shop called Teavana by free samples that tasted amazing. So amazing that we bought $25 worth of tea and a to-go drink. In case you’re wondering, raspberry lemonade tea sweetened with German rock sugar. It was so good that we had to fight over the cup, and it was gone in about 5 minutes. Yes, it was that good.

After wandering around for a while, we ended in Caesar’s Palace, which has the same painted ceiling design. We decided to have dinner under the beautiful false sky beside the Fountain of the Gods under Pegasus at restaurant Trevi by chef Peter Scaturro. We went directly for a main course of Linguine al Frutti di Mare, a pasta dish with lobster, scallops, and shrimp with linguine in a cream sauce. We also received a basket of bread and olive oil for dipping. We paired our pasta with a delicious little glass of German Riesling white wine. Unfortunately, the wine was the only delicious thing about our meal. The pasta we chose was not only the most expensive pasta on the menu at $30, but it was their signature dish. It lacked any taste whatsoever with no seasoning and the scallops were undercooked. The shrimp and lobster were cooked well enough with more seasoning than the rest of the dish. I expected an experienced chef to at least know how to use salt, but alas, no. The cream sauce was bland. If I were served a glass of warm cream, it would still contain more flavour than the sauce this restaurant produced. The side bread was dry like it had sat for a half day before serving it to customers, but at least it had a fine flavour of sage, so there’s that. Don’t waste your money, folks. There are plenty of better Italian restaurants out there and they’re better value for your money. The experience wasn’t even romantic. It was just loud, but at least it was pretty.

Now as much as I hate to leave a post on a low note, let me remind you that this is still day one of our Las Vegas adventure! There are plenty of great things to come, so keep an eye our for new posts, pictures, and reviews of things we've eaten along the way.

Stay chefy!