Text 9703, 106 rader
Skriven 2014-02-09 19:07:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: LAS trip 179
====================
I found Alex at the conference center, where he was
representing his hotel at a job fair, and he closed up
a little early; we toted his traps to the car - carrying
his signboard he was nearly blown over as the passage
to the parking lot is open-sided though top-covered,
and I nearly lost all the resumes I was carrying to a
particularly malignant gust.

We decided it was too inclement to walk to the Four
Seasons, which is all of a quarter mile away, so took
the company car and valet parked it - I found it amusing
that we took a car belonging to a three-star hotel from
a four-star hotel to a five-star hotel.

Part of the plan was to check out the lobby bar so Alex
could get ideas for remodeling his own hotel bar, so he
could expense a relaxing tonic or two. We did not abuse
this privilege and had only one beverage each and no
snacks. A grapefruit sour was boring and substandard;
it was either gratifying or disappointing, it depending
on how you approached it (my hotel's bartender can do
better, or I'm paying good money for this?). I had a
glass of Dr. Hermann Riesling 11, a pleasant Moselle?
wine of low concentration, medium-sweet, unchallenging,
a little woody and citrusy to keep my interest going
for a whole glass, but I wouldn't drink a bottle of it.
I should have had a snack on the expense account, come
to think of it, but dinner, not on the business tab,
beckoned, so I didn't.

Kevin, a charming young lad, met us to serve as the
designated driver at Charlie Palmer Steak, an arduous
couple hundred feet or so down the corridor. He's very
young in appearance and experience despite being in
his 20s, and he needed to be coached on the menu and
hand-held a bit as well. He doesn't drink at all (a
Mormon), which was good for the designated drivership,
but he likes to be included, so the last time they
were here, the bartender made him a mocktail of
muddled berries and citrus with simple syrup and a
splash of soda. Unfortunately, it was a different
bartender (probably the one who had made the dreadful
grapefruit thing at the lobby bar) who was flummoxed
by the request and made something that tasted like a
Sprite with raspberries in it and that Kevin turned
up his nose at.

The table d'hote, called Cut of the Week, comes with
all the wine you can drink, so along with all the
unfamiliar ingredients, that automatically nixed it
for Kevin, who after lots of hemming and hawing chose
onion rings for his starter and a bone-in dry-aged
sirloin for mains, about 70 bucks worth of food.

Alex asked me to describe the difference between wet
and dry aging, so I did, and then to articulate the
difference in flavor, to which I answered fairly
descriptively, I thought, except that one of the
words I used was "cheese," and Kevin has this phobia
about dairy products. This caused untoward effects
later in the meal.

The adults, price conscious, as we were no longer
on expense account, ordered the table d'hote.

Kevin's onion rings came first. They reminded me of
Burger King onion rings only bigger. At least they
were like the Burger King rings before they made
the boneheaded decision to make them out of chopped
onions. Kevin asked for ketchup to go with them.
This came in a silver gravy boat on a silver tray.

The bread basket had an assortment - cornbread,
sweet like Durgin-Park's, which Kevin highly
praised; an olive-whole-wheat loaf; country white,
very good; and something else brown that I didn't
recognize in the rather dim light and refrained
from trying lest it have caraway in it as so many
brown breads do.

When the steak came, it was large and gorgeous,
cooked medium-rare as requested. Kevin took a few
bites and then started fiddling with his silverware.
He reported that he always thought some beef tasted
like cheese, and when he said so, everyone thought
he was crazy, only I had validated his opinion, and
yes indeed, this $55-60 steak tasted like cheese,
and he didn't want any more of it. I tried to make
a joke of it, and Alex looked embarrassed. I took a
taste, and it was fork-tender, pink-juiced, beefy,
with just a Roqueforty undertone. I would have
eaten it gladly. Instead, it got packed up for Alex
to investigate later.

Oh, as he likes rice, and there's "lobster fried
rice" on the menu, he asked for it minus the
lobster, which the waiter nixed, as it is apparently
already put together. So he ordered it anyway,
asking us to pick out the lobster for ourselves,
which we did - there was a lot of it, in big chunks,
and it was first-rate. Unfortunately, the rice had
too much ginger in it for the kid's palate, so Alex
ate most of that as well - he's still young enough
to be a Hoover the way I was until 40 or 50 or so.
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