Sorcerers, soups, and staging

For those of you who may not have heard, the latest Harry Potter movie, Deathly Hallows part one, came out on Friday. Of course, I had to see it. And it was awesome!

Anyway, before the matinee, lunch was required. We had originally planned on Thai, but we missed the window for lunch at Lotus of Siam, so decided to get Vietnamese food at Lemongrass instead.

Lemongrass is a charming little place here in Henderson. The location's a little strange; it's in an old 50's style diner building in a parking lot on Pebble and Eastern, not really visible from either road. But they have really great food, so I end up there quite often.

I got creamy Thai iced tea, the milkiness is always needed to combat the spicy for me. Plus, it's yummy!

Please excuse my spelling if I get any of these wrong, I don't actually speak Vietnamese... anyway, above is banh mi, a sandwich. It was made with home-made sausage, pickled vegetables, pork liver pate, herbs, and mayonnaise. Served on crunchy French bread, these are very bright and flavorful sandwiches, and a great bargain.

The egg rolls are made with ground pork, taro root, daikon radish, glass noodles, yam, and wood ear mushroom. You basically wrap the searing hot egg roll in a lettuce leaf, and throw fresh basil and shiso leaves in there, dip in a vinegar based sauce and have at it. They have a really unique flavor from the taro and a nice earthiness from the mushroom, brightened by the fresh bite of the herbs. I love the hot/cold contrast too.

This was a lemongrass and chile sauced chicken dish that Michael got, spicy, but had a great depth of flavor.

Of course, I got Pho ("fuh"), a noodle soup with sliced beef, in a consomme-like broth scented with spices. You spice it to your preference with jalapeno, lime juice, bean sprouts, and more fresh herbs, and a bit of Siracha or the mystery pepper sauce in the bottle at the end of the table that tastes great, but destroys you from within via capsaicin. This is the kind of tasty soup that haunts your dreams, the one you find yourself craving at odd times when nothing else will do.

Vietnamese cuisine is an interesting blend of Indonesian, French and Asian influences, and has unique flavors.

On the flip side, Jean-George Vongerichten's (man his name is hard to spell!) cuisine is French technique with beautiful Asian influences, and I staged at his restaurant in Aria again on Saturday.

It also happens to be one of my favorite steakhouses ever. Above is their wood grill, they use a mix of mesquite charcoal and apricot wood to grill their steaks.

I got to try a lot of the food, the short ribs came with an apple-jalapeno puree, apple and micro celery salad, and rosemary panko. Delicious, the puree was especially flavorful. I also highly enjoyed the miso and yuzu crust on the sea bass with maitake mushrooms, though I usually won't eat sea bass because it's not a sustainable fish at all.

The food there is fantastic, I blogged about visiting them for restaurant week about two months ago, where we all had an amazing meal. Being in the kitchen again was really educational, and I plan on going back to stage again some time in the future.

Now, I'm exhausted, and I have my sommelier class in the morning, so I must get some sleep.

Adios!