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Vegas Test Kitchen Takes Over Greene Street at The Palms Fridays + Saturdays Through July 30

There’s a lot of reasons to cheer on the newly reopened Palms Casino Resort—the first resort in Vegas now fully owned + operated by a Native American Tribe—after a two-year pandemic closure. 

Chief among those reasons is the massive multi-room Greene Street space, with its colorful + imaginative eye candy including whimsical apocalyptic-chic decor. Really perfect, then, that downtown’s adventurous + acclaimed Vegas Test Kitchen has taken over the space Fridays + Saturdays through the end of July with rotating guest chefs. 

It was an honor to be invited to a media preview dinner ahead of its last Friday official opening, with chef Josh Bianchi helming the first weekend and unveiling a memorable four-course “Rustic American Italian” dinner. 

The artfully prepped antipasto board—with roasted + pickled vegetables, pepperoni croquettes, and focaccia with salsa verde aioli—was a home run, segueing into the silky Thai Snapper Crudo, with fava beans + a wild mushroom agrodolce. Both dishes set the stage for the outstanding entree, the tonnarelli (typical egg pasta shaped like spaghetti), which nicely hung onto the spot-on sausage sauce. Bianchi’s menu was topped off with his Strawberry Rhubarb Pavolva, a meringue-based tart-and-sweet creation that instantly felt like summertime, perfectly matched to these triple digit days.  

The VTK prix-fixe menus are hip, tasty + moderately priced at $59, and the Greene St. space is the perfect venue for them. Go here for the VTK schedule at Greene St:  https://vegastestkitchen.com


QUICK HITS: Mochinut in Chinatown; Derek Hough’s “No Limit” Venetian Residency; Sand Dollar Opens Second Location Downtown: Vegas’ Non-Stop “Fest Life”; The Outstanding Allegro at the Wynn


MOCHINUT CRAZE
: Didn’t learn until recently that Vegas is known as the “ninth island” of Hawaii since many native Hawaiians have settled in Southern Nevada. Which explains why there are so many Hawaiian restaurants in Vegas. And you can grab a quick taste of Hawaii here in Chinatown at the worldwide chain Mochinut which serves the Mochi donut—a union of Japanese rice cake (mochi) + American-style doughnuts that originated in Hawaii.



DEREK HOUGH’S CREATIVE VISUALIZATION: Dropped into Derek Hough’s “No Limit” show at the Venetian. There were of course the insanely great how-did-they-do that? dance moves. And then there was Hough as uplifting motivational speaker…someone who creatively visualized himself right into a packed high-end showroom on The Strip.



SAND DOLLAR DOWNTOWN OPENS
: On a recent hot Thursday night, there were cool grooves at the opening bash for the The Sand Dollar Downtown, at the Plaza Hotel, with sets from Billy Gibbons, Franky Perez and John Popper. This sharp-looking + excellent-sounding space is the second Sand Dollar location—the original one is still rocking in Chinatown. Thanks to marketing guru Eric Gladstone for the invite and Chris Vranian for letting me use your ace live shots. 


“CITY OF MUSIC FESTIVALS”: Like  a buffet that keeps adding new food stations, the jammed Las Vegas festival calendar continues to expand Vegas is “a town that could add City of Music Festivals to its already-bursting résumé,” writes Brock Radke in the recent  “Fest Love” cover story of Las Vegas Weekly. This publication, expertly edited by Spencer Patterson, keeps pointing me in the right directions when it comes to restaurants, shows + other cultural happenings. Read about it here: 

 https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/2022/may/19/festival-vegas-how-this-city-became-music-mecca/


OUTSTANDING ALLEGRO AT THE WYNN: Really nice to have a top-shelf Italian restaurant like Allegro at Wynn Las Vegas which we’ve now been to twice before shows at the Encore Theater Their Caesar salad is one of the best around, and we followed it with their artfully prepared Foccacia Pizza (mozzarella, cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers) and the Potato Gnocchi, with an excellently blended pork, veal + beef bolognese, burrata cheese + pine nut pesto. Couldn’t finish the pizza—no way—so they packed it up for us in this fancy box that will be hard to throw away.


“Piece of Me,” New Murder Mystery Web Series, Celebrated with 80s Prom Murder Mystery Dinner at Downtown Vegas’ Millennium Fandom Bar

It’s always a joy to support the vibrant creative community here in Las Vegas, so with that in mind I headed last week to the fun “Piece of Me” 80s Prom Murder Mystery Dinner, a benefit at downtown’s highly cool Millennium Fandom Bar.

The event raised funds for the cast of the new “Piece of Me” murder mystery/dark comedy web series about the COVID-19 pandemic—the pilot for which is now streaming on IFT Network—and The Shade Tree of Las Vegas which assists the women, children, and pets at their shelter who’ve survived domestic violence, human trafficking, and homelessness. Watch the “Piece of Me” trailer here. All six episodes will eventually stream on IFT, an online  platform for indie films and off-Broadway plays, later this month: http://www.iftnetwork.com

I caught up at the event with Darlene Dalmaceda, the producer, actress, and screenwriter who owns ACE Vegas Studios, an independent film production company. She wrote most of “Piece of Me” (collaborating with another screenwriter, Randall Potts) and stars in it as Lisa, the main character.

What exactly inspired “Piece of Me” which was filmed in Vegas and directed by Nicholas Grant?

“It’s based on a real-life incident right before the pandemic when a nerdy young pizza delivery driver came to my door and asked me all kinds of inappropriate questions that creeped me out,” said Dalmaceda. “After I called and complained to the female manager who seemed to know who I was talking about, I wrote the first draft of the pilot. I put it away for a while, but when the pandemic hit, I decided to create a limited web series about it. I couldn’t work on my bigger scale projects because of the Covid restrictions that were in place last year, but I still wanted to do another film project, just on a smaller scale.”

Dalmaceda went on to elaborate that “Lisa is a paranoid young woman who takes social distancing to the extreme. She’s being stalked by an obsessive pizza delivery driver while under quarantine at her apartment and must figure out a way to escape from him, even if it ends up in murder.”

The pandemic has definitely kicked all of our collective asses, and in some cases inspired creatives like Darlene Dalmaceda to use it as a thematic jumping off point for their projects. With “Piece of Me,” Dalmaceda has created a dark comedy designed to get under your skin and follow you around like a stalker.




Depeche Mode Set List, Madison Square Garden, 12/7/05, In Honor of Andrew Fletcher, R.I.P.

In honor of the recent passing of Andrew Fletcher, we wanted to share this set list from the period we handled PR for Depeche Mode (2000-2007). This was a reliably great Depeche show at Madison Square Garden on 12/7/05 when the band toured their ‘Playing The Angel’ album which they released in October that year. Fletch was always so gracious to Mitch Schneider, Marcee Rondan + everyone at Schneider Rondan Organization. May he rest in peace…


Donny Osmond Embodies A Slick Vegas Showbiz Americana At Ongoing Harrah’s Residency

The world may be going to hell in a hand-basket, but there’s Donny Osmond to remind us of a seemingly more innocent time. And he does this really well at his Vegas residency at Harrah’s Showroom. No surprise. He’s been performing in Vegas since he was seven-years-old, as he noted from the stage, starting with the Osmond Brothers, when they opened for Sinatra + Presley. 

Donny embodies a slick Vegas show-biz Americana and has fun with it. At 64, he’s an ace all-around entertainer who delivers the goods: he sang well, he danced, he was self-effacing, he expertly interacted with the packed audience, and his new rhythmic pop songs (from his, unbelievably, 65th album, 2021’s Start Again) fit nicely alongside his solo and Osmond Brothers hits.   

The choreography was sharp, the lighting dazzled, and the production didn’t lag. Plus the archival TV footage and images of old album covers were well-integrated throughout. I noticed on one of the album jackets a track listing that included “Sit Down, I Think I Love You,” a Stephen Stills song by the Buffalo Springfield (not in this show’s set list). He recorded the tune for a 1971 solo album. Who knew? 

Dates for Donny’s show at Harrah’s are listed online through November 2022. It’s definitely a feel-good night out, right down to the finale’s confetti blast. Whenever the end of the world rolls around, I want to go out wearing Donny Osmond’s sequined jacket.





Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Set List from May 2001 (Gill Coliseum, Oregon)

Here’s a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers set list from May 2001 (Gill Coliseum, Oregon) that Mary Klauzer of East End Management faxed to Mitch Schneider back then to share with the press. Mitch always dug when Tom played the slow + moody “It’s Good To Be King” like he did on this night. When Mitch first heard his ‘Wildflowers’ album, he told Tom that he thought “…King” could be a really big hit.  Mitch remembers Tom saying, very matter-of-factly,  “that won’t happen.” Tom explained that the song’s double minor chords right at the top (E minor, A minor) worked against it being a big hit. He was right, but the song, released as the album’s third single, still made a pretty good showing. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart + peaked at No. 68 on the Billboard Hot 100.  “It’s good to be king, if just for a while/To be there in velvet, yeah, to give ’em a smile.”


Vintner Grill: Playful American Dishes With Flavors from Spain, France + Italy in Comfortably Elegant Surroundings

If you drive down Charleston Blvd. in Summerlin looking for Vintner Grill, good luck because you won’t find it. Which is annoying if you haven’t been there, but if you’ve dropped in before, you might feel a certain smugness about knowing its hideaway location, nestled among a few office buildings just north of Charleston. 

The restaurant is comfortably elegant, modern + spacious with multiple areas in which to dine plus there’s a big outside patio. It should be pointed out that Vintner Grill is gorgeously lit, and there’s something to be said for restaurants with sympathetic lighting. Who doesn’t want to look ageless, especially when the pandemic has messed with all of us?

This was our second visit to Vintner, and it was absolutely packed on a Thursday night. The menu—“American dishes infused with flavors from Spain, France and Italy —is instantly inviting + imaginative, and the well-trained servers sell it well. 

The two appetizers we had are highly recommended: pan seared crabcakes, with tarragon cream sauce, and the oven-roasted beets with lavender goat cheese. You can easily detect the chef’s playfulness touch, which was also evident in the braised lamb bolognese with black pepper tagliatelle, truffle ricotta + grated nutmeg. The other entree—Mediterranean sea bass with meyer lemon buerre blanc—was perfectly tender + subtly hit the right notes. 

Noting how fresh + flavorful the appetizers + entrees were, it would’ve been criminal to leave without ordering dessert, and the mix of textures in the apple pie tart with caramel sauce + ice cream was dazzling. It’s the kind of life-affirming dessert that should be served to dictators in order to make them rethink pressing the nuclear button. 



The Aria’s Magical Ambience + Lemongrass’ Elegantly Tasty Thai Dishes

Always a treat to drop into the Aria in the City Center section of The Strip—the dazzling city-of-light glass towers there put me in a cool New York state of mind.  

Then there are the hotel’s signature restaurants like the gorgeously designed Lemongrass where the elegantly tasty Thai food includes standout dishes like the Eggplant Claypot, Black Pepper Shrimp and Drunken Noodle Seafood. 

In the lobby after dinner, we admired the floating cloud fixtures hanging from the ceiling—the eyes painted on them peacefully watched over everyone going about their business.




Feeling The Love at the Plant-Based Graze Kitchen

It’s hard not to start a love affair with Graze Kitchen + its imaginative plant-based creations. From the folks behind Firefly Tapas and Tacos & Beer, this fairly new eatery in the southwestern area of Vegas is part of the city’s dynamic + ever-growing vegan food scene.

The two appetizers we ordered were instant home-runs: the Firecracker Cauliflower (with panko breadcumbs + sweet & sour glaze) + the heaven-sent Crab Cakes (with cornmeal breadcrumb + remoulade sauce). Our entrees were a Cobb salad with deviled tofu, a taco salad + another with soba noodles—all dreamy + crunchy—plus the Graze Burger (quinoa-walnut patty on a toasted pretzel bun) served with fries.

We couldn’t leave without trying Graze’s carrot cake + a slice of their lemon blueberry cake—both were subtle + on-point. And the Moon Milk, with the lavender syrup + steamed oat milk, is a must-have.

The dishes at Graze are flavorful + creatively plated, and the eatery’s whimsical interior design perfectly complements the experience of dining here.

As testament to this city’s vegan movement, this past November marked the debut of the Vegas Vegan Culinary School. Founded by self-described “passionate animal welfare advocate” Heather Heath, it’s the city’s first vegan cooking school and, impressively, the first non-accredited vegan cooking school in America.

What these chefs are doing with plant-based food is uplifting and feels revolutionary. There will always be people flocking to the classic Vegas steak houses, but an eatery like Graze, to my mind, is a more interesting route to take.

Meanwhile, all eyes are on the upcoming opening (in late-May) of Crossroads Kitchen—the Vegas outpost of the acclaimed high-end L.A. vegan restaurant—at Resorts World.  Hopefully it will be another plant-based gem to fall in love with.


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