Hello, Allegiant Stadium in Paradise of the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada

A little while ago, I went on a tour of Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders.

I recently realized that, for some reason, I never posted photographs from my tour. Considering that I haven’t been doing much for the past few weeks and haven’t had anything particularly notable to blog about, I figured now would be a good time to share these pictures to fill in the lull.

The only sports I ever really watch are combat sports, so it was nice being able to get a behind-the-scenes look at a traditional ball sport stadium.

My main takeaway from the tour was that sports stadiums like this basically have the same premise as commercial planes, in that there a lot of “economy” seats where people are crammed together in a small space, but then there are extremely expensive, luxurious, over-the-top “first class” sections for people who are superfans and want to spend a ton of money. I got to check out the private viewing rooms, lounges, and clubs, and they seemed like pretty nice environments from which to enjoy some American football.

This tour didn’t convert me into a football fan, but it did make me realize that, as long as I’m not squished in a regular seat, I wouldn’t mind checking out a game sometime.

 

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Hello, Nostalgia Street Rods in Las Vegas, Nevada (Part 1: The Museum)

Nostalgia Street Rods is somewhat known among us Las Vegas locals as being a hidden gem in the Valley. Although it might not make it to the top of tourist’s lists of places to check out while in town, it still has a very good reputation for those who are interested in cars.

In between my back-to-back hours of work, I decided to squeeze in a break and get some fresh air. The weather has been scorching hot recently and not too many other people have been out and about lately, so I figured now would be a decent opportunity to finally make my way over to the industrial area near the Boulder Junction neighborhood to check out the museum and car collection while it’s not that busy.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. There were only two other people in my tour group—they were a couple who generally kept to themselves—so it ended up being a very private and personal tour experience. I paid US$20 for general admission, but it felt like I got lucky and almost got the equivalent of a one-on-one tour that would’ve gone for US$50.

There were two sections to Nostalgia Street Rods, the museum and the automobiles. The museum was the smaller section, housed inside a single very large room, and had a lot of memorabilia. Most of it was centered around media and pop culture, but there were also some interesting historical Las Vegas relics. I was especially satisfied with the high volume of music-related items to see. The tour guide pointed out that a lot of care was taken to verify the authenticity of everything on display.

The main section of the experience was the vehicles. There were multiple rooms and warehouses of cars, in addition to larger vehicles being parked out­side in the lot. One aspect of the automobiles I found nice was that there was a breadth of condition of the exhibits. In simpler terms, car museums u­su­al­ly only have very well-maintained and polished cars, and even older cars have been restored to a pristine condition. However, even though Nos­tal­gia Street Rods had a lot of those, it also had a bunch of vehicles that had clearly been used and abused and milked of their functionality, and it was nice to see the more practical and realistic side of the vehicles as well.

I took a lot of photographs, so I decided to split it up into two blog posts—this one contains specimens from the museum, and the subsequent one will have photos of the automobiles and other vehicle-adjacent items.

 

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Hello, The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada

After a long string of back-to-back travel, I’m finally back home in Las Vegas to rest up for a bit before my next trip. After settling in for a few days and getting some errands done, I decided to go check out the Neon Museum in downtown.

The Neon Museum is a fairly popular tourist hotspot, so it was about time for me to go visit it after having been a resident of the Las Vegas Valley for the past six years (though I guess two of those years don’t count because I was road-tripping cross-country full-time). I scheduled my tour for the night­time because I wanted to see the signs illuminated. This also meant I didn’t have to face the brunt of the excruciatingly hot summer temperatures, as it had (marginally) cooled down post-sunset.

It’s become a well-known meme at this point among my peers and fans as to how much I love Las Vegas, and with that adoration, I’ve done a lot of re­search about the city and the surrounding unincorporated towns. During that process, I’ve learned about the history of Las Vegas and the way it e­volved to what it’s like today. Because of that, walking through the Neon Museum and recognizing the names on some of the old neon signs was a fun ex­pe­ri­ence.

I got a discounted locals’ general admission ticket for US$23.00 and purchased a guided tour add-on for US$15.00. Along with the US$1.34 transaction fee, my total for the visit came to US$39.34. I do think that is a little bit pricey compared to other mu­se­ums, but I’ve traveled a lot and been to a lot of mu­se­ums, and I can say that I’ve never quite seen anything like the Neon Museum before when it comes to the nature of the exhibits and the historical sig­nif­i­cance of all the displays.

Here are some of my favorite shots from my walk through the Neon Boneyard.

And yes, I still drive the same pickup truck.

 

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Hello, Mr. Shota All-You-Can-Eat Sushi in Spring Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada

For my latest restaurant adventure, I went to Mr. Shota AYCE Sushi in the unincorporated town of Spring Valley in the Las Vegas Valley.

To start, I got salmon and yellowtail carpaccio with ponzu and truffle oil.

Next was the seafood salad.

For my third dish, I received a sashimi roll with tuna, salmon, whitefish, and crab wrapped with cucumber and topped with screaming orgasm sauce. At other restaurants, this roll is often called the Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Following that was seafood aioli with assorted fresh fish topped with fried onion and drenched in creamy aioli and eel sauce.

Then came towering sashimi poke with assorted fish and crab on wonton chips with ponzu, spicy mayo, and eel sauce.

Next was an oyster.

After that was amaebi, or sweet shrimp.

My final plate consisted of salmon belly, ocean trout, salmon, and sea urchin.

For dessert, I got ube ice cream… but more on that later.

If you look through my photos, you’ll notice that this is substantially less food than I usually have at all-you-can-eat restaurants. It’s not because I wasn’t hungry… it is because Mr. Shota had the literal worst service I have ever received at an all-you-can-eat restaurant in my entire life.

I spent about two and a half hours at the restaurant and the waiter came to my table six times. The first time was to give me water and take my first or­der. The second time was to bring me my first round of food. Then nobody showed up for about an hour, before I managed to flag someone down to put in my second round of food. My second round took over half an hour to show up, during the waiter’s fourth visit. The fifth visit wasn’t even a real visit, but I flagged someone down again to get myself some dessert. The sixth visit was to drop off a small container of ice cream. I went straight up to the register to pay, then left.

Decent waiters at AYCE restaurants will check on you once every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure you have all the food you want, or at the very least, show up once they notice you’ve finished eating everything on your table. I understand that some AYCE restaurants have policies in place to in­ten­tion­al­ly place delay in food ordering and delivery, thus trying to make you feel more full and en­couraging you to eat less food to cut costs… but Mr. Shota has done this to an unacceptable extreme.

The reason the table in the background of the ice cream photograph is different is because I took it back with me and ate it at home, because I was way too frustrated with the restaurant and didn’t want to stay any longer.

Never go to Mr. Shota.

 

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Hello, Gaetano’s Ristorante in Henderson, Nevada

I’m back home in Las Vegas for a bit before my next trip, and for my first nice meal back, I met up with my friend Aidan who owns the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube for another food adventure.

This time, we decided on Gaetano’s Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in the Siena Promenade in Hen­der­son, Nevada.

When we arrived, we were served a basket of complementary bread. This was actually one of the nicer bread baskets I’ve had; there were three different kinds of bread, and they were more “premium” pieces than just the plain white bread that you get at a lot of other restaurants.

Like usual, so I can try as many different dishes as possible, I did a “build your own” dinner where I ordered multiple appetizers instead of just a single main entrée. My first appetizer was tenderloin carpaccio with raw filet mignon, arugula, shaved parmesan cheese, and Sicilian olive oil.

I thought this was fine. There was way too much cheese, and I think I would’ve liked it more if it had about a quarter of the cheese that it came with, but I think that particular aspect of the dish is highly subjective, considering that I’m not really that big of a fan of cheese in general. I ended up only using a quarter of the cheese along with the carpaccio, then finished the remainder of the cheese afterwards as a topping for the bread.

Unfortunately, the filet mignon slices were more like shavings instead of slices, as they were a bit excessively thin. It would’ve been nice if the portion size was a bit larger, but when the slices were separated and swirled around, there was still enough substance in them to have a satisfying bite.

Aidan’s appetizer was three stuffed mozzarella sticks with pistachio pesto and marinara. As you may have deduced from what I just said about cheese, I wasn’t particularly interested in them, so I didn’t sample any.

Aidan also got a house salad with mixed greens, carrots, shaved parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

My second dish was grilled Calabrese mild sausage with rapini, olive oil, and garlic. I’m usually more of a fish and seafood person, but surprisingly, this sausage was my favorite plate of the meal. The sausage wasn’t too salty, it had a deep and rich flavor, and the greens complemented it well. At this point, we had also requested a second bowl of bread, and the bread enhanced the flavor of the sausage and rapini very nicely.

My third and final dish was brodetto, made from fresh black mussels sautéed with a lightly-spiced marinara sauce served with crostinis.

I probably should’ve Googled “brodetto” prior to ordering it so I could see that it was basically Italian fish stew. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it wasn’t too bad either. I like the isolated oceanic flavor of raw seafood, so it was a bit different to have the cooked mussels along with tomato sauce. The crostinis were a bit too crispy to the extent that it was a little painful to chew, so I ended up soaking them in the marinara to soften them up first.

Aidan ordered truffle mac and cheese for his main entrée.

For dessert, we split a spumoni, made with layered gelato and whipped cream with a cherry in the middle. The flavors we got were vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio. To me, it just tasted like regular ice cream, which was refreshing after having such a thick and meaty meal.

This is what the inside of the restaurant looked like.

Bread $  0.00
Tenderloin carpaccio $ 22.00
Mozzarella sticks $ 12.00
House salad $ 14.00
Sausage and rapini $ 18.00
Brodetto $ 22.00
Truffle mac and cheese $ 32.00
Spumoni $ 12.00
Diet Coke ×2 $ 10.00
Sales tax $ 11.90
Gratuity $ 23.00
Total $176.90

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

One thing I found comical about this restaurant is that it aims to be an upper- to high-end restaurant, but it’s located in a major shopping center area. In order to give off the impression of being premium, they have a valet parking option (which I obviously did not use). Hilariously, the “valet parking” was nothing special—the valet spot was marked off with cones, there was one single valet spot, and it was literally about 20 steps away from the front door. To compound the humor, there is a Buffalo Wild Wings a few doors down, and it was absolutely packed with people who had shown up for Super Bowl LVIII who were just desperately park­ing their cars anywhere there was space. I already despise the concept of valet parking anyway, but this en­tire situation just made the stupidity of the concept even funnier.

Also unrelated to the food, but still something I want to mention: their service seems to be a little scat­ter­brained. Throughout my dining experience, I think there were either four or five different people who served us, so it was difficult to tell who exactly our waiter was—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but definitely different. When the first waiter showed up to take our appetizer order, he listed off so many off-the-menu specials (I’m talking probably like 6+ options) that it would’ve probably been worth it for them to create a special mini-menu for the daily features. He also did not have a notepad, so when we ordered, he tried to memorize everything, then came back to us twice because was second-guessing himself on what we ordered and wanted to re-verify with us.

A recurring theme I’ve noticed from most Italian restaurants is that they serve their food extremely salty, but Gaetano’s seemed to be an exception to that, which I appreciated. The food definitely was still a bit salty, but it was nowhere near the level of other Italian restaurants where it felt like the inside of my mouth was basically getting pickled.

Overall, I’m happy with what I got, but I think there might be some better options that you may want to check out at this price point where you’d get better value for your money.

 

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