If Wishes were Bagels

Vegas Baby...

I got my first look at the Encore, Steve Wynn's follow up to the Wynn, yet another Casino Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. If you like glass boxes, it's an impressive mirrored cracker jack box with some not so secret surprises inside. In fact, if you've seen the Wynn, you're really not going to see too much difference here. Design-wise, there is this continued fascination with butterflies, that is meant to be a dream-like concept from La Rev. I guess some dreams are never ending.

While the Wynn boasts some colorful backdrops, chandeliers, it's more gaudy younger cousin, sports enough red velvet to make one wonder, when the appearance of French prostitutes dancing around roulette wheels will become a fixture.

There was also a couple of forgettable meals we had at the new Aliante Station, part of Station Casinos chain. My friends are happy to have something like this in the neighborhood, as they live in North Vegas. They are brand spanking new and probably still working the kinks out. One of the kinks is called the Cantina, we were going to wait on the buffet line but decided to give the mexican place a try as it had no line. We found out why. We sat down, ordered drinks and meals. The drinks came quickly. An hour later one meal came out. We had a table of 6, the person who ordered a chicken caesar salad thing got what they requested...but not quite. The chicken was ice cold. When our meals finally came, they were extremely bland. No one was happy. During our hour-long wait the waiter asked more than once, if we'd like more margaritas. He was beginning to get answers like "no but I'd love dinner." We had partial view of the kitchen and there was this plate of food sitting right up on the serving station for the entire time. When we were leaving, it was still there and we wondered what poor sap was going to get this cold plate.