The husband and I took two practically back to back trips this July. We attended two conferences. The first was to Las Vegas and the second to Portland, OR. We were home for exactly four days in between. Both cities are great for food. The latter in particular for vegetarians and vegans (although I admit I didn’t take pictures of everything I ate at either place, just obviously, the gooey stuff, based on the title of this post).
First up:
BLT Burger’s Bread Pudding Made out of Krispy Kreme Donuts and Rum Raisin Ice Cream
(The Mirage)
Bread Pudding: A
Ice Cream: F
Next time, I’ll skip the ice cream. Matt suggested I just get vanilla. But since it isn’t anything special and it really does affect the pudding, I am okay with just skipping it altogether. Then I won’t get a belly ache.
I do have to say that I LOVED the veggie burger. It was made of falafel! Yumm. We will definitely be back.
Next Up:
Holstein’s Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Slider and Fries
Presentation/Creativity: A+
Fries: A+
Slider: C (it was too sweet for me – I ate two bites and had to put it away)
The fries are churros! The ketchup there is strawberry sauce! The burger is mouse-y stuff and the burger bread is something I don’t know, wafery thing.
The burger was a vegan patty that I thought was good too, but not better than Stripburger. But the creativity in desserts here was great. I would eat here again if I was in the area, but not actively seek it out if I was staying further out one end or the other of the Strip.
Third:
Red Velvet Pancakes, Sugar Factory
(Paris Las Vegas)
Yum. A+ without the toppings. No need to say more. Get these. You’ll stay full all day. Only available until 11:00
Fourth:
Some candy place in center court at Forum Shops
We did not get these. These make my face hurt just thinking about eating them. I just took the picture because I found it quite fascinating. It was a difficult thing to do because the person working kept coming over to me.
Now we move on to Portland. It wasn’t as bad there.
One thing I love about Portland is that most of the local restaurants, that is to say, not the national chains and not the specifically vegan or vegetarian ones have at least two or three vegetarian things on their menu. We went to a pasta restaurant near our hotel called Pastini Pastaria. I HIGHLY recommend it. They had a whole SECTION for veg-heads! It took me a while to decide what to get. However, there was no doubt I was getting dessert. It WAS my birthday after all. Here is my birthday gelato sundae! :)
Yum. No, I haven’t magically started liking chocolate ice cream or gelato. I ate around it.
And just to help unclog those pores, here is a representative of the kind of lunch I ate in Portland:
That is a “live” (or raw) falafel wrap from the Blossoming Lotus restaurant. I can hear all the raw food eaters groaning that I mixed all that dairy and ooziness with their raw goodness. But what can I say? Isn’t vacation all about the food? Oh, it’s not?
And the best thing of all? I didn’t gain one pound on this trip. Not one. Even with two cross-country flights, all those desserts. It must have been the fact that I ate well around the other food and didn’t stress about it most of the time.
Next post, I’ll tell you a little about the trip highlights. There’s not many, since it was mostly just sitting in conferences, but there were some (besides the food!)