Gordon Ramsay's BurGR

VERDICT: A very juicy burger served as dryly as possible that makes you question the very nature of existence in the ambiance of a hospital cafeteria in hell.

This is Gordon Ramsey's burger joint in Planet Hollywood in Vegas.  I don't usually review Strip restaurants, because it is usually overpriced tourist trap fare.  I figure that BurGR would provide, at the very least, a unique burger experience.  I had cousins visiting to watch a hockey game and was given the parameters that they wanted a burger or steak.  It was a perfect opportunity to try BurGR.

First, you are greeted with an artistic wall of fire where you wait to be seated.  Nothing is more welcoming after being in the 115 degree summer heat than a nice hot furnace to stand by.  I guess this is some sort of German existential performance art piece.  You get to experience the horror of Hell's Kitchen.  The pain, the suffering, the agony I suppose only add to the culinary experience.  You must suffer before you know pleasure.

Make sure to be seated in the "No Exit" section for a full sensory experience.

The service was excellent.  I would describe the decor as "newly decorated hospital cafeteria in the seventies".  Which I think is in vogue?  I don't know.  Of course, there are televisions broadcasting all the latest in sports, because the world caters to sports lovers and sports are one of two things you'll ever see on televisions in restaurants.  The only other thing being, of course, menus.

The burgers did take a while, but that was to be expected.  One of my cousins ordered a plain burger with nothing on it, which leads me to believe that he gets the whole German existential culinary experience better than I do.  I got a burger with fancy cheeses on  it.  We also split two orders of fries.  So, 4 burgers, two fries, and three sodas came to over $90.

I have a hard time describing the burger, because it was both good and bad...like life.  This would be ideal if I was taking a course in philosophy, but I wanted an all over good burger, not one sprinkled with the bitter disappointments of a life spent in agonizing self-contemplation.  The meat portion was perfection.  I truly have not had a burger patty done to such high standards ever before.  The bun, however, was dry.  I don't mean just without condiments, I mean dry like it had built-in desiccant.  Any juiciness of the burger was offset by the moisture destroying sponges on the top and bottom.  My saliva was not enough.  I found I needed to down food with water.

The fries were unexceptional.  The garlic Parmesan fries did little in the way of flavor.  They were basically a regular order of fries with a sprinkle of Parmesan and garlic on the top, definitely not worth the extra money.  The fries came with different condiments, one of which was curry ketchup, a staple in many European countries and a condiment that just can't seem to make it in the United States.

I'm mixed as to whether to recommend this restaurant or not.  I feel it's great if you want an expensive total sensory German existential philosophy adventure making you see through the veil-covered illusion that is life.  Or if you got the money, try it once.

Mimi's Café

VERDICT: Bring your own butter...better yet, bring your own food.

I don't get this restaurant at all.  What is it suppose to be?  A family restaurant?  A French restaurant?  A New Orleans restaurant?  Because it fails with all of that.  The menu consists of rather bland café fare.  There is Chicken Cordon Bleu on the menu.  Rather than actual Cordon Bleu, it is deep-fried chicken served with a bright yellow mustard sauce that they have the guts to call Dijon sauce.  The room we were in was decorated as if we were in a New Orleans café, ironically painted with the names of fun, Cajun dishes that were not on the menu. 
I ended up getting the ravioli...I know, I know, how French is that?  The sauce would made Chef Boyardee seem gourmet and the ravioli seemed fresh from the freezer. We went with Greg's mother, who I refer to as the Dairy Queen.  She became absolutely disgusted that they didn't serve real butter with the bread.  It tasted as if it was Promise, a butter substitute..  You may remember her bringing her own butter to the Tournament of King.  She, after finishing with her unbridled disgust, decided to bring her own butter with her on any future trips to Mimi's Café.  I, on the other hand, was not offended by the butter substitute, but will not be returning to Mimi's ever again, with or without my own butter.

Grand Lux Cafe - Venetian and Palazzo

VERDICT: This is one of the few decent places on the strip to eat that won't cost you an arm and a leg.

One of the things that I hate about going to the strip is the horrible restaurants.  They are horrible in that they are either very poor quality or they are extravagantly expensive...or both.  That's why I always recommend people go to the Grand Lux Cafe.  They aren't cheap, but at least you get better quality food for your money.  Owned by the same group that brought you the Cheesecake Factory, the Grand Lux has a large menu, but not the phonebook menu with ads that you get at Cheesecake Factory.  The food is a little more upscale I find as well.  

  I love the Asian Nachos (Crispy Fried Wontons Covered with Chicken in a Sweet-Hot Peanut Sauce. Topped with Wasabi Cream and Melted Cheese).  I almost always get the amazing Shaking Beef (Southeast Asian Inspired! Pieces of Beef Tenderloin, Red and Green Onions Sauteed with a Mildly Spicy Marinade. Served with Steamed White Rice).  Also, take advantage of A Box of Warm Homemade Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies, because they are amazing.  You have to order them at the beginning of the meal, because they do bake them fresh.  I always eat them later at home anyway.

Gordon Biersch - Boca Park

VERDICT:  I don't get the appeal of this place, but everyone else seems to love it.

It's hard to believe that I've only recently gone to Gordon Biersch.  This place is very popular.  Actually, I've heard reports that Gordon Biersch near the strip is actually a bit of a meat market.  Watching the mating habits of straight, young hipsters is actually pretty disgusting to me, so I've always avoided the place.

So, how did I end up there?  The Poo-Poo game™!  The Poo-Poo game™ is the smartest thing that I ever invented, although I think I need to rethink the name.  The Poo-Poo game™ is used whenever two or more people want to go out to eat (it can work for eating at home too though).  It used to be that when Greg and I had to choose a place to eat, we would end up in endless repeating cycles of saying "I don't know.  Where do you want to eat?"  Greg then would expect me to rattle off restaurants until I named one that pleased him.  The problem was that I could go through the entire phone book, showering him with the name of every restaurant and still he wouldn't hear anything that he liked.  What a princess?!?

The Poo-Poo game™ is easy to implement and take care of all that BS.  It's as simple as making a suggestion and when the other person disagrees with or "poo-poo's" that selection, you say "You poo-poo'ed, now you choose."  Greg hates this, because I'm no longer showering him with choices.  It makes him come up with suggestions, too.  If I don't like his suggestion, I also have the option of poo-poo'ing him.  It goes back and forth until no one poo-poo's.  Of course, one of the rules of the Poo-Poo game™ is that you can't repeat the same restaurant twice.  As an added bonus, if the other person names a restaurant that they know no one likes and it is not poo-poo'ed, it becomes a game of chicken.  Who is going to cave and admit that they want to poo-poo it and come up with another suggestion?  This really is the most democratic way of restaurant choosing.

Anyway, it was the Poo-Poo game™ that made us end up at Gordon Biersch.  It was Greg's suggestion and I've secretly always wanted to try it and see what the fuss was about.  OK, first, I have to admit that I thought it was a German restaurant...it isn't.  It has German beer and that is the extent of the German-ness.  That's not a bad thing.  I'm not a big fan of bland sausage with soured cabbage followed by a flavorless, sugar-dusted, dry pastry for dessert.  Instead they have an assortment of pub food and some restaurant items bordering on Applebee's territory.

I confess, I didn't have a restaurant item, which might have been delicious, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money and while they were not that expensive, I just wasn't even in the mood for moderately priced food.  I ended up have the Kobe Beef Burger.  I have had Kobe beef before, in steak form.  I actually had it in Japan and it was amazing, tender and flavorful.  I couldn't imagine what Kobe hamburger would taste like.  The hamburger that I got was dry and flavorless.  I've read elsewhere that their burgers are notoriously dry.  Greg got the corned beef sandwich which was good, but you could get better at a pub for less.

Their notorious garlic fries were unremarkable in my eyes, but they take great pride in them.

I'm sure the restaurant food is better, but for good pub food, find a local pub!

crEATe - Restaurant or Cult?

UPDATE: The cult must have met their alien leader.  Now out of business.

VERDICT: Expensive and odd.

 Greg was all about going to this new restaurant called "crEATe", which was basically a burger bar.  I've noticed it before as it is painted bright lime green and looks rather sleek.  We walked in and immediately became disoriented.  Greg turned to me and said, "Do you want to leave?", but he always says that in restaurants.  I swear to god, he's got some sort of strange phobia of new restaurants.  I stood my ground, because who wants to drive around saying, "I don't know, where do you want to eat?"

The disorientation came from the unusual layout.  There was a counter, but there is no menu visible above the counter as expected.  Instead the menu was behind us, against the wall, in the form of free-standing, black, electronic light boards.  The menus pretty much consisted of a list of different size burgers and a long list of burger ingredients.  Just as when I was starting to wonder how I was going to get my order from the complex menu all the way over to the counter, a man came out the greet us.

The man, who appeared to be a manager because of his age, quizzed us on what brought us in, "Was it the green paint?  You have a friend that has been here before?"  I think we just looked bewildered.  I don't remember answering the question.  I was just thinking that I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he chose a good paint color and I, just like everyone else, was drawn like a moth to the flame.  I just wanted to say, "We're already sold.  We're fatties, insert food now!"  Why do I have to answer a stupid survey, no matter how informal, when I do anything?

He explained the menu.  There were burgers that were already "designed" that could be simply ordered or you could make your own burger from the burger toppings menu.  The pre-designed burger menu had burgers named after art periods, "The Modernist, The Classical, The Renaissance, The Impressionist".  But the names were somewhat misleading.  The Renaissance had pineapple on it.  The Impressionist was their spicy, jalapeno burger.  They had a burger called The Dali (not a period, but rather an artist), that was inexplicably their southwestern burger.

The manager then explained that their were clipboards over by the counter, so we could circle our choices.  Then he kind of just stood there and stared blankly at us.  It became a little awkward.  I almost wished I had succumbed to Greg's restaurant paranoia and left earlier.  I looked to Greg and said, "well, let's go get a clipboard."

There really were a lot of toppings to choose from.  Nothing horribly gourmet, but the standard gourmet like bleu cheese, pineapple and chiles.  While we were deciding what to put on our burgers, which was actually quite a daunting task, a strange girl came around the corner, got right in our face and loudly declared, "The people at Nabisco have done it again!  This new chocolate Chex Mix is amazing."  This set off my crazy meter to the limit.  It wasn't what she said, it was the familiarity with us that she displayed; well that, plus the fact that she had chocolate Chex mix smudged on her mouth as she was shoveling in the last pieces that led me to believe she was off her rocker.

I replied, "Oh my!"  What am I, British?  I tend to say, 'oh, my!' a lot.  Anyway, I continued, "Do you work for Chex mix?"

"No, I just really like it."  She then went up to some people ordering at the counter and extolled the virtues of the new Chex Mix.  She returned to us a short while later to inquire if we had been here before.  We stated that we hadn't.  She explained that she worked here and that she was just here last night painting.  She claimed to really have been excited about the painting.  At which point, someone behind the counter, agreed that she was indeed very excited about painting.   Greg and I looked around, yet no one pointed out what was painted.  The walls were nicely painted, but it didn't look fresh.  The back wall had a lot of writing on it  saying junk like peace, life, sand...I don't know...new age junk.

The thing that got me was that she wasn't working.  She was just hanging out, eating Chex Mix and raving about it to the customers.  At no point, did she offer me any Chex Mix.  She did later get into a uniform, but it wasn't for another 15 minutes.

This is what led me to believe crEATe was a cult.  Everyone was too cheery and slightly off.  The atmosphere was disorienting.  They had their own vegetarian burger made with brown rice...if that doesn't scream cult, I don't know what does.  On their website, there is a news story that states, "Employees learn customers' names so they can personally greet them with a smile.  When Graulich gets a promising application, he said he will often observe the person at their current work site. It tells him whether that person is right for Create.  'You can't train personality,' Graulich says."

My burger was good, but Greg's burger was phenomenal.  He's the best chooser, that's why I make him make all of my sandwiches.  He then confessed that he had been there before and left because he didn't want to order food at a counter.  He rather be waited on.  Is that picky, or what?  I guess that's what makes him such a good sandwich maker.

http://www.createburgersandcustard.com/
7290 W Lake Mead Blvd.
586-0430