A Mini Podcast-a-Palooza for Monday

We didn't have a new episode of The Strip this past week because there was no engineer available at LVRocks.Com on Saturday which turned out to be just as well given that I had a mammoth neckache and was given some remarkable meds. But I did sober up long enough to catch up on posting both the latest of The Strip and of my other program, The Petcast.

Firstly, I encourage you to watch our Special Petcast Video show from the SuperZoo convention this fall at Mandalay Bay. We provided video commentary, interviews and product demonstrations. That included Pet Top, the Amazing Treat Machine, Pink Poodle Gourmet & Designs, The Port-A-Poo, the remote-control cat toy, the crazy creative grooming competition and much more! Don't miss the montage of fun photos at the end, too!

I also posted Episode No. 216 in which Emily and I discuss the problems of wild pets being released into the Everglades with Jenny Novak Tinnell of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. You can subscribe to The Petcast via iTunes, of course, to get all the episodes when they're released.

Oh, and I also managed to get "The Strip" updated, too. You can subscribe to that in iTunes, too, or in Zune. So here's that one:

Oct.31: The Top Chef Effect

w/Hubert Keller

Four years ago, a San Francisco chef took a gamble and opened up his San Francisco kitchen to the first challenge of a new Bravo TV show called “Top Chef.” At the time, Hubert Keller came across as tough and grouchy but the show was a hit and his Fleur de Lys in California became a place of intrigue for its fans. Fast forward to this year when warmer, cuddlier Keller appeared first on Top Chef Masters and then in an episode of the current, Las Vegas-set season of the show. Business at Fleur de Lys – long an underperformer at Mandalay Bay – is booming. Keller speaks this hour about that, about what it smelled like to grow up above his family’s bakery in Alsace, France, and about how a Frenchman became one of the biggest things ever in the burger cuisine. Plus, as usual, Steve asked Keller about his food guilty pleasures.

In Banter: Ticket scalping issues, Barry Manilow, the Podcast-a-Palooza, Harrah's dumb iPhone app, DB leaves Wynn, DB opening at Sands in Singapore and who is the Maori Hi Five?

Links to stuff discussed:

Top Chef Vegas
Fleur de Lys in Las Vegas
The Strip Sense column that included Hubert Keller
Our Vegas Podcast-a-Palooza episode
Harrah’s lame iPhone app
Steve Wynn’s gotten political
Jan Jones and others defend Obama
Steve’s column about Obama and Elaine Wynn
A YouTube clip of Lady Elaine from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
Steve’s Las Vegas Weekly cover story on the D Gate murals
John Curtas of EatingLV.Com breaks news of Daniel Boulud’s Wynn exit
Las Vegas Walk of Stars

NY Post: LV Copies of NYC Eateries Suck. Sorta.

New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo concludes that many of the Vegas versions of vaunted NYC eateries are pale facsimilies. His central conclusion:

"For the past few years, puff pieces about the Vegas dining revolution have clogged the pages of food and travel magazines that are, coincidentally, even more clogged with Vegas advertising. ... But unless the name is McDonald's, restaurants aren't portable. Even if the food is the same at distant locations - a dubious proposition - the atmosphere isn't close, and neither is the dining experience."

Along the way he mocks the decor of the Vegas version of 111-year-old Rao's (at Caesars Palace to your left, NYC to your right), as I have gotten great heat for as well, questions whether Fiamma (MGM Grand), Tao (Venetian), Il Mulino (Caesars) and Le Cirque (Bellagio) measure up to their Manhattan forebears, both culinarily (is that a word?) and experientially. He praises Daniel Boulud Bistro at Wynn, Restaurant RM and Mandalay Bay, both worthy exceptions to his thesis.

So here's the thing: He's sort of right. And not exactly right. If you've been to the original in New York, you have a preconceived notion of what you'll find and you can put not just the food on trial but also NY versus Vegas sensibilities. That cuts both ways.

I'm a big fan of Charlie Palmer's Aureole at Mandalay Bay, for instance. It's a terrific dining experience and brilliantly Las Vegas. We ate at the New York version last time we were in town and found it to be, well, stodgy. The food was good, but the "experience" was Old School. NYC devotees may never have seen a Vegas wine angel ascend a glass tower (right) on a winch and pulley to fetch a patron's vino -- and never wish to. Rao's was the same way. The only people who will even know how cheesy and false the decor is there are those of us who have had the privilege of experiencing the utterly charming original. The food's lovely at both, but that's not the only criterion for judgment.

Cuozzo kind of acknowledges just this at the end of the piece when he notes that one of the reasons Daniel Boulud Bistro triumphs is because of the Lake of Dreams show at Wynn that goes off every so often.

"I was halfway through a plate of pungent artisanal cheese when a giant, full-voiced frog popped out of a rainbow-lit waterfall and channeled Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World." Try ordering that on East 65th Street!"

Well put.