Las Vegas~Firefly Tapas Kitchen and Bar

Way back in June, Mike and I took a quick trip to Las Vegas to attend my sister's wedding.  I forgot to bring a hand bag that would fit my new camera, so I was not able to take pictures of all the wonderful food we ate.  I did manage to bring my camera to "Firefly Tapas and Kitchen Bar" one night to capture all the yummy food at this bar. 

Stuffed Dates-[bacon-wrapped, smoked almond, red wine reduction, blue cheese]. Everyone loved this dish!

Manchego Mac 'n' Cheese-[Baked w/baby shells]

Thai Beef Salad- seared beef, thai dressing, romaine, tomato, cucumber, ginger

Olives, Sweet Butter, and Crostini's

Filet Mignon Sliders-mini burgers w/Serrano ham, cabrales cheese, caramelized onions

Shrimp Tempura-beer-battered, ponzu dipping sauce

Fried Calamari

Firefly Tapas Kitchen and Bar
3900 Paradise Rd.
Las Vegas
702.369.3971

Las Vegas~Simon Restaurant and Lounge

So I finally am able to move on to my Las Vegas trip highlights...which occured...back in September 2009.  I don't know how you food bloggers (I'm a food blogger wannabe) do it, but much props to you all who can post every other day or can even publish posts about restaurants that you visited during the same week. 

My sister is becoming a foodie! My sister has never been as interested as me in food, so in the past year or so, it has been surprising that she has started checking out restaurants and bakeries.
Prior to arriving in Las Vegas, she had sent me an itinerary of all the restaurants we would be checking out during the four days I was there. One of the restaurants she was excited to try was “Simon” which has a gourmet brunch on Sundays. My sister especially wanted to go there because of the “junk food” dessert which was a plate of nostalgic sweets including cotton candy, snowballs, hostess cupcake, rice krispies treat, a chocolate chip cookie and caramel corn.

The Simon buffet was not set up like a typical buffet. A few pastries, dry cereals, and fruit were laid out buffet-style, while big-ticket items had to be ordered from a menu. These items included omelets, French toast, paninis, and pizza. There was also a sushi chef making basic rolls, not the high-end sushi bar type sushi, and a smoothie maker.

The highlights of my meal were the French toast (see above) and the deep-fried sushi topped with spicy tuna.


The price of the brunch buffet was steep at $38/person. We were in Las Vegas on the strip, so I’m sure a lot of people would not even flinch at these prices. I think this buffet would be more worth it if I was a bigger eater and if the food that we ordered came faster. We ordered the big ticket items 15 minutes after we were seated and waited at least 45 minutes for the dishes to come. There was no way we could order another round of dishes from the menu and still be hungry to eat them. I guess that’s how costs are kept down. The more time that elapses between dishes, the less food people will eat. And since the cheaper items were laid out in typical buffet style, people filled up on this first.

My other favorite dish, Simon's Signature Crispy Sesame Rice topped with Spicy tuna.
Margherita Pizza (fresh mozarella, tomato, and basil).

I forget what this was. I think it was a steak and potatoes eggs benedict.

Simon Junk Food Dessert-Isn't this a cute presentation?

The Simon Brunch Buffet is definitely an experience. The dishes were creatively presented the descriptors of the food items sounded delicious. Unfortunately we were unable to try all of them.

Simon Restaurant and Lounge
4381 West Flamingo Road (located in Palms hotel)
Las Vegas, NV 89103
(702)944-3292

Hawaii Bakeries~Fendu Boulangerie; Las Vegas Bakeries~ Bouchon

I really wanted to check out Fendu Boulangerie when I was back home in Hawaii after I had read the reviews on yelp. Mike and I checked out this bakery late one afternoon after I had visited some of my undergrad professors at UH-Manoa.
Fendu Boulangerie is a relatively new French bakery located in Manoa Marketplace. It's a cute little bakery with very friendly staff.
There were a couple of people there who were waiting for their pizza orders. I guess pizza is the thing to order at Fendu. The pizzas range from $12.50-17.00/ 14" pizza, and $7.50-10.50/8" pizza. The pizza choices sounded amazing: Firecracker Shrimp pizza (with jalapeno peppers, fresh tomatoes, and sour cream), Cilantro chicken pizza (with white truffle oil, sauteed shallots, tomato sauce, and brie cheese). The pizza smelled so good that Mike and I would have ordered one. But we had dinner plans with my parents, so we couldn't arrive full.

According to Mike, this was "one good chocolate cookie." It was crispy on the inside and chewy on the inside. I really enjoyed this cookie too because of the gooey-ness of the chocolate. Only downside of the cookie was that it contained macnuts (okay, this is not a bad thing for the majority of the world, but I prefer chewy cookies to not have nuts in them).
We also purchased a lychee strudel danish. I mainly bought it because I've never seen lychee incorporated into a pastry before and I love lychee. The pastry was light and tasty, but the mild flavor of lychee was lost in the overall effect of the danish. Props for the concept of a lychee pastry, but these types of pastries need stronger flavored fruits like apples or apricots.
Moving on to Bouchon. Bouchon is owned by Thomas Keller (of the famed French Laundry). While I was back in Hawaii, Mike and I dog-sat at home while my parents went on a trip to the mainland. One of their stops was Las Vegas (that's where my sister lives), so I was lucky that my super nice sister bought a bunch of pastries from Bouchon. She took a few pictures of them, but I couldn't open the images that she had emailed me.
So what did she buy? Macaroons (Pink-Raspberry, Yellow-Lemon, Cream-Vanilla, Orange-Orange, Tan-Mocha, Brown-Chocolate), the nutter butter (think a peanut butter cookie sandwich), the TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo), and a chocolate cupcake. Mmmm....yumminess!
I cannot wait until I visit my sister later on this year. She's planning out all the restaurants and bakeries we'll check out. My sister was never a foodie, but this year she's slowly becoming one.



Fendu Boulangerie
Manoa Marketplace (closer to Long's)
2752 Woodlawn Dr. #5-119
Honolulu, HI 96822
(808)988-4310

Bouchon
The Venetian Hotel
3355 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(702) 414-6200