Vegas, Baby! Part 3: A Sweet Evening

The Bellagio Hotel and Casino as seen from Las Vegas Boulevard, where the famous fountains are located

I know I left the last post on some bad food, but the day (yes this is still the first day) wasn’t completely ruined. There was room for redemption, and we weren’t ready to head back to the hotel again just yet. We continued on to the Bellagio hotel, another Italian-themed hotel. This place is huge – enormous! It’s located around mid-strip, and surrounded by lots of other famous locations, making hopping back and forth between hotels a breeze, except for all the walking. Luckily, lots of hotels are owned by the same people, so you can easily connect from one to another. It’s also best known for their fountains, which perform a choreographed show every half hour during the afternoon, and every 15 minutes in the evening from about 3pm until midnight. The Bellagio is also home to the Cirque du Soleil show “O”, with their own massive theatre off the casino.

Cafe Gelato in the Bellagio. From left to right: Mocha slush, a delicious blend of choclate and coffee blended with ice for a cool drink on a hot night; Chocolate ganache, layers of ganache, moist cake, cream and berries in an elegant sphere; Caffe Americano, an espresso with a bit of extra water in it to make a deep flavourful coffee drink for purists.

We had a bit of time  left before going back to the hotel, so we searched around and found a cute little café called Café Gelato. This café is home to Italian ice cream, pastries, fresh-pressed juices, smoothies, and, of course, coffee. Sweet tooth here I come. I was interested in their gelatos, which come in a wide array of flavours you can taste test beforehand, but my eye was immediately drawn to a selection of plastic spheres in their pasty display case. They looked like large Christmas bulbs with beautifully decorated desserts inside. Yes, please! We chose a chocolate ganache, which had a ganache base, a moist, light chocolate cake layer that had been soaked, cream, fresh raspberries and chocolate dust. Michael had a regular black Americano while I went for their Mocha Slush, a combination of chocolate and coffee served as a slushie with a whipped cream topper. I can highly recommend the mocha slush if you like your coffee cold and blended like I do. I can’t finish a whole drink, though, and they don’t come in anything smaller than a medium, which is the only sad bit. They taste amazing. Chocolate, coffee, cream, cooling. Goosebumps! The ganache was interesting because at first, I thought the entire chocolate layer under the cream was supposed to be ganache, which was mousse-like. 

We ended our first day in Las Vegas by watching their famous dancing fountain show. In fact, we stayed and watched it twice. Like everything in Vegas, it’s over the top extravagant and flashy, but it’s really a very elegant and lovely show. The work involved in engineering and programming these shows must be incredible, and I tip my invisible hat (although I did buy a floppy touristy sun hat for walking) to the folks at Bellagio for creating a wonderful show. Also, shame on those tossing garbage into that water!! Tsk tsk!! Well folks, thanks for reading this far. This was just our first day in Las Vegas, and it was 12 hours of walking packed into a single, hot day. We hobbled back to our hotel with our feet covered in blisters, and mine with burns from hot asphalt. Tip: Don’t wear mega thin soles or your feet can burn on the bottoms in summer. I had to stop and buy new shoes because of this. I hope you enjoyed the journey thus far, and I hope you stick around for more. More pictures, video of the fountains, and more will be coming up in the following weeks, so stay tuned, and check out my facebook page, twitter, and Instagram.

Watch the captured video of the Bellagio Fountain show.

Stay chefy!

It was a bit gritty, which made me a bit sad, but on closer look, I could see the smooth ganache on the bottom with a chocolate cakey layer that had been lightly soaked to make it very soft, and it blended well with the ganache. The raspberries added a wonderful pop of sourness to the mix, making it possible for us to “share” and eat every last bite, and their tempered chocolate had the perfect snap. The only complaint is that the sphere should have a more flat bottom, because once you eat half the dessert, it begins to fall over and lean to one side and spin. A little amusing, but also a bit inconvenient. Definitely worth a shot, and yes, we went back on another day.