Although I am best known for my var­i­ous dif­fer­ent roles and ap­pear­ances as a broad­cast per­son­al­i­ty, I am a busi­ness­man by trade. I work pri­ma­ri­ly with Tem­po, an e­sports team and me­di­a com­pa­ny turned game de­vel­op­ment stu­di­o; I help run the cor­po­rate side of le­gal, fi­nance, and HR ad­min­is­tra­tion. I also pro­vide busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry serv­ices to en­tre­pre­neurs and pub­lic fig­ures. You can find more de­tails on my CV.

I'm 34 years old and live in Las Vegas. In my free time, I like to write, cap­ture pho­to­graphs, train mixed mar­tial arts, play mu­sic, and pur­sue fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. Gen­er­al­ly, I pre­fer to do ac­tiv­i­ties that ex­pose me to nov­el ex­pe­ri­ences or help me de­vel­op new prac­ti­cal skills.

Those who know me well often de­scribe my per­son­al­i­ty as “meticulously-controlled chaos.” The MBTI types me as INTJ. I'm split be­tween In­ves­ti­ga­tor (Type 5) and Chal­leng­er (Type 8) on the Enneagram. My CliftonStrengths Top 5 are De­lib­er­a­tive, Learner, An­a­lyt­i­cal, A­chiev­er, and Com­pe­ti­tion. I score high­est in Well-Being, Self-Control, and E­mo­tion­al Sta­bil­i­ty on the SPI-27. My top trait on both the Big Five and HEXACO-PI-R is Con­sci­en­tious­ness.

I don't use so­cial me­di­a much, but my pro­files are Parkzer on Twitch, Adam Parkzer on YouTube, @Parkzer on 𝕏, Adam Parkzer on LinkedIn, Parkzer on Last.fm, and Parkzer on Letterboxd. I don't have any se­cret “alt” or “friends only” ac­counts. Never send cash, gift cards, or cryp­to­cur­ren­cy to any­one claim­ing to be me—they are all im­per­son­a­tors and scam­mers.

Below, you can find my blog where I doc­u­ment my ad­ven­tures, or­gan­ize my thoughts, and share snip­pets of my life. You can browse in re­verse chron­o­log­i­cal or­der, or you can sort by these pop­u­lar cat­e­go­ries: Highlights | Food | Las Vegas | Tourism | Travel | Flights | Cruises | Face | Finance

 

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Hello, BlizzCon 2026

by   •   Conventions
 

This past weekend, I flew over to Anaheim, California to attend Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon at the Anaheim Convention Center.

As you can probably tell by the name, BlizzCon is a convention dedicated to Blizzard and their various games. It was held almost annually between 2005 and 2019, only excluding 2006 and 2012. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and marked the start of the BlizzCon cadence being thrown off quite a bit. The pandemic “postponed” the 2020 convention to the subsequent year, and then forced the 2021 one to be online-only. To make things worse, the 2022 convention was canceled entirely; although they did not cite it directly, people reasonably assume that it was due to their ongoing major lawsuit at the time, California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard, Inc., No. 21STCV26571 (California Superior Court, Los Angeles County; July 20, 2021). BlizzCon came back for 2023, which I attended. They took 2024 and 2025 off, then returned this past weekend for the 16th BlizzCon.

Between 2015 and 2019 when my company Tempo still had its Tempo Storm esports division and we were still competing in the esports leagues of a number of Blizzard titles, I was regularly invited to BlizzCon as either esports support staff or as a member of the press. In fact, even though it originated during my time in League of Legends, it was actually Blizzard esports that popularized calling me Adam “Adam Parkzer” Parkzer, and then subsequently, Adam “Don’t call me ‘Adam "Adam Parkzer" Parkzer’” Parkzer. (If you don’t get it, it is a joke on the FirstName “Gamertag” LastName naming convention; due to me just using my full name everywhere, they filled in my full name as my “gamertag,” and then when I told people to stop doing that… well, you can see how that went.)

Being invited to things is nice, but can also be burdensome. If you’re at a convention for work, i.e., to make sure your professional players are taken care of, or to cover the announcements and make content about it, then those duties are always at the front of your mind. Even if you have no obligations at the convention, receiving a complimentary admission ticket by invitation has an implication that you have a “special” relationship with the company (at least, special enough that you get a free ticket) and that you have a soft expectation to portray the convention positively.

For example, if I had gotten a free ticket, I may have second-guessed myself when reminding everyone earlier that BlizzCon 2022 was canceled most likely due to the state government suing Blizzard for alleged sexual misconduct and discrimination against women. And if you know me, you know that I don’t like to pass up opportunities to inform people about bad things that have happened in the recent past so we can learn about them and avoid them happening again in the future.

For BlizzCon 2026, I did not reach out to any Blizzard contacts and I did not apply for media credential consideration; I purchased my normie ticket at full price out-of-pocket so I could enjoy the convention strictly as a tourist, and then say whatever I want about it on my blog afterwards.

 
With that somewhat rambly and borderline tangential introduction out of the way, here are some general impressions I had about BlizzCon.

First, it felt like the convention was wildly oversold. The reason I was looking forward to BlizzCon 2026 was because BlizzCon 2023 was actually quite peaceful and relaxed, and I expected it to be the same this year. BlizzCon in particular is appealing to me because a lot of Blizzard game fans are old adults now, so the general attendee-base is a lot more mature than what you’d see in other gaming conventions. The level of maturity seemed to have carried over to this year too, but the number of people there was frankly insane.

The worst way that this manifested was the lines. If BlizzCon 2026 had a nickname, it would be Wait In Line Simulator. Doing literally anything involved standing in a line that ranged in length from “very long” to “famishing.” I believe the line to get into Darkmoon Faire was over 5,000 people long when I checked (and that is a genuine underestimate, not an exaggeration). That particular line spanned up the escalators in Hall A and across the entire walkway to the far end of the North Hall, zig-zagging and snaking back and forth, folding in on itself multiple times over.

Another place this was visible was the main stage. There was a substantial amount of seating, but there were so many attendees that people were still packed almost shoulder-to-shoulder off to the side in the standing areas. I showed up to the opening ceremony a little bit late and could barely see what was going on because I was on the literal other end of the hall, right by the exit doors, as far away as you can possibly be from the stage.

As a side note, there was a bit of a problem with the seating. The chairs were quite medium. Now, medium chairs are usually fine, but the problem with stage seating was that the medium chairs were hooked together side to side so that the seats were touching to form a makeshift bench. The attendees at BlizzCon were just normal people who you’d expect to see at a convention in the United States, i.e., a good number of them either just had large statures, or were overweight. On the first day of the convention, I was in and out of the main stage viewing area because I was squeezing in looking at the exhibits between panels. Whenever I showed up and scanned the audience for seats, I’m fairly certain that at least 15% of them were always vacant because they were occupied by people’s shoulders or love handles.

Adjacent to the congestion, I thought BlizzCon was a little bit boring for me this year. Maybe it’s because I’m just so used to having a packed, back-to-back schedule of obligations and commitments in the past, but it felt like there was both nothing to do and too much to do at the same time.

One thing I appreciated about having special media access in the past is that there are dedicated computer stations for members of the press to try out the demos without needing to wait in long lines. I was not particularly enthused to stand in lines of hundreds of people to try the demos on the show floor, so I ended up not playing anything (otherwise, it felt like all I would be doing for the entire convention is standing in line).

I really enjoyed seeing all the exhibits, but after I spent a few hours slowly walking through everything, there wasn’t much else that was particularly engaging to me… except for one thing.

 
My favorite part of BlizzCon was seeing LE SSERAFIM perform live.

If you know me and know how uninterested I have always been about K-pop, then you might think that is an absolutely wild statement to come out of my mouth. But, I actually legitimately enjoy a good amount of their music. I also think the group was built well, and each member is quite likeable.

Their BlizzCon concert was better than I expected, and that’s even with my relatively high expectations from already knowing that they are great performers. They did 13 songs in 45 minutes, which is a very packed lineup. They maintained their high energy throughout, even with there being minimal talking time and a lot of back-to-back dancing and singing, which I obviously found quite impressive. I thought the setlist was built very well; it felt like the breadth of songs was selected to appeal to both casual fans who recognize viral hits, in addition to diehard fans looking for rare live renditions of less popular songs. Also of note were their outfits—compared to what they’ve worn in the past, it seemed like these were custom-catered to be particularly appealing to a Western audience.

If you thought me listening to LE SSERAFIM was wild, I’m about to say something even wilder: I showed up about four hours early for their show. To be clear, I didn’t just idly sit there staring at the ceiling and twiddling my thumbs. There was still stuff happening on the main stage during most of that period—I got to enjoy hearing about the upcoming release of Diablo V and watching the voice actors across the various Blizzard worlds sharing stories. However, I knew that the main stage would get packed for LE SSERAFIM’s performance, so I claimed a seat early to make sure I wasn’t stranded all the way in the back. I technically was early enough that I could’ve gotten a seat in the front-most section, but I figured I’d save those for their FEARNOTs (which is what they call their fanbase) who showed up with branded light sticks. (And I also wanted to avoid being constantly on screen for their live concert video.)

I didn’t record any of the performance because I knew that there was professional filming being done (and I’m just not the type to be holding up a camera the entire time at a concert anyway), but I did take some still shots—a few during their introductions, and a few when they walked forward onto the B-stage and were closer to the audience.

And before you K-pop fanatics ask: no, I do not have a bias. I respect and admire all five of them equally, each for their own individual reasons.

…

If you put a gun to my head and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t pick one, then my bias is Chaewon. And my bias wrecker is Eunchae.

Remember how I mentioned that I showed up a bit late to the opening ceremony and could barely even find space in the standing area? Well, this was my view.

Do you see where it seems like there are people standing on the stage? Well, look carefully. Those are actually the static camerapeople who are set up halfway down the seated area. The actual stage is double that distance away.

This is what the Overwatch area looked like. I don’t play Overwatch (or pretty much any first-person perspective games) because it gives me motion sickness, so I didn’t really know any of the characters or understand any of the references, but apparently the reason LE SSERAFIM was even at BlizzCon at all was because they did a collaboration with Overwatch.

In the far outskirts of the hall, there were sections set up for some of Blizzard’s more “neglected” games, like Heroes of the Storm. Tempo Storm used to have a professional Heroes of the Storm team, so I used to play it a lot, but then they added loot boxes and abruptly terminated the league, so I haven’t even opened the game at all for several years now.

They set up a nostalgic Heroes of the Storm showmatch and invited back a bunch of previous professional players, which I thought was nice. League of Legends did a similar showmatch a couple of months ago, and although I wasn’t there to watch it live, I still enjoyed watching the VOD. With that being said, I did not watch the Heroes of the Storm one due to the lingering sourness I have with the way they ended the esports league.

They also had some classic game stations scattered throughout the exhibition halls. There was a demo for some new Warcraft III content, as well as a row of memorabilia from the old days of Blizzard.

Blizzard also announced that StarCraft is coming back… as a shooter game. I literally thought this was a prank because it said it was releasing in 2030, and it sounded ridiculous that, not only would they turn a real-time strategy game into a shooter, but then claim that it is releasing so far into the future.

I grew up playing StarCraft. StarCraft: Brood War was one of my favorite games as a kid, and I distinctly remember the excitement when StarCraft II came out right after I graduated high school. Sixteen years later, I still occasionally boot up and play a game or two of StarCraft II.

Needless to say, I am quite disappointed about the StarCraft news. I thought Blizzard had found a new, innovative, unique way to make RTS games appealing again and make them profitable enough to make it worth investing into and reviving the esports scene again. It never occurred to me that it would end up becoming… a shooter. Furthermore, I don’t know if this is just thinking too deeply into it and drawing conclusions that weren’t intended, but if they are implying the conversion of the StarCraft world into a shooter game, then I guess this could be seen as soft confirmation that StarCraft III as an RTS is probably never coming.

Ever since I stopped overseeing the Tempo Storm Meta Snapshot®, I stopped playing Hearthstone entirely. I think Hearthstone for me is one of the best examples of a fun hobby no longer being fun after turning it into a job. Because of the high-pressure nature of publishing the Meta Snapshot® to our gigantic expectant fan base (we had several million visitors per month at our peak), on top of the high staff turnover due to the difficulty of finding reliable Hearthstone expert contributors, it was definitely one of the more draining projects I did at Tempo Storm.

With that being said, right before I reached a point of complete exhaustion and burn-out, I was able to hand over the project to a different staff member at Tempo Storm. I think that was critical, because if I had gone any longer, I probably would’ve hated Hearthstone for the rest of my life. However, even though I still don’t play Hearthstone and would probably never play it again due to how unsustainable it feels to need to continuously dump money into new card sets, I think I left Hearthstone on a positive note. Walking through the Hearthstone exhibits at BlizzCon invoked a pleasant sense of nostalgia and brought back some good memories.

One of the most surprising things for me at BlizzCon was how big the Diablo section was. In retrospect, it makes sense, because there are a lot of different versions of Diablo, one of which is literally a mobile game that can grind revenue for Blizzard in the traditional high-profit mobile game microtransaction model. Also, out of all of Blizzard’s games, it feels like Diablo might be the world that is most likely to appeal to a general non-hardcore audience due to its relatively low barrier of entry and retention.

I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Diablo fanatic, but I enjoyed playing Diablo III and I’ve made decent progress through the Diablo IV storyline. Funny enough, the Diablo section of the convention was actually my favorite out of all the Blizzard universes. It felt the most immersive, and it seemed like the people who worked on the Diablo section paid extra special attention to refining all the small details.

Out of all the Blizzard games, World of Warcraft is the one that I play the most nowadays. I’m nowhere near as dedicated to it as I was at one point in my life, but in general, MMORPGs are my favorite genre of video game, so I usually end up going back to World of Warcraft as part of my video game rotation. I don’t like the constant grind though and don’t enjoy the feeling of gear getting outdated so quickly, so I usually end up just completing the main storyline quests, clearing through the raids once using instance finder, and then coming back for the next patch.

Going more in-depth about the gear getting outdated: I don’t have a lot of time to play video games anymore, so I can’t do the constant grind of dungeons and raids every week after the reset. It is annoying to me when I finally do enough raids and battlegrounds to be able to buy good gear, and then a few months later, all my progress becomes pointless and I have to repeat the process all over again. This is why I have enjoyed Guild Wars 2—its horizontal progression means that I can play as much or as little as I want, and it will never feel like the past time I put into the game becomes useless.

With this idea in mind, I am particularly looking forward to the release of World of Warcraft: Forever, announced at this BlizzCon. It seems like WoW: Forever is intended to be closer to a horizontal-progression game, as opposed to the heavy vertical progression that the regular World of Warcraft has. I do not intend on playtesting WoW: Forever during the beta period as a volunteer quality assurance tester, but I do plan on playing it in early November when it formally releases to the public.

Because I was at the main stage so early, I saw the full programming leading up to the LE SSERAFIM concert, including the closing ceremony. They gave away some free merchandise by using air cannons and throwing bundles of apparel into the crowd.

I feel like I already covered all my thoughts at the beginning of the blog post, but I guess I did leave out one obvious question, of whether I would go again in the future. At this point, I’m actually not sure. I know this sounds wishy-washy and hypocritical to what I literally just already said in this blog post, but funny enough, I might be more inclined to go again in the future if I receive an invitation and special access to restricted areas so that I can actually try things out without feeling like I have to stand in paralyzingly long lines.

… Or if LE SSERAFIM performs again next year. I’d pay full price and go back for that.

 

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Hello, “Paradise” at the Bellagio Conservatory on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Las Vegas
 

Meteorological summer already ended just over a week ago, and astronomical summer is about to end in two weeks, but I still made it in time to take photographs of the summer installation at the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens inside MGM Resorts’ Bellagio Resort & Casino.

This is an attraction on the Las Vegas Strip that I always recommend checking out because it’s free and low-commitment, so when my friends come to visit Las Vegas and we are in the general area of the central Strip, I always encourage them to stop by. Because of that, I’d seen this installation in-person a handful of times already, but I didn’t have my point-and-shoot camera with me during any of those previous trips. I didn’t want to miss my streak of sharing pictures of the seasonal installations on my blog though, so earlier today, I walked over to the Bellagio for one final look at all the animals.

The Conservatory is scheduled to enter its dark days starting from this coming Sunday, so you only have about half a week left to see this in person.

Hello, toe beans.

Here is a bonus floral arrangement set up in front of Harvest, a restaurant deeper into the resort near the pool area.

If you liked these photographs and want to see more from previous installations, I also have these past blog posts (in reverse chronological order): “Springtime Symphony: Music In Motion,” “Lunar New Year 2026: Year of the Horse,” “All Aboard for Holiday Bells and Whistles,” “Glam Menagerie: Surrealist Summer,” “The Birds and the B’s,” and “Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake.”

 

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Hello, The YakitoriGuy Experience

by   •   Food, Highlights
 

A little over a week ago, I had an opportunity to join some of my friends for a private dinner with YakitoriGuy. I was invited to this because my friend who organized all this knows how much I’ve been enjoying tasting menus lately (and I’ve been to quite a few together with her), so she figured that I would enjoy this as well.

As you can probably tell from his name, YakitoriGuy specializes in yakitori. Yakitori, or 焼き鳥, translates to “grilled bird”; practically, it is small portions of chicken threaded onto skewers and grilled over charcoal. He sources Jidori chicken for his dinners, which he appropriately names “The YakitoriGuy Experience,” and he builds a “course list” (which, in his case, would be a “skewer list”) using as much of the chicken as possible, even including portions that people who aren’t particularly chicken enthusiasts would not even know existed.

For those who know me for my restaurant recaps and my (sometimes unconventional and unusual) reviews and analyses on different tasting menus and omakase experiences I go to, I want to clarify that this blog post does not count as one of those. Not only is this just not a regular restaurant where you can show up and order off a menu, but even if I tried or wanted to do a detailed breakdown, I don’t remember enough specifics about what part of the chicken each skewer was made from to be able to provide much value in my commentary beyond “it tasted good.”

Overall, the dinner was fantastic, both food-wise and experience-wise. I learned a good amount about yakitori, and YakitoriGuy was very interactive with all of us throughout the dinner, which is what you’d expect from a quality experiential dinner like this. I think the skewers with only chicken were decent, but I really enjoyed the skewers that had both chicken and vegetables. In my personal opinion and for my own culinary preferences, I think chicken on its own has a lower ceiling of deliciousness than other kinds of meat. However, if you’re building combination skewers with chicken and other complementary items, I think that’s where the food really shines. Thus, although I still liked the chicken with simple sauces and garnishes, the ones you’ll see grilled together with large cuts of vegetables were my favorites.

As a side note, YakitoriGuy does serve members of the public sometimes, but he does it in an exclusive and limited pop-up structure, and the dinner I was able to enjoy was a fully private group hand-picked and curated by my friend. If you’re interested in potentially attending one of his pop-ups, he mentioned that the best way to do that would be to check out his website (linked above), register for his newsletter, and follow him on social media for his latest updates.

With that all being said, consider this to be a casual photo diary of my dinner:

 

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Hello, D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event 2026 in Anaheim, California

by   •   Conventions
 

Thanks to one of my friends, I randomly had an opportunity to attend The Walt Disney Company’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. To be clear, I am not a “Disney adult,” and even as a kid, I didn’t really watch any Disney media and wasn’t familiar with Disney intellectual property. I have been to Downtown Disney a decent number of times because I like to go for a walk through it when I’m in the area, but I hadn’t been inside Disneyland Resort until only a handful of months ago. Even then, when my friend offered to bring me along with her, I agreed to go because I thought it would be a novel and interesting experience. (As a point of clarification, the friend who invited me is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Co.; this blog post is simply me sharing an interesting part of my life, and it is not a commercial endorsement in any way.)

I heard that getting a ticket to D23 is a difficult process, so I feel very fortunate that I was an invited guest. Prospective ticket purchasers apparently need a certain kind of premium membership with Disney’s fan club, and then from there, they need to line up in a virtual queue and hope for the chance to buy a pass before they all sell out. With that being said, I really respect and appreciate how Disney runs their ticketing system. Scalpers and ticket resellers have become a major problem with basically anything limited nowadays, so I think the fact that Disney filters out ticket buyers to only be genuine fans of their brands is a good move.

I’ve been to a lot of conventions before, but D23 still stood out to me. The first thing I noticed about it is how nice everything was. The build quality of everything was far more premium than what I’ve seen at other conventions, and I found it surprising that even just the regular aisles and walkways were covered with plush carpeting. In conventions where they have to sell exhibition space to third parties, it is obviously not possible to maintain this level of quality and consistency among all the booths—different exhibitors are going to have different budget availability, and some brands will have to cheap out on materials in order to be able to afford being there. However, the fact that Disney is handling the entirety of the convention floor by themselves made it so that they had an incentive to uphold their reputation and make everything nice.

Another first impression that I got was how there were little to no children at the convention. It was very easy to tell that this was designed to be a convention for adults, and the only children I saw were infants in strollers who I assume had to come along because their parents either couldn’t or didn’t want to find a babysitter. This made the environment far less chaotic, and I felt like I was at an actual civilized gathering instead of a circus. For comparison, this was the polar opposite of VidCon where a majority of attendees were children, an unfortunate many of which were quite obnoxious. On the other hand, D23 reminded me more of the most recent BlizzCon; most classic Blizzard game fans have grown up to be adults now, so the last time I attended BlizzCon, it felt like I was there enjoying my time with fellow adults reminiscing and being nostalgic about their childhood.

As I spent more time at the convention, I began realizing just how big the Disney brand is. I kept on seeing logos and characters that I either knew or recognized, but I previously had no idea that they were at all affiliated with or owned by Disney. It seemed like any other brands that were present that were not owned by Disney were there due to corporate partnerships or other business-based alliances in connection with Disney’s products.

My friends who I went with have recently developed an interest in collectible cards, so they were particularly excited for the opportunity to buy sets and merchandise from Lorcana, Disney’s trading card game. There was a wide open space for people to play Lorcana together with other convention-goers, as well as a store run by Ravensburger selling physical Lorcana products.

There was obviously limited stock of Lorcana card sets, and many people at the convention wanted to buy one, so D23 had a virtual queue system on their mobile app where you “line up” online rather than in-person, and then you show up when it’s your turn to shop. The ability to join the queue opened up at certain designated times, so you had to sync your clock to coordinated universal time down to the second, and then right as the release hit, you had to press a button to request to be added to the queue.

Everyone in my group pulled out their phones to prepare to join the queue. Even though I personally wasn’t interested in making a purchase, I figured I would still participate, because it’s better to have more reservations and then withdraw extras later, as opposed to not having enough. So, I also opened my D23 app, made sure the time on my Garmin watch was synced, and then counted down the seconds. The exact moment it hit 1 PM, I pressed the button to join the queue and got inside batch 50. They were currently servicing people in the early batch 40s, presumably still people who were being taken care of from the previous queue, so I realized that I ended up with a really good spot.

Then I checked in with my friends. I don’t know if I just had a more responsive phone because I uninstall all bloatware and barely use any apps, or if it’s because I keep 5G disabled on a routine basis so there is a chance that I had better ping with my 4G LTE service (because keep in mind that 5G is usually faster, but 4G is usually more stable), or if I’m just godlike at counting seconds. But, the next best person in our group got put into batch 99, and everyone else landed above batch 100 (with the highest being in the 140s) and got waitlisted.

Each reservation permitted the reservation holder and one guest to stand in the physical line and make a purchase, so I brought my friend along so she could buy two of everything she wanted—one from my reservation holder allocation and one from her guest allocation.

One thing I extra liked about the Lorcana activation was how there was a deckbuilding quest where you had to interact with other people to trade cards and build a set of four that you got assigned at the Ravensburger store, and once you completed your mission and brought it back to the turn-in spot, you would receive a bonus card. With the decline of social third places nowadays, I almost always support opportunities where strangers can come together in-person and build interest-based connections with each other through a medium that is not online.

Adjacent to that, my friends also had an interest in checking out the Magic: The Gathering booth to see if there were any exclusive items for sale. The MTG booth made queueing more fun by having a quiz that people could take on their phones while waiting in line. Those who took the quiz would be able to show their results to someone at the entrance of the booth and receive a free deck of cards. I took the quiz and got Black, though I don’t actually play MTG, so I’m not sure what that means. I gave my deck to my friend.

One of the most memorable commercial activations I’ve seen at a convention was this Heinz one. Heinz and Disney apparently entered into a multi-year strategic partnership, and in celebration, Heinz set up a place where you could try out their sauces.

One section was sort of like a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine where you could pick your base flavor and add-ons to build your own sauce. Conveniently, they had a concession stand nearby where you could buy hot dogs so you could try these sauces out on a hot dog. Another section showed their four new pre-packaged sauces: orange mojo, blackberry bourbon barbeque, maple sweet chili, and brauhaus mustard.

When it was my turn to try the Heinz Remix machine, I went with a honey mustard and mayonnaise base with an add-in of a double portion of roasted garlic. I think the machine ended up adding in too much mayo, and I wish there had been an option to go easy on the bases as well, but overall, I was satisfied with my creation.

On the opposite side of the Remix machine, there was a cart where an attendant gave out a four-pack of the new sauces. They were in small portions, the size and look of which reminded me of McDonald’s dipping sauces. This was a separate line that required an additional wait, but I somehow accidentally entered that area through the exit after being confused as to where I needed to path after I retrieved my cup of Remix sauce. I guess the attendant was just as confused as I was, because she noticed that I had randomly spawned in and just randomly handed me a sauce set. I gave it to another one of my friends (the one who you see in the photograph pondering about her Remix sauce) because she exited through the proper area and didn’t inadvertently cheat the system like I did, so she ended up not getting one.

One of the activities we did was… voluntarily watching advertisements. This sounds ridiculous, but it was actually quite enjoyable. The line was pretty long, and if you know me, you know that I’m the type of person who doesn’t like standing in lines or otherwise facing any kind of friction between myself and doing what I want to do. However, this line wasn’t too bad because I was chatting with the group of people with whom I had gone to the convention.

The premise behind this was that you would put on 3D glasses, go into a theater where there are immersive elements (like seat vibrations and mist to go along with what’s on-screen), and then watch short clips of various different Disney and Hulu shows so you could get a crash course on what’s available on their programming network. I was lucky enough to literally get the best seat in the house, i.e., in the front row and directly in the center of the screen. The immersive elements were fun, and it was overall pretty enjoyable.

They didn’t allow us to take photographs inside the theater, so instead, here is a picture of us in the waiting room while the hostess chatted with us and briefed us about what was to come.

While we were walking around the exhibition halls, a bunch of employees suddenly cleared the walkway and told everyone to retreat to the edges of the path. Then, out of nowhere, a marching band came through. It was quite jarring, but pretty funny.

Here is a picture of my friend feeling up a statue of Rotta the Hutt. She is probably thinking “why can’t my boyfriend also have a 12-pack…”

(Her face is censored because she doesn’t like having her face posted online.)

Apart from that, I spent the rest of the convention walking around, sightseeing, and taking pictures of things that I found interesting. I feel lucky that I got to go, and I think the fact that I, a non-Disney fan, attended and had such a positive experience is a great indicator on how well the convention is put together.

(As a side note, apparently D23 takes place in two venues: the Anaheim Convention Center, and the multi-purpose arena Honda Center. We only got to experience what was in the convention center and did not get a chance to see the shows at the Honda Center.)

In no particular order, here are a bunch more photographs from my visit:

 

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Hello, COTE Korean Steakhouse at The Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Food, Las Vegas
 

Following a recommendation from a friend, I decided to join in for dinner not too long ago at COTE Korean Steakhouse at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada. I haven’t been going to too many barbecue restaurants lately that revolve around red meats with high saturated fat content because I’m still being conscious about my high cholesterol and heart health. However, I saw that COTE wasn’t a typical all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurant, and instead offered some tasting menus, so I figured that if I’m going to go to a KBBQ restaurant, COTE would be a good candidate. Upon arriving at the restaurant, I saw from the logo that COTE is styled with 꽃 placed in the hole of the O, which is Korean for “flower.”

Out of the tasting menus, they had one called “Welcome to the Fabulous Butcher’s Feast,” also written in Korean on the menu as “모둠 고기한상,” for US$88.88 per person. The English name is obviously a play on the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” catchphrase, while the Korean name roughly translates to “assorted meat feast.” The other tasting menu was simply called “Steak Omakase™: The Grand Tour” for US$225.00 per person. The Steak Omakase is what my friend and I ended up getting.

Of course, when someone puts a trademark symbol beside a name, I always get curious enough to do some snooping, partially to see if they actually did trademark it, and partially to see if there is an interesting story behind it. I guess this is also one of the quirks of reading restaurant reviews on my website, because I imagine that not too many other food bloggers have enough of a background and an intrinsic interest in legal matters to go off on a trademark and intellectual property tangent in the middle of their review.

So anyway, during my search, I found that the first attempt to trademark Steak Omakase was made by Cote IP LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, back in January 2019. Unfortunately, it seems like they ran into some issues; they successfully responded to an office action in April 2019, but failed to overcome the subsequent office action in October 2019.

Rather than responding to the office action in October 2019, they instead abandoned the initial application and filed a new one under Gracious Hospitality Management LLC, a New York limited liability company with a foreign registration in Nevada, in November 2019. That application also received an office action in February 2020, and then again in August 2020, which caused the company to once again abandon the application.

Third time’s a charm, though, because in March 2024, Gracious Hospitality Management LLC made yet again another attempt to trademark Steak Omakase. They received an office action in September 2024, responded to it successfully in early December 2024, and finally received their registration certificate in late December 2024.

Thus, that confirms that this review is officially for COTE’s Steak Omakase®.

 
The omakase started with an ice-chilled oyster topped with some sea urchin. This was a very generous portion of sea urchin, but I felt like the explosion of flavor wasn’t quite as intense as what I expected for this size of sea urchin. Regardless, overall, it was still very delicious, and considering that sea urchin is my favorite food and I really like oysters, this was a very satisfying appetizer for the meal.

The friend with whom I went to this restaurant is the friend who doesn’t eat seafood, whom I’ve talked about previously on my blog. As a substitution for the oyster and sea urchin, the waiter instead brought out 바삭한 통 삼겹살구이, translated to English on the menu as “Korean ‘bacon,'” composed of house-smoked crispy heritage pork belly and pickled jalapeño.

We were also served a cup of broth. This was intensely and borderline overwhelmingly salty, but the broth had so much rich, deep, umami flavor in it that the salt did a great job enhancing and amplifying the deliciousness of the broth.

Next was some steak tartare with local grass-fed top-round beef, pear, and crispy tendon puffs. This was topped with a small portion of caviar, though I don’t remember exactly what kind of caviar it was.

This was amazing. I liked this combination, and this came with the “flavor explosion” that I expect from high-quality steak tartare and caviar. To make the beef flavor even stronger, this tartare came with crispy tendon puffs instead of bread. I’m impressed that they managed to shape the tendon puffs so neatly. This was perfectly complementary with the steak, and I wish more restaurants would serve tartare like this (though I imagine the reason they don’t is because this is far more resource-intensive than just serving bread).

When our waiter was told that my friend dislikes seafood but I love seafood, he took a caring step to ensure that the caviar went to me, and wasn’t just omitted from my friend’s tartare and “wasted.” My friend’s portion of caviar was separated into a small bowl on the side, so I was able to blissfully enjoy even more caviar to make sure we were getting our full money’s worth.

For my beverage, I ordered an Aplós Ume Spritz for US$15.00. I saw it on the non-alcoholic beverage menu and had never heard of it before, and it said that it came with an infusion of lion’s mane, which I thought sounded interesting, so I picked it. I was expecting some kind of fancy specialty drink from their bar. Unfortunately, when it came out, I realized that it was just a canned drink that I paid $15 for.

When I looked it up on their website after the fact, I found out that you can order this directly from Aplós for US$6.00 per can, or as low as ~$3.44 a can if you buy in bulk packs of 48 cans and enroll in their no-commitment subscription. It was actually pretty tasty and had a very interesting flavor profile, but it starts tasting less fantastic when you find out that, if you include the fact that you tip the waiter to carry this can to your table for you, the restaurant is taking over a 400% profit margin on the drink. (Yes, I understand that profit margins on fountain drinks are even higher, but at least for that, there is an up-front capital cost of the machinery, as well as ongoing maintenance and repairs.)

Not long after we finished both our appetizers, the waiter brought out the meat. There were six different kinds, and one piece of each for each person. The waiter explained that they were generally grouped into pairs—two wet-aged, two dry-aged, and two high-grade wagyu.

In traditional Korean fashion, we were also given a broad selection of side dishes. However, these were not the generic, stereotypical Korean side dishes. Instead, we were brought out a very unique selection of sides, some of which I have never seen at a Korean restaurant before. For example, the green sticks that you see next to the cauliflower are okra.

Another notable thing about the preparation of these side dishes is that a lot of them were pickled. I’m usually not a fan of pickled vegetables because I don’t like the taste of vinegar, I find pickled foods to be too sour for my preference, and I’d rather just eat vegetables raw. However, these pickled vegetables had all the positive flavors of the pickling process without there being any sourness. I ended up eating a substantial amount of these sides.

Unlike all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurants where you cook the meat yourself, COTE’s waiters cook your meat for you at your table. This is a huge plus considering that these waiters most likely have far more skill and training at grilling meat than I do, so it’s a great way to maximize the flavor of each cut of meat while minimizing the possibility of it being overcooked or cooked with an unbalanced doneness level.

Here is a series of photographs of our waiter salting, preparing, grilling, and serving the first few cuts of meat.

While the meat was being cooked and served to us, we continued to get more side dishes throughout the meal. I liked that they did this because I enjoy breaking up the continuity of meat with additional flavors. I think eating beef non-stop, especially cuts that have high levels of fat and marbling, can get cloying; mixing in other flavor profiles makes it so your taste buds can “reset” a bit, which allows you to fully appreciate each bite of meat without their flavors just merging together.

Here is some 계란찜, which is Korean-style steamed egg.

Here are some more photographs of our waiter salting, grilling, and serving more cuts of meat. He threw in a mushroom with some of them, which I thought did a great job at adding an earthy element to the rich fattiness and making the overall flavor profile more complex and desirable.

As we were approaching some of our final pieces of meat, they brought out two noodle dishes.

The first one was 상큼한 비빔국수, described on the menu as cold and refreshing Korean angel hair noodles with apples, iceberg lettuce, and gochujang vinaigrette. I ate this cold noodle dish a lot as a kid, so eating this again was quite nostalgic. However, as you can imagine, COTE prepared these noodles far better than anything that my mom made me as a kid, so that added an additional layer of euphoria.

The second bowl of noodles was 뜨끈한 잔치국수, described on the menu as Korean angel hair noodles with piping hot clear anchovy consommé.

I thought this was so funny that I had to take a photograph of it. If you’re familiar with Korean cuisine, you may recognize this as roasted chili flakes. These are extremely spicy. I immediately knew what these were because I have had instances in the past where I put way too much of this in my food, had a mild emergency in my mouth, and started sweating enough that I could’ve been added to Google Maps as a fire hydrant.

I smartly only added a very small pinch of this to the warm noodle dish, which brought it up to my perfect preferred heat level. I found it absolutely hilarious that they served this much of it for such a tiny bowl of noodles. Surely, at least once in the history of the restaurant, someone thought “they must’ve given me this much because this is how much I’m supposed to use,” dumped this entire thing into their bowl of noodles, and then proceeded to think that they had to go to the hospital.

Here are some photographs of our final pieces of meat. These were the high-grade cuts of wagyu. The waiter was so far doing a fantastic job making sure that the flame wasn’t flaring up, but because of how rich and fatty these cuts were, it was inevitable that the fire started dancing under the grate.

After we were finished with our wooden platter of meat, the waiter brought out a bonus plate of pre-marinated meat. He called this the “dessert meat.” This cut of beef isn’t actually eaten as a dessert, but it made sense why he would call it that, because the marinade usually has a nice sweetness to it. This is different than the more straightforward cuts of meat that we just finished eating that rely primarily on the flavor of the aging, the high fat content, and the accompanying salt to carry their naturally amazing flavors.

For our actual dessert, we were served some ice cream with a soy sauce glaze. The soy sauce glaze tasted very similar to caramel, but it had a deeper and more complex flavor to it. I actually liked this a lot, and if this was served à la carte at an ice cream shop near me for a reasonable price, this is something that I would deem worth getting for dessert on a relatively routine basis.

To close out our meal, we received a bowl of fruit. The pink pineapple was absolutely incredible and might have been some of the best fruit I’ve ever had in my entire life.

This is a photograph of the bar area in the center of the restaurant.

In alignment with the flower theme pursuant to the 꽃 in the middle of the COTE wordmark, the ceiling had a floral design on it.

This is the wordmark on the glass at the front of the restaurant.

This is the hostess’ podium at the entrance of the restaurant.

These are some animated LED signs just outside the restaurant that showed various different items served at COTE.

The omakase and non-alcoholic beverage came to a subtotal of US$240. After sales tax and gratuity, the total for my portion of the meal came to US$300.

I had a fantastic dining experience at COTE, and I highly recommend it as one of the top-tier and higher-priority options for someone looking for a meal at that price point. The meat was very high quality, their special twist on Korean cuisine noticeably elevated the food, the service was attentive and skillful, and the environment was classy and pleasant.

 

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Hello, Kojima in Sawtelle, Los Angeles, California

by   •   Food
 

Last week, I made a quick trip to Southern California to catsit for a friend and then do a LEGO-building live broadcast with my Twitch moderator @PhummyLW, which at this point, has almost become as much of a tradition as the anniversary dinners are.

While in town, I met up with a different friend (than the one for whom I was catsitting) to get some dinner together before I headed back home to Las Vegas. When I asked her where she wanted to go, she picked Kojima in the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles. Her reasoning for it was because they received a Michelin Star relatively recently, so she expected the price to go up soon and wanted to try it out before it got too expensive.

I’m fairly transparent about my dislike of the Michelin Guide, but I feel like it’s been a little while since I’ve last complained about it, so I can re-summarize a limited selection of a couple of my biggest grievances about it.

The deal-breaking problem is that Michelin offers a paid service. The state of California and the country of South Korea are two very well-known examples of regions that paid very large sums under very large contract sizes to Michelin to fund them to come to their markets. Any time there’s money involved, the money becomes an incentive and inherently takes away the absolute neutrality of a ranking system. If a jurisdiction pays for Michelin inspectors to show up, then restaurants that inevitably don’t deserve Michelin Stars are going to get some, otherwise the Michelin Guide is going to feel bad about the state or country spending that much and getting little to nothing out of it. We also don’t know what other monetary transactions are happening behind the scenes that haven’t had public press coverage. To those who argue in support of the Michelin Guide’s integrity in remaining neutral and honest… if they actually had that much integrity, would they collect that much money to begin with?

The Michelin system also “dooms” restaurants into an unsustainable cycle. Restaurants that want to earn and maintain a Michelin Star need to push certain aspects of their operations to levels that result in extremely high stress for employees and unrealistically low profit margins for the business (even after raising prices). The Michelin system has a certain set of metrics that it uses to determine whether a restaurant is deserving of a Michelin Star, and in order to satisfy those requirements, many restaurants have to change the core identity that made them unique, and instead, end up just being vaguely homogenized with many of the other Michelin Star restaurants.

For these reasons, among a handful more, I myself never intentionally go out of my way to seek out Michelin Star restaurants. Instead, I search for restaurants that have a good reputation among regular people, or are offering well-designed tasting menus, or are doing something creative and innovative with their food. However, I will never not go to a restaurant due to the Michelin Guide. As you can see from me having visited this restaurant, if a friend specifically wants me to come along for a Michelin Star dinner, I have no problem joining.

I swear that all this is actually relevant specifically for Kojima, and I’m not just being a geriatric man ranting into the void. Remember how I said that the Michelin Guide implicitly encourages the homogenization of restaurants due to needing to excel in certain performance indicators? Well, Kojima earned a Michelin Star, but is not falling into that trap. Other restaurants often stop experimenting with new concepts in fear that one of them will be bad and make them lose their Star. However, Executive Chef Hayato Kojima is so experimental that he apparently changes his menu on a near-weekly basis. Unrelated to the Michelin Guide, restaurants like Kojima are ones that I want to support—ones that try out new things in an effort to make discoveries and advance the culinary arts.

When my friend and I arrived at the restaurant, we were fortunate enough to be seated directly in front of the chef, so I had a great view throughout the entire dinner.

For the first appetizer, we received lightly fried pieces of fish and vegetables. It was visually obvious that this was fried, but flavor-wise, it was a very intriguing type of fried food—the fried flavor profile was there, but it had none of the greasiness.

As a side note, keep in mind that, because the menu is changed so frequently, there is no set list or written menu of what we had. The waitress explained how each dish was made as she brought it out, but because it’s already been a week, I don’t remember all the specifics and all the ingredients of each dish.

For my drink, I selected Kimino yuzu sparkling juice from the non-alcoholic beverage menu.

While we were eating our appetizers, the chef was already hard at work slicing and preparing some beef tongue.

As the beef tongue was cooking, the chef plated small bowls of potato salad, and also started preparing some scallops for the next dish.

The beef tongue dish was incredible. Tongue is my favorite cut of beef, and I think this might have been the most tender and delicious beef tongue I’ve ever had. The potato salad had an incredibly soft and fluffy texture, and it had a very light and clean creaminess to it.

While we were enjoying the beef tongue, the chef grilled the scallops.

The scallop was served under some mushrooms. The scallop had the perfect consistency of tender and chewy, and the flavor combination of both the scallop and mushroom was complementary.

Next up was some broth. If I remember correctly, it was simmered with fish bones and other unused-but-still-edible fish products so it could extract all the rich flavor.

I don’t quite recall what the solid objects in the middle were made of, but the best way I can come up with to describe it was that they were “premium fish balls.” The consistency was that of ground and processed seafood, but the quality was as if it was just regular seafood.

Afterwards, we got a small bowl of noodles. The noodles were cooked relatively firm, so there was still a bit of a resistant bite to them on the outside, and the inside was chewy. It was a very fitting texture for this cold noodle dish, and it also aligned perfectly with how I like my noodles cooked.

The soup was intensely flavorful, and the strength of it reminded me of an in-between of regular broth and dipping ramen broth. The tempura-fried vegetables served on top resembled the fried appetizer we had at the beginning of the meal.

When you go to a Japanese omakase restaurant, you generally expect to have a decent amount of sushi and sashimi. Thus, at this point of the meal, I was surprised that we hadn’t gotten any yet. Later on, I asked the waitress about the very low ratio of raw fish dishes to other dishes, and she clarified that they are not a sushi restaurant (and are simply a Japanese restaurant) because there is already a sushi restaurant elsewhere in the strip mall (and of course, Kojima’s tenancy reasonably comes with a non-compete clause).

However, this doesn’t mean that there are no fish or sushi-adjacent dishes. For the fish dishes that we did have, the chef was creative about making it so that it was actually a specialty dish and not just, for example, a piece of nigiri.

This next dish was a very thick piece of seared trout placed atop some brown rice and served alongside a few cuts of abalone. I approached this similarly to how I would approach eating nigiri, so I put the entire thing in my mouth. However, the portion size of the trout was so massive that I immediately regretted not just breaking the Japanese social norm of eating nigiri in one piece, and just biting it in half instead.

When this next small plate came out, I was concerned that the dinner might already be approaching its end, but luckily, this was just an intermission. As a palate cleanser, we received some fig with hojicha cream on top. It looks like it would be a good dessert, but it had very little sweetness to it, so it did indeed serve much better as an intermission dish.

In the meantime, the chef brought out a large portion of kinmedai, also known as splendid alfonsino.

This was served as sashimi along with some freshly ground wasabi and some minced okra. I had never seen okra used like this before in combination with fish, and I appreciated being able to try a flavor profile that was completely new to me. The fact that there were no other garnishes or sides to go along with this meant that I was really able to focus in on the taste of the okra and kinmedai without any distractions, which I ended up liking a lot.

Next was some sea urchin, but instead of being served as gunkan atop some rice and wrapped with seaweed like it’s often found, this was served on top of some whitefish.

I am notorious for almost never using soy sauce with nigiri because I really like the original flavor of fish and rice, and if it’s not some kind of special-made soy sauce, then I think it too frequently detracts from the flavor profile such that it’s not worth the risk. However, upon the chef’s recommendation, I had this uni and whitefish combo with some of their house soy sauce. It was fairly light, so the extra saltiness helped enhance the rich flavor of the sea urchin.

Afterwards, we were served a tuna hand roll. I don’t recall anything particularly remarkable about this (which, to be clear, is not always a bad thing). I think it was just simple and straightforward and didn’t stand out compared to all the other creative dishes of the omakase, but there was nothing wrong with it such that I would remember the tuna roll for any shortcomings.

Next up was a bowl of crab and tomato. I often associate tomato as being prone to having an underlying sourness that needs other flavors to counteract it, but this tomato didn’t have much sourness to it and tasted refreshing. However, I’m not sure how or why this happened, but the crab seemed like it was somehow watered down a bit and wasn’t strong enough in flavor to properly complement the tomatoes.

As we were approaching the end of the night, the chef started preparing the grand finale dish.

Thanks to my lucky seat, I had a great view of him grilling our wagyu beef. The grill didn’t flare up much when he was using it previously, but as expected, the wagyu created a nice spectacle due to the high fat content that rendered off and hit the flames.

This is how the wagyu dish was served—a few slices of meat with some greens and garnish.

At this point, the chef had built up such high expectations for himself that I was hoping that something more interesting would’ve been done with this dish. However, there is also some rationale for serving this in a very simple way—it creates a stark contrast from and emphasizes the creativity of the previous dishes we ate, thus making us appreciate the prior dishes even more. With all that being said, the wagyu quality was fantastic, which is the most important part that actually matters.

The last dish before dessert was some rice with vegetables and anchovies. The server showed us the full portion of rice inside the pot in which it was cooked.

The rice came served alongside some pickled vegetables and some broth.

I’m a big fan of seafood in general, and that includes the small anchovies in the rice. When I was younger, I would snack on dried anchovies, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a properly-cooked anchovy-driven dish, so this rice was nice to have again.

That was a lot of rice cooked for just nine people, so I was able to enjoy a second serving of rice after everyone got their first portion.

One of our fellow diners was celebrating her birthday, so when it was time for dessert, the restaurant staff brought out hers with a candle inside.

For dessert, we got a scoop of sorbet. As expected from a Japanese restaurant, it wasn’t excessively sweet, which I appreciated.

As a parting gift, we received some rice. Every solo diner received one bundle, and two women who showed up as a pair received one bundle each, but all the couples only got one to share. Unfortunately, it seems like the staff thought my friend and I were a couple, because they only gave us one. We didn’t bother asking for a second portion, and I gave the whole thing to my friend so she could bring it back home to her boyfriend.

Here are some photographs of the outside of the restaurant. It’s located on the second floor of the strip mall, in the northwestern corner.

Parking is available in the underground lot for a small fee, but because our dinner went a little over time, the parking attendant went home before we were done, so there was nobody there to process the payment and we were able to leave the garage without paying.

Omakase ×2$ 400.00
Kimino yuzu sparkling juice ×2$  14.00
Service charge (15%)$  62.10
Sales tax (9.75%)$  46.42
Total$ 522.52
The table to the right shows how much we paid.

A few quick notes about payment logistics: At the time of booking this reservation, there was a 50% required deposit on the price of the omakase, presumably to combat no-shows, which is obviously credited against your grand total once you finish your meal. Kojima bills a mandatory service charge of 15% in lieu of gratuity; because the service charge is included in the sales tax calculation, it becomes an effective ~16.5% addition to your check in exchange for being able to skip the tip.

As my friend mentioned, I’m not sure if the pricing on this is going to go up at any point in the near future or if reservations will become prohibitively difficult to secure, all due to receiving a Michelin Star. However, in its current state, I think the value you get during Kojima’s omakase experience is very reasonable.

The facet that makes me the most hopeful about the future of this restaurant is the fact that Chef Kojima continues to do his own thing and changes up the menu regularly to what he thinks is the best for his diners, without being influenced by external factors. His system is also great for repeat customers, and if a dynamic Japanese restaurant like this was in Las Vegas, I’d definitely become a regular there.

Overall, if a meal at this price point is within your budget, then I think Kojima is worth checking out.

 

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