Echo and Rig

Tags

bacon, Echo and Rig, Las Vegas, reviews, Steak Sandwich, Summerlin, Tivoli Village, Tivoli Village Las Vegas

Last Wednesday, the lovely wife and I decided to have one last lunch date before the school year began.  During the school year, school lunches are a humble affair.

Generally speaking, our lunches involve whatever leftovers we had the night before* stuffed unceremoniously into a ziplock bag, then placed into a used grocery bag.  We rush to school, jam our lunch into an overcrowded communal refrigerator where it waits with its equally humble lunches until we get to eat at 12:50.  At 12:50, the lunch is hastily plopped onto a styrofoam plate, and often eaten cold.

*Today we had leftover Costco tortellini, along with leftover salad, grapes, and bananas.  Tomorrow, however, is leftover Cuban sandwiches!  (Shameless plug for earlier blog post that involved dangerous cooking activities with students and COMMUNIST DICTATORS)

So with that in mind, we went to Echo and Rig last Wednesday to enjoy a more refined lunch before we set off with vigor into the new school year.

Echo and Rig is best described as a steakhouse and high-end butcher shop seamlessly combined in one.  It’s located in the Tivoli Village shopping center located at the corner of Rampart and Alta on the west side of town.

When you enter Echo and Rig, the hostess takes your name, as well as asks you if there is a reason you have chosen to dine with them that day.  As you go upstairs to their open, uncluttered dining area, she jots down your information, and hands it to a manager upstairs.  The manager greets you by name, seats you, and briefly talks to you about your reason for visiting that day.  It may seem forced, but I have found it pleasant each time I’ve visited.

The lovely wife and I decided to splurge and each ordered a small plate as an appetizer.  She ordered the Tomato, Cucumber, Watermelon and Red Onion Salad…the light, healthy, summery option.  I ordered the Grilled, Thick-Cut Bacon with BBQ Sauce.  After serving us some homemade bread made in-house, our appetizers arrived, and we were both very pleased.  The salad was a marvelous pairing of sweet, acidic, and bitter flavors with a hint of citrus.  The bacon was just the way I like it, crispy along the edges and chewy in the middle with the right amount of smoky and salty flavor, although I didn’t care for the BBQ sauce that much.

We each ordered a sandwich, and after another helping of bread, the sandwiches arrived.  I had the Flat Iron Sandwich, while the lovely wife had a Grilled Cheese sandwich which had short ribs as a bonus.  The Flat Iron sandwich is as close as a steak sandwich can get to perfection.  Prime beef grilled to medium rare and sliced at an angle made for succulent red pieces of delicious beef.  What made the sandwich was the combination of toppings melded into the house made roll.  Spinach cooked to just past wilting was combined with peppers and a bright chimichurri (another favorite of mine).  It was fairly big as well, and considering you are eating prime beef, well worth the $13.  The lovely wife enjoyed her sandwich as well, though I can’t say that I tried it, as I was focused on the beautiful sandwich (and lunch companion…love you honey!…dodged a bullet there) in front of me.

Flat Iron Sandwich

Grilled Cheese

The service was outstanding with an attentive waiter who made sure our drinks were full, and our bread fresh.  The manager came to talk to us again, and our hour at Echo and Rig flew by.

I love Echo and Rig, and STRONGLY encourage you to try it out if you find yourself on the west side of Vegas.  They make you feel at home, do the little things exceptionally well (try the salt scrub in the restrooms), and serve some excellent food.  Finally, they take their meat seriously, and even had a display of a Weber grill in the front window.  All in all, my kind of place.

Alas, those days are behind us now, and we are left to bag our leftovers again day after day after day.  However, summer will come again, and Echo and Rig is just down the road to remind us of what summer tasted like.

Stloueats a Year Later…

Tags

food, Las Vegas, Scorpions, St. Louis, Uzbekistan, weber grill, weber kettle

The lovely wife reminded me last night that I used to be a blogger.  Apparently, I was a fairly good blogger from time to time.  Yet, about a year ago, with a final flourish, I ceased to be a blogger.  I wrote a very well received goodbye letter to St. Louis*, (read over the air on Y98FM…the peak of my fame) and I closed that chapter of my life to go on to bigger and better things.

*Apparently the St. Louis metro area responded to my goodbye letter by going through a period of rather self-destructive behavior.  I really hate to see it, and I hope this difficult period brings about some real change to the whole area.

That bigger and better* place is Vegas.  LAS Vegas.  Spanish for “the meadows.”  If there is a more inappropriately named city in the United States, I’d like to find it.  We have settled in nicely, with our children’s resentment of our move lessening each day. Except the days we find scorpions.  In the toilet**.

*Completely inaccurate.  St. Louis metro is bigger, and Las Vegas is only questionably better…

**We previously lived in Las Vegas for four years and NEVER saw a scorpion.  That has not been the case this time around.  Earlier this summer, around bedtime, my daughter bellowed from upstairs words you never think you’ll hear, “DAD…THERE IS A SCORPION IN THE TOILET!”  He had himself(herself?) nestled in the front of the lower bowl…Let’s just say you were sitting down to do some business, it would have been primed to strike in a number of unfortunate areas.

Las Vegas is well known as a culinary destination, but the vast majority of the famous, high end establishments are located on the strip.  I like to avoid the strip like the plague.  It is Vegas’ reason for existence, and I am thankful for those who choose to partake in its hedonistic excess, but the lovely wife and children don’t seem to be terribly interested in high-stakes baccarat or clubbing.

So, what to write about?  Well, I think I’ll focus on local establishments on the west side of town.  I also have developed a new passion over the last year, and that is the humble Weber Charcoal Grill.  I’ve collected a few, and find myself wanting to grill everything, as it gives me a chance to get outside, make fire, and cook something delicious.  I’m not sure if I’ll have any revolutionary tips, but that’s where my life is right now.  Finally, I think I’ll try to share tidbits of my life every now and then.  I still think my favorite post was about my trip to the dentist, and I’d like to share more of that.

Overall, I think I am starting this up again with the intent to flex my creative muscles, and give the random reader out in let’s say, Uzbekistan*** (ONE VIEW ACCORDING TO WORDPRESS!) something to brighten their precious time for a few minutes.

***Sorry…last thing!  I was just reading an article in National Geographic the other day that the government of Uzbekistan FORCES its citizens to pick cotton every year at harvest time.  HOW DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?  Government forced labor in 2015.  Scary.  Soooo…if you ARE that reader in Uzbekistan, I sincerely apologize for my incredibly easy life.  ALSO, RUN AWAY!  FLEE!  ESCAPE UZBEKISTAN!

I have just been banned in Uzbekistan.

Llewellyn’s Winghaven

Tags

bangers, bangers and mash, Las Vegas, Llewellyn's, mash, restaurant, Summerlin, sweet potato fries, waffle cut, welsh rarebit, Winghaven

I used to live in Las Vegas.  Ah Vegas, such a different time in our lives in such a different place.  Out on the western edge of the Las Vegas Valley is an ENORMOUS planned community called Summerlin.

My wife and I bought our first home in Summerlin back in 2001.  We bought a condo right on a TPC golf course.  Of course, we were part of a condo association, but we were also part of the SUMMERLIN NORTH COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION.  They are the Galactic Empire of western Las Vegas.  When we moved in, we were given a voluminous book larger than an annotated Bible with the rules and regulations we were expected to abide by.

There used to be little code enforcement trucks prowling the neighborhood, looking for nefarious signs, and illegal gas grills.

There used to be workers whose job was to literally scrub the curbs along the road.  It was all very clean, very pleasant, and very Orwelllian.  Everything was nice…TOO nice.  Getting fined for enjoying gas grilling was a step too far!  So we moved to a Las Vegas neighborhood without a homeowners association.

In our new neighborhood, I found a crack pipe (is that one word or two?) in our driveway.

Police helicopters with searchlights hovered over the nearby freeway at night.

We realized soon after our daughter’s birth, that the Midwest is a fine place to raise a daughter, and moved back home to St. Louis.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, I was reminded of our days in Summerlin when the family visited Winghaven last week for dinner.  Winghaven seems to be a fine community, but you get the feeling that it’s just a bit TOO nice.

Llewellyn’s Pub is located in “downtown” Winghaven, and we spent a pleasant evening on their outdoor patio, safely gated from the dangers that surrounded us in Winghaven.*  Llewellyn’s Pub is a Welsh themed pub with several locations throughout the STL area, and I have to say, I had my best experience in their Winghaven location.

*I had to chuckle at the “gang” of unruly Upper-Middle-Class-Middle Schoolers who gathered on their BMX bikes and skateboards outside the gates of Llewellyn’s patio.  They loitered, they rode in vaguely threatening circles, they went home at sundown.

Enough about the ambience.  It was a pleasant evening, and I did enjoy a Blue Moon while waiting for all of our party to arrive.  Our waitress was very nice, and put up with our lingering at a table throughout the evening, waiting for my very pregnant sister-in-law and her husband to arrive.

As an appetizer, we ordered the Welsh Rarebit.  This is a cheese sauce, flavored with Guinness, traditionally served on wedges of toast.  I tried to make it once a few years back, after an episode of Good Eats, and was unimpressed.  However, Llewellyn’s Rarebit was savory, with a hint of Guinness, and a nice strong cheddar flavor that tasted great with the toast and beer.

For dinner that evening, I ordered the bangers and mash.  I have to say, I was intrigued by the lamb sausages, and thought I’d give it a shot.  Although, I didn’t go pure Celtic, since I replaced the mashed potatoes with waffle-cut sweet potato fries.  There is little I won’t do for waffle cut fries.  Also, how can people not like sweet potatoes?  It is a dessert vegetable.  That is all.

It was a wise decision for a couple of reasons.  First off, Llewellyn’s lamb sausages (bangers) are SPICY!  I loved the flavoring, but found the sausages themselves to be rather dry.  I’m not sure if they were overcooked, or if there is just little fat content in the sausage that leads to their dry texture.  However, this was OK, since they were smothered in a rich, flavorful brown sauce.  I thought the sweet, salty, perfectly cooked fries were a good complement to the hot sausages.

Overall, the dishes were a bit hit-or-miss.  My wife had a turkey cottage pie, and although she was told there weren’t many mushrooms, there were quite a few.  She was not a fan.  My son had the standard kids’ pizza, and it was OK.  My daughter ordered a rosemary chicken flatbread, and it was quite the hit at the table, with its chunks of chicken, olives, rosemary, and blend of cheeses.  As we left that night, I realized that I found Llewellyn’s to be a great fit for Winghaven.  Llewellyn’s is vaguely Celtic, with a semi-authentic pub area which sits in a fake downtown in a very pleasant (almost too pleasant) corner of the St. Louis area.

If you’re there, try the Welsh Rarebit, eat the Bangers and Mash…but stay safely in the gated area, or the Winghaven Eaglets (My name for the Upper Middle Class Middle School Gang) may mildly menace your pleasant day.