Last November, I was plotting a path through CityCenter and all its scrumptious treasures. My first visit to the Strip's latest restaurant wonderland found me at Julian Serrano, and the food was so good, I got stuck. The acclaimed Sage is a few feet away, the neighboring Mandarin Oriental houses twin jewels Twist and MOzen Bistro, and yet I couldn't seem to pull myself away from this Spanish stronghold. Certainly, the food was excellent, but the secret ingredient was friends.
The driving force behind this big boom in foodie culture isn't eating. It's sharing, discussing and occasionally raving about the best you ever had -- and for that you need other people. A summer dinner with friends -- a couple just back in Vegas after two years in Korea -- was the most memorable of many trips to Serrano. We listened to stories of a hectic, compromised life in a foreign land, where it's almost impossible to keep up with the all-important NFL season. We passed plates of béchamel-laced chicken croquetas, goat cheese-stuffed piquillo peppers and sharp ceviches, beaming with Vegas pride as our guests enjoyed every recommended bite. Then we walked CityCenter, showing off the architecture and the visuals by artists Tim Bavington and Jenny Holzer.
It was a quintessential Vegas night, if unapologetically touristy. While our food was flawless, the experience was no more memorable than the dinner one of those friends cooked in our home, weeks later. After a quick trip to the Greenland market, the westernmost point of Chinatown, she prepared a feast of tofu and potato soup, glass noodles with black mushrooms and crisp vegetable pancakes. It was punctuated by truly terrible, headache-inducing Korean beer (she nicknamed the popular brand Hite as "Shite") but we had to drink it, because she had to drink it for two years. Fair is fair.
