CPK: I’m Christopher Kimball and this is a special episode of Milk Street Radio in collaboration with our sponsor Las Vegas. [FULL STOP]

Today’s show— it’s my big night out in Vegas with Al Mancini.

You might remember Al from our live show in Vegas last yer. He’s a food journalist and host of the podcast Food and Loathing. He also runs the Vegas restaurant guide Neon Feast.

Coming up in this episode, Al and I eat the Vegas dish you really need to try right now.

Chef Chen: I got nickname. They call me a duck master ou give me a duck I’ll make something magical happen

We also visit a bar unlike anything I’ve ever seen

Tater: So the whole concept behind our bar is that we’re sitting here inside of a sunken pirate ship. A dog pirate ship, mind you.

That’s all later in the show.

But first…if you venture beyond the Strip you’ll find an amazing world of nightlife, fine dining, and history in other parts of the city, Including Downtown. That’s where Atomic Liquors is located. Founded in 1952, Atomic is one of Vegas’s oldest and also most iconic bars — Al wanted to meet me here first for a taste of some Vegas history.

ATOMIC LIQUORS

CPK: You know, one thing I love about Las Vegas is it covers the full gamut. You have you know the big casinos and the strip, and then you have downtown. I'm looking at the sign right now for atomic, liquor cocktails, packaged liquors, cold beer. You know, it's a dive bar, but it's an incredibly charming dive bar with a long history.

CPK: the first thing I notice is it says dress code in force, which really makes me feel at home, right? Because in Boston, that would mean coat and tie. Unfortunately, here it does it. It says bikers, no colors allowed, including jackets, vests and T-shirts. Thank you. So I guess dress code here is a little different than dress code in Boston. So let's go in and get a drink

[TRANSITION: CHRIS ENTERS BAR]

CPK: So the first thing is, I can't see anything, because it was really bright outside, and this is really dark in here, you can almost see nothing. So I'll stumble my way to the back, long L shaped bar, very long L-shaped bar. And there's my guide, Al Mancini. Al, how are you.

Al: Good to see ya. Welcome.

CPK: Yeah, it's been a long time, man.

Al: Been a few minutes. Man, it's great to have you back in Las Vegas.

CPK: Well we need to talk and have a drink, not necessarily in that order, maybe

Al: I got to show you a different type of Las Vegas. You know, last time you were here, I was telling you there's a lot of different sides to this town, so we're going to go out and see a few of them tonight.

CPK: Well, the reason I'm back is you talked a good game last time. Now we're going to find out,

Al: See if I can actually come through, huh? Okay.

CPK: So let's go back to 1950 because I was doing a little research on this, and so they were blowing up in the atmosphere, like 100 nuclear tests a year or something, which is crazy. And actually, people used to advertise to come to Vegas to watch these things go off, right?

Al: Yes.

CPK: And now we're sitting at atomic liquors. So tell me about that, because that's just like people will get up early in the morning and you’d look out your hotel window and watch a nuclear blast. Is that what was going on?

Al Yeah I feel like…back then they wanted to see a mushroom cloud

CPK: Ha!

Al: that used to be a big tourist attraction. People thought there was nothing cooler than watching a mushroom cloud go up. And this actually became the first licensed liquor distributor in the state of Nevada. They got the first license to sell takeout.

Al and CPK: 00001.

Al: Yeah. So, you know, that's pretty amazing, and it has a fantastic history. They embrace the dive bar aspect of it, but they do it as a good dive bar with really great craft beers with high quality spirits. They know how to make a cocktail.

CPK: So the other thing I like is famous actors, entertainers, used to come down from the Strip after they're done and hang out here, right?

Al: Yeah. I mean, we know that the Rat Pack used to hang out here. We know that Barbra Streisand used to hang out here. I think it's probably a lot more than we know about, because this is the kind of place where people, even if they're famous, they want to sink into a corner. They want to just not be noticed by anybody. They want to hang out. And this is just a classic one that went on for decades and decades.

CPK: Somewhere, I read that Lauren Bacall was the one who came up with the term Rat Pack. I think…

Al: Yeah, I believe that that was back when Bogart was the unofficial leader of the Rat Pack, and that's, I guess, what they looked like when they came home from a night of partying.

CPK: And someone else said, I read that Dean Martin sometimes would be sipping a drink and turn out to be apple juice.

Al: Yeah.

CPK: Now, what was that story?

Al: That’s the story about Dean because Dean Martin was the notorious drunk of the Rat Pack, and when they would play their big shows during the Oceans 11 days.They're partying at night. You know, they're doing all that, and they're performing at the old sands. And Dean apparently always seemed like he was drunk when he came out. And then the stories that were released years and years later is he was sipping apple juice, yeah.

CPK: Well, he was a great actor, I guess, yeah. So yeah, I guess shooting Oceans 11, the original, they would shoot just a few hours a day, and they – half their lines were just ad libbed or something. It was not a very controlled set, right?

Al: Not at all. It was meant to be a party. It was meant to be a way for the Rat Pack to really kind of redefine who they were. Right? The Rat Pack were trying to take dominance again over Las Vegas in those Rat Pack days, Sinatra knew that, you know, he was sort of being edged out by Elvis, by the Beatles, And he sort of set up shop in Vegas to be that bastion of the old school. And, you know, of course, Elvis eventually followed him here to do that, but that was really Sinatra's way of making one last grab of a place that he really owned the town.

Dean: Welcome to the Atomic guys. My name is Dean. How are you today?

CPK: Hey, Dean, how are you?

Dean: I'm fantastic. Good to see you.

CPK: So before the drinks, I need a quick tour.

Dean: Okay. Absolutely. Well, this is atomic Liquors. It's the oldest freestanding bar in downtown Las Vegas. Opened up in 1947 originally as a cafe. 1952 they decided to switch over and add a bar to it.. There's tons of cool history in this place. I think I heard you guys saying the Rat Pack hung out here. Hunter S Thompson, of course, who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He hung out and drank old crow whiskey here. We actually found a bottle of his from 1976. So I think that's actually the best place to start. It's right down on the end here.

CPK: So what do we got?

Dean: This is our little memorabilia wall here. We've got a few fun things. This is one of the bottles that was here for Hunter S Thompson. You can see the big, heavy bottle, the old tax stamp on there. So that's one of the cool things. We've got some Geiger counters up here. These actually were at the test site. There was a gentleman in town who worked at the test site, and he brought us these.

CPK: Cool

Dean: So these are all authentic from there. So the legend of atomic is that it picked up the name atomic liquors in the 50s during the days of the nuclear testing. the testing happened about 70 to 80 miles north of here. The blasts were so big you absolutely could have seen them from downtown Vegas. So this was a place that a lot of the locals would come. A lot of those blasts happened about three, four o'clock in the morning, when it was pitch black out, so that they'd come in, they'd have a party, they'd go up on the roof, they'd hang out, and then about 3am the bomb goes off, and then the party's over and you go home. So just some of the cool little things we have a few others little ones on the other side. We'll go around and show you those.

CPK: Okay.

Dean: So this chair right here with the blue star on the back is not for the Dallas Cowboys. This is in honor of Barbra Streisand. This is what we like to call Babs chair. It's positioned here for a very specific reason. You'll look across where you'll see our beer taps right here. When this was original bar on the other side of that beer tap was an office, and there was a desk right there, and there was a window that passed through between the office and the outside area. And Barbara Streisand would sit in this chair, and she would talk to the owner's wife, through the window of the office right there. So that's why, specifically, this is Barbra Streisand's chair, because she would hang out here and talk to the owner all day.

CPK: Dean, thank you // Fabulous place. It’s fascinating. And um, Dean thank you.

DEAN: Thank you. We appr

eciate you coming to hang out with us.

CPK There's one thing missing, which is my cocktail.

Dean: Let's rectify that.

Dean: What do you like to drink?

CPK: Old Fashioned is really my virtually only drink. Oh,

Dean: Oh absolutely. We make you a great old fashioned we do a lot of great cocktails here we do a very good old fashioned. We have a couple signature cocktails that we do. Our Hunter S. Smash. I like to describe it as a bourbon-y Mojito. So anything you like, we'll do. Well, we can make it old fashioned, for sure, Bourbon or rye?

CPK: half bourbon, half rye?

Dean: Oh, okay,

CPK: That's how I like it. Sorry.

Dean: No, no problem.

CPK: I'm difficult.

Dean: However you like it. That's how I want to make it. Absolutely.

Dean: So we are making our old fashioned, very classic style. We start with our orange peel. We're going to hit it with a little bit of bitters. We do a little bit of a rich Demerara syrup. It's like a dark sugar syrup that we make, Muddle it up, get those essential oils out of the orange peel. And then we want to add ice, and basically just stir it to dilute

AlL: Thank you sir.

CPK: Excellent. Yeah.

Dean: Please enjoy.

CPK: Things are looking up now.

Al: Here’s to a savage journey into the heart of the American dream, my friend.

CPK: Mmm. That’s good.

Dean:. Oh, good. Yeah. Glad you enjoy it. Thank you very much.

CPK: Really. Well done.

Dean: We take a lot of pride in our cocktails here.

CPK: So let’s talk about something. First of all, when I do an old fashioned I do something you hate. Okay, so we're gonna have a fight now. So I –

Dean: Can I guess? You put an orange wedge in it and a cherry…

CPK: No, no, no I do not. Oh, that.

Dean: You top it with soda, Wisconsin style.

CPK: No, I don't do that. I shake it in a shaker, and I knew you were gonna pass out.

Dean: You hurt my heart.

CPK: Now the reason is, I like a little dilution. Someone told me, If you're at over 85% proof, that it's hard to taste all the other flavors. So a little dilution is good, and also it’s cold.

Dean: It makes it a little more tolerable.

CPK: Every bartender I've ever spoken to said, If you ever shake an old fashioned you need to leave now. //

Dean thank you. This place is phenomenal. I mean you know It’s a great place.

DEAN: In my not so humble opinion I think it’s the best bar in the city.

CK: If you come to Las Vegas, come to Atomic Liquors. That’s my little commercial for this place by the way.

DEAN: Love it. Thank you so much. We appreciate you coming to hang out with us.

CPK: So there were a lot of movies shot here. What's that? There was a Scorsese movie, right?

Al: Well, Casino actually set up here at Atomic. They used it as an office, as a production office, while they were shooting. The building in the back over there, they shot some scenes in, I believe they shot some scenes right where we're sitting. But it is fun to watch that movie, because when you watch casino, they do a lot in there's a lot of places you could do a whole trip to Las Vegas, only eating and drinking in places that you saw in Casino.

CPK: It’s like going to Salzburg and doing the sound of music tour I suppose.

AL first of all that movie casino, you could do an entire tour of vegas, and you could just go to pierrots, and you could go to the plaza, and you could come here, but this is one of the coolest places, because it's not just used as a set piece, but it's actually where the creative people were hanging out, doing a lot of the work.

CPK: Okay, so we've had a first drink or two, and now we're on to get something to eat. So what's next?

Al: Well, You know we were talking a bit about Las Vegas having a lot of signature dishes, things that you really have. And I came up with one that I think is a little it's not what you would have expected, right? So I'm going to take you out. We're going to go over to Fountain Blue and we're going to go into Chyna Club.

CPK: So this is not steak. Obviously.

Al: It ain’t steak and ain't shrimp cocktail. I'll tell you that.

CPK: Okay, I'm one drink into the evening, so it's time to get something to eat.

Al: Yeah, well, we've wet your whistle, so you've seen a little bit of downtown. Why don't we go to the Strip now, do a little bit of time in the big, big resorts, man.

CPK: Well, I like the small, dark places,

Al: But you gotta do a little of everything when you come to Vegas. After you, sir, you.

CPK VO: That was Atomic Liquors with bartender Dean Howard.

CPK VO: You’re listening to a special episode of Milk Street Radio, sponsored by Las Vegas.

Next up, we’re leaving Downtown for the Strip. And we’re going from one of Vegas’s oldest spots to something brand new—Cote at the Venetian Resort which opens later this year.

Simon Kim came to Vegas for college to study hospitality—he'd always dreamed of working in restaurants and hotels.

Years later, he started Cote—it’s part Korean barbecue and part American steakhouse. And it’s the only steakhouse in New York City with a Michelin star.

KIM: when I created Cote as a concept, the DNA of Las Vegas was always there, the darkness, the loud music, the neon signs…And sometimes people are like, hey, Simon, you have a club restaurant. And I'm like, you want to see a club restaurant? Wait until we open Cote Las Vegas.

KIM: Whenever we open a new branch, it's so important that we don't just bring what we have been doing to a new place.//For Las Vegas, we have made a sandwich that's to be served in the bar, so it's exclusive to Las Vegas, and we call it the blackjack. [beat] It is Japanese, a five wagyu rib eye, grilled, topped with generous amount of black truffle in a milk toast. //This is going to be a showstopper.

KIM: We have amazing food that you would expect from a Michelin star restaurant, but we never lost the fun and fire of Korean barbecue that's so unique, where you can go in with your bros or girls night out or friends or family. So as the world's first Korean Steakhouse, that's Michelin star. What we're going to bring to Las Vegas is something nobody has ever seen before.

KIM: When I left Las Vegas. I always yearned to go back to Las Vegas and to be able to bring back my own restaurant. to bring it back to where it all started. It really feels like a homecoming. So get ready Las Vegas.

CPK VO: That was Simon Kim, founder of Cote.

CPK VO: This is a special episode of Milk Street Radio, sponsored by Las Vegas.

You know most cities have a signature dish…something you have to try when you visit. For Vegas, that dish is always evolving.. The dish you need to try right now in Vegas is elegant. It’s a show-stopping spectacle…but also steeped in tradition.

I’m talking about Peking duck. Al and I got to try some of the best Peking duck in Vegas. Prepared by the legendary Chef Richard Chen. Here’s our next stop—Chyna Club.

CPK: Okay, we're fresh from the atomic liquor store bar. We're here at Chyna Club. And what's next?

Al: Yeah. Well, welcome man, welcome to The Fountain Blue Las Vegas's biggest and newest and craziest attraction here on the Strip. And I wanted to take you here to China club. This is one of their high end restaurants. It's just, it's beautiful,

CPK: So from a dive bar to a very high end. Oh, and they've got, is it the Fountain Blue, or is the Fountain Blue?

Al: We all say Fountain Blue here in Las Vegas.

CPK: Okay, I just want to make sure I get that right.

Al: And they've got a great bar here. I don't know if you'll be able to get, you know, a um, Hunter S Thompson signature cocktail. But they do have some great signature cocktails here to rest, smash, yeah. Okay, yeah. So follow me. Let's go back to the bar. Okay, so Let's grab a seat at the bar, and Quincy is going to make you an amazing cocktail.

CPK: Quincy, I'm here.

Quincy: Welcome. You're here in China club, yeah.

CPK: So evidently, you probably have a signature drink or two.

Quincy: We do well, we definitely have the most unique cocktail program, I think, in Fountain Blue. And among the program, I think our staple is the bloody China. You'd be hard pressed to find another cocktail like that on the Strip. We call it a bloody China because it's a riff on the Bloody Mary. But our bloody China,It's more like drinking a martini, right? So it's a clarified version of a Bloody Mary. I want you to think about it like, almost like a second cousin removed from a Bloody Mary. It drinks really nice, really easy. You can have in the morning dinner. You're gonna feel good, all right, if I start making one for you?

CPK: Well, it's not morning, but okay, I'll take your word for it.

Quincy: All right, yeah, yeah, it's a it's probably put a lot of love, blood, sweat and tears into this cocktail. Takes about two days to make this cocktail, so what we do is we get all the ingredients for a Bloody Mary. And, you know, we chopped it up. We got our Worcester, and Thai chilies, simple syrups, some lemon juice and a couple other fun stuff. We put it into a camber overnight and let it marinate so all the ingredients kind of dance with each other, and then once it gets to the right flavor profile that we're looking for, we strain it through a coffee filter, maybe four or five different coffee filters. And it takes about another six, seven hours to do that, and then what you have left is a beautiful Martini style cocktail. And that's our bloody China, and let me serve it up for you right now.

CPK: this is a humongous martini glass, with a humongous martini, and it's stirred, not shaken, by the way.

Quincy: And then what's in there? It's actually, it looks like an olive, but it's actually called a Tom olive. So it's a tomato olive

CPK: Oh my god, that is really good. This is superb, really is, I mean, it's got some heat to it, but it's just the right amount,

CPK: Quincy this. This may be the best cocktail I ever had. I mean, it's, I love my old fashioneds, but this is on another level. So.

Quincy: I'm glad to really be fortunate enough to show you something a little different, and I hope to see you come again.

CPK: I'm never gonna make this at home every year. I'm gonna have to come back here.

QUINCY: That's a good excuse to come back there.

CPK: It is great. Thanks, man.

QUINCY: Nice meeting you Chris, take care.

CPK: Unfortunately cocktails are over, and now it’s time for the kitchen.

CPK: It's Chef Chen. It's Richard. Is your first name? Yes, Richard pleasure. . I've seen a lot of restaurant kitchens. This is the biggest and nicest I've ever seen. It's gorgeous.

Chef Chen: So I'm gonna show you how we make our Chyna Club famous Peking duck. China club Since We open the Peking Duck probably the talk of the town. So I want to show you the secret how I put that Peking Duck together. Follow me the this way please. So first we're going to cook with the humidity, 100% humidity trap in the oven. So it will cook internally of the duck. And that's the last 20 minutes we're going to open up the chimney. Basically will be zero humidity in the oven. So let all the steam go out. Then it will crisp the duck, nice and crispy.

CPK: So where did you start your career? You were in Taiwan were initially?

Chef Chen: Yeah, I grew up with my parents in Taiwan, then I moved to the states when I was like 12 years old, I was in Chicago. So in Chicago, I grew up in an Asian Kitchen with my dad. My dad was a chef. Then when I graduated from high school, I went to culinary school in New York State Hyde Park. I want to know the both side of the world. What can we do? How can we take the Asian food to the next level?

CPK: So this is my favorite kitchen of all time. I kind of like to move in. I'm gonna get a cot and a mattress anyway. Time to go eat, so we're gonna head to the dining room.

CK: So I've had my drink, and now the Peking duck has arrived.

Chef Chen: So the duck just came out from the oven. You see the color, nice caramelized color, and the skin is nice and crispy. So now I'm going to start cutting the duck for you. [cutting] Now I can smell the aroma of the duck while I'm carving it. Now I can smell all the spices of the five spices and star anise and over cinnamon with the salt and you see the the duck is super juicy right now. the meat is just a very super tender and juicy. I don't have to barely put any pressure on it. The meat just come right off.

I was 30 years in chicago I got nickname. They call me a duck master duck mask, because a lot of time you see the duck, on the menu it’s in the fall or the winter time. But I can use the duck all year round. So I can you give me a duck make a magical make something happen.

so I'm going to let you start trying this duck right now. I'm getting desert ready for you. Okay,

CPK: Thank you, Chef

Chef Chen: Thank you.

AL: Oh, man. First bites. What are the thoughts, man?

CPK: My first thought is the pancakes are super thin.

Al: Yeah.

CPK: They're usually much starchier, yeah, and the duck is, nothing greasy or fatty about it.

Al: No. And the skin's beautiful, nice and crispy on the end there. It's just the whole dish is just very, very very delicate. There's so many flavors, and there's, they're so delicately balanced. And, man, it works in this room, right with the elegant, golden kind of walls and the chandelier overhead, I mean, this is high end dining,

CPK: I would say, though, when you eat something that's this good, you could be on the sidewalk, on a Formica table, enjoying it like the room's fabulous. But it ultimately comes down to the food. This food's great,

Al: Yeah, absolutely fantastic. Food again, Peking duck. You have to make it. You have to make it well. You have to make it at an elevated level in Las Vegas. And there are, there's a huge competition for the chefs who know how to do it well. And Chef Richard Chen, who's here doing it, I mean, he's been doing it in Las Vegas for a very, very long Time, and he knows what he's doing with this dish.

CPK: So this is just one of your on your list of Top 10 signature dishes in Las Vegas. Give me a few others, and they don't have to be all highbrow either.

Al: Yeah, and they're not all highbrow, um, you know, there are a lot of things that are just very, very Vegas to me. You know you talked about steaks. You thought I was maybe going to bring you to a steak house, right? And of course, Las Vegas has some of the best steakhouses in the world. But for me, if you want to do a really not too expensive steak in Las Vegas, you want to have a real experience. You go to Montamiga B in the Paris hotel, you sit on their patio and you have steak frites. That is a Vegas experience. You've got the Bellagio fountains on the other side of the street, you've got people walking by. You've got all the energy of the Strip, and they do steak frites numerous ways. So–

CPK: So if you like, in Paris, if you have steak frites, they've like six or seven cuts.

Al: Yes.

CPK: So that you could choose your cut for this.

Al: Yeah, they do it that way. And you could choose some different sauces from time to time. So, you know, that's fantastic. You know that, to me, is just such a Vegas experience.

CPK: Yeah steak frites, I don't know why it works, but it's one of the top 10 or 15 dishes. I think in the world, it just works well.

Al: Yeah.

CPK: It’s just perfect.

CPK: Okay. So what else next time I come back here,

Al: Beef Wellington made a huge comeback when Gordon Ramsay invaded Las Vegas. And there's plenty of places that you can get great beef. Wellington now in Las Vegas, but I like to do something a little different. I like to go to Carver steak, where they do the lobster and Croat. So rather than doing the beef within the pastry shell, they do the lobster in that pastry shell. And I just absolutely love it. I think it's just you know –

CPK: They cover it with Ducsel as well, like you do in beef –

Al: Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, you take that off and you go in, and it's like a lobster Thermador preparation. But then to take that, that, um, that dough, and just dip it in there and eat it. It's, it's one of my favorite dishes.

Al: Um, You know what? Also, because everything doesn't have to be high end, some of my favorite Las Vegas experiences are very, very populist experiences, and one thing that people love is the oyster bar at Palace station. They're open 24 hours a day. There's only about 12 seats, and people line up for three hours, four hours. It's their first stop off the plane when they get to Las Vegas.

CPK: Is that just because the oysters are so good, or it's the other things they do with them.

Al: It's just the experience, really. It's one of those things that you do. It's part of people's trip to Las Vegas. They wait for three hours so somebody holds the space on line, and the rest of the people go gamble. They make new friends.I would say the food is very, very good there,

but you're not really going there for the food. You're going there for that experience of bonding with people standing on line for hours.

Chef Chen: So right now, I can present you some dessert we serve in China club.. So right in the middle, right now you'll see the Japanese crown melon. The Crown melon. 20 years ago, I was in Japan I went to supermarket. and I calculated price, Holy Cow it’s $125 a piece. When you take a piece, This is something like a honey. It tastes so sweet.

Chef Chen: I usually get about like 25 every 10 days, So I got only two left. I thought we might share one with you tonight.

CPK: Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. That looks really special.

Chef Chen: So thank you. Thank you so I'm very glad to meet you.

Al: Yes, very nice to meet you finally.

CPK: And by the way, this melon is unbelievable. It's just so good.

Al: Oh man!

CPK: It's like the best fruit ever had my life. Well, this is sort of like Alice Waters, who wants to serve you the Perfect Peach for dessert? This would be something at Chez Panisse.

Al: Just a beautiful, perfect melon.

CPK: Well it’s like a honeydew on steroids. this is just phenomenal.

CPK: Well? Let's see Peking duck. And the hospitality was absolutely outstanding. Lovely, lovely meal. Great place.

Al: Okay, so We've done atomic liquors. Now we've had a fancy meal here at Fountain Blue. You're still up for drinks tonight, though, right man?

CPK: We're just getting started. Okay, cool. I just want to make sure, because I got some place in mind for you,

CPK: I have a feeling we're going slightly down market after this, because you couldn't go higher than this probably.

Al: It is, yeah, it's almost impossible to go higher. But now we’re going to live a little funky for our drinking tonight.

CPK: Of course. Let's go.

CPK VO: That was Chyna Club at the Fountain Blue Las Vegas, with executive chef Richard Chen and bartender Quincy Palou.

CPK VO: This is a special episode of Milk Street Radio sponsored by Las Vegas.

CPK VO: While Chef Chen has his Peking duck, every chef has their own special recipe. Within the Shops at Crystals in Las Vegas, world-famous chef Jose Andres launched Bazaar Mar. There we visited head chef Daniela Romero (ROW-mare-oh) who shared with us her favorite dish.

Daniela Romero: So everybody that goes into a carnival, smells the funnel cake, fried batter, powdered sugar on top. Very delicious. So we did our take on it. So it's a California roll on a seaweed funnel cake that it's enjoyed in two bites.

CPK VO: Chef Romero also loves going beyond recipes—she says the most exciting

part about working at Bazaar Mar is the constantly changing menu.

So we started working with some vendors, and their main shipment comes from Japan. So they have something called the amakase box, what I call a fisherman's box. It's basically what that fisherman have caught that day.

The fun part of it is we don't know where we gonna get like, literally, our invoice says fish box, right? So once we open the fish box, we see the names, and we see the fish, and we've, just come to push that fish box, just because we as chefs get to learn something new really fast. And honestly, the servers just love learning the different selection of fish, just having that Fun Friday of, Hey guys, this is a new fish. Look at it. It's completely different. This is what it tastes like. So, you know, learning all those things of how to best prepare it, how to best get the flavors out. That is a Friday day, an entire day for me.

[beat]

We don't stick to one fish, So we try to be fair to Mother Nature and really represent her as best as possible.

CPK VO: That was Danielle Romero, head chef at Bazaar Mar.

CPK VO: You’re listening to a special episode of Milk Street Radio, sponsored by Las Vegas. Up next, Al wanted to bring me to a bar unlike anything I’d ever seen. For our final stop, here’s Stray Pirate.

CPK: So there's been a Twilight Zone transition. I've just gone from China club in a private dining room, very high end, amazing chef and food, and now I'm sitting in a dark room with sharks going by the portholes. So what? And there's and the portraits of dogs all over. So what exactly are we doing here?

Al: Well, look, I hope you like pirates and I hope you like dogs, because that's, that's what this place is all about. This is stray pirate. We're one block off the main drag in the arts district. This is one of the newest bars to come in down here, and it's just a very immersive, not quite a tiki bar, but it really channels that Tiki theme. I mean, look, the beauty of Las Vegas is we have something for every audience. When you have a great mixologist like my friend Tater, who you're going to meet here, it becomes very immersive. It becomes about the alcohol and the room and the decor all taking you on a journey that really sets you aside from what you've probably thought the Las Vegas drinking experience was like your entire life.

CPK: If you said Las Vegas to me 10 years ago, I would not think I'd be sitting in a dog pirate bar.

Al: And that's the beauty of this town right now. You have to explore. You have to explore the neighborhoods, and you will be blown away. So look, let me introduce you to one of the finest mixologist bartenders this town has to offer. My friend tater here. Tater. This is my friend, Chris.

Tater: Hey, welcome to stray pirate. My name is Chris Gutierrez. My friends lovingly call me Tater, and I'm here to show you around my place today.

CPK: So this is a relatively new bar, I guess it hasn't been here since like 1948 or something, right?

Tater: No, we just try to make it look like it's been here 1748 but, yeah, we've been here for just a little bit less than a year and a half.

CPK: looks really cool,

Tate: You ready for a tour?

CPK: Absolutely. So can we just start with the portholes here, with the ocean?

Tater: So the whole concept behind our bar is that we're sitting here inside of a sunken pirate ship. And the port holes and the holes in the back bar kind of give us the illusion that we're in this sunken pirate ship that's in the bottom of the ocean, a dog pirate ship. Mind you.

CPK: So let's talk about the dogs. So these were actual dogs.They're painted after real dogs. Is that right?

Tater: all the pups in the portraits are all our own, all the partners and investors right over here was mine, Tito. the captain of the ship, Sarge, over there in the corner. Sarge the Schnauzer. He's who we're dedicated to. We have over here ticker and gordita and Steve down in the corner, as well as Archie hanging out here too.

CPK: So what's the back story of the dogs and the pirate ship?

Tater: So the story is, is that some pirates were sailing along searching for treasure, and they got called into a cove, and they were cursed and turned into dogs, and learning that the real treasure is not so much in the riches, but in the loyalty and camaraderie, as we all know, if you're a dog owner yourself.

CPK: So can we talk about what's going on in these port holes here?

Tater: Sure.

CPK: So, so how did you assemble it's kind of cool, because you think it's just going to be a landscape, and then every minute or so a shark goes by, or something else. Yeah. How did you get all that put together?

Tater: So it was all built in Unreal Engine. It's an entire world that these are viewpoints into. So if you were to explore it, it actually would be like a video game. If you zoomed into the boat there's cannons on it. It's everything in place in a 3d environment, and that these are just our little windows into the rest of it.

CPK: These are Super cool.

CPK: So we've done the tour. I've seen the dogs, I've seen the scorpion fish, and now it's time for well, I guess to have a few drinks.

Tater: Sounds great. Let's do it.

Tater: Hey. So here we have arrived at the bar. Got some menus for you to peruse, and I wanted to start making some drinks for you. For starters, I'm gonna go with a drink that we call the Get it cracking.

CPK: This is cracking like K, R, A, C, K, E, exactly.

Tater: Exactly.

Al: Unleash it.

Tater: We've got some great Thai food here in Las Vegas. And in the world of us, having this pirate bar, and being able to draw from as many inspirations as possible. We made this drink with a combination of coconut, lime juice and kefir leaf, which you'll also find in tomca soup. So it's a fun little like colada coconut variant cocktail that has some really fun nods to some awesome Las Vegas culinary culture. Also features of Hua cachaca, which gives it a little bit of a grassier note. It's definitely not the sweet colada cocktail that you're thinking of. It's really well balanced with the lime, and we use some calamansi, which is a South Pacific sort of a, yeah, citrus.

Tater: All right guys. Drink up.

CPK: Let’s try it.

CPK: That… You know what I love about this drink, it's complicated, like, it has a lot of different layers to it has some sweet to it that's kind of got some savory to it. like, a great dish, you know, the 10th bite is as interesting as the first. And I also like the little umbrella. This is, this is excellent. Really excellent.

Tater:. Thank you.

CPK: So I do have a question. So instead of little umbrellas, which I love, would you have little dog umbrellas or pirate umbrellas, or maybe you need –

Tater: it's interesting that you say that we actually put the umbrella. We kind of destroy it like it's a wind blown umbrella–

CPK: I noticed–

Tater: if the cocktail has alcohol in it, but if you're getting a dry drink, we keep the umbrella intact. The umbrella –

CPK: Tells the story.

Tate: Well, it basically an intact umbrella keeps the cocktail dry.

CPK: So this is like, asking Bob Dylan how he wrote all those songs. I'm going to ask you the same question. So you obviously are extraordinarily talented, how do you come up with these ideas for these drinks?

Tater: We call it liquid memories. I love eating Thai food here in Las Vegas, if you were to catch me after work, you know, OCHA, I think right down the street, I think has one of the most heartfelt late night menus. They’re serving Thai food That's made just as good at five in the morning as it is at five in the afternoon. So if you ever wanted to catch me post work at two or 3am you could probably find me there with a bowl of Tom car. And it's really just taking these experiences that I've had in my life, and holding on to them and then sharing them through these drinks, that we have

CPK: Yeah, and the drinks were phenomenal.

Tater Thank you.

TATER: You got it. Our pleasure

AL: Thanks Man.

TATER: You got it.

CPK: So in the theme of, there's no place like Las Vegas, which I think is true. This is just a really super cool place. Are there other places you recommend that are kind of places you would only find in Las Vegas?

Al: Yeah I mean, you know, we've touched on it that immersive. This idea of immersive has become a buzz word, and I think Vegas does it better than anybody else, because that's what we're all about, is creating fantasies. And I think when you try to look at what we mean by an immersive bar or restaurant in Las Vegas, it's two different ideas. One, they immerse you in the idea of being in Las Vegas. Try to put everything under one roof, and then the other idea would be they immerse you in a place like where we're sitting right now, where you forget that you're in Las Vegas.

So if you want to be totally immersed in the entire Las Vegas experience, the strip does it incredibly well at places like Mayfair supper club, where you can spend an entire evening there. You can see entertainment. The entertainment is choreographed to the Bellagio fountains out the window. The food is old school Vegas. They're doing prime rib on carts. Dancers are over your shoulder, and it's really intended to have an entire evening there. Similarly, when Las Vegas, Delilah is another one of those places where it's a supper club, and you're meant to spend the entire night rather than go from the blackjack table to your dinner to the club, to whatever. So that's a trend in Las Vegas, is keeping you in a place that's very, very Vegas.

Then the other trend is kind of making you forget you're in Vegas and speakeasies. that idea of going behind a hidden door and finding a refuge– that is so popular right now. We have speakeasies everywhere. There's many of them within the food halls that are another huge trend of Las Vegas right now, food halls have almost replaced buffets for the quick, something for everyone, inexpensive, and now most of them are putting a speakeasy in the back. So one of my favorites is Here, kitty kitty, over at the Cosmopolitan. And you feel like you're in a little grocery store. And you push a shelf, it opens up, and you suddenly feel like you're in Tokyo, in a tiny, little cool hipster bar in Tokyo.

CPK: So it’s the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but they're cocktails?

Al: Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, theme restaurants. You know, there's a great show running at the link called disco show, and they have a 70s diner that's built in right next door, called diner Ross. And you feel like you're in a crazy 70s diner when you're in there, and you can go from there to the show and back into the bars. So things like that are a lot of fun, really immersive. And then if you want to crazy stuff, you know, go down to area 15, And you can go to lift off bar, and it's this massive bar that's built around kind of a giant flag pole, and they lift you up into the air. And you know, your open air having a cocktail up there, viewing the entire Las Vegas Valley.

CPK: What about a place that sitting on a terrace, you're watching people go by? It's sort of lazy. It's more people watching than it is just the food.

Al: Yeah, my favorite places for people watching are places that are right down there on the strip. And again, this is a situation where we have something for just about everybody. There's great people watching at Sammy hagars, Cabo Wabo, it's really a great patio to watch the world go by. But there are also so many relaxing places, you know, go to Spago and hang out at the on the patio and watch the Bellagio fountains go up, and it's just a lot of fun.

CPK: And eat salmon pizza.

Al: yes, salmon pizza with a scoop of caviar.

CPK: so if, if someone's coming to Las Vegas, what would you tell them about how they should really get the most out of it,

Al: Yeah, First of all, you need to clear your mind of what you think Las Vegas is. One thing that people don't understand is that Las Vegas is at its most successful when we have an experience for everybody, every type of person, whatever you're you're into, whatever your price range is, whatever your tastes are, whatever weird sport you're into, we probably have a championship of it here. We'll have a demolition derby one week, and, you know, whatever. So research it, because what you're into we're going to have for you here in Las Vegas, there is something for everyone in this town.

CPK: Al, thank you. You know, I rarely go out at all. I actually went to three places in one night. The food was amazing. The people were just great. And the drinks, while the drinks are absolutely a plus, thank you.

Al: Well, I appreciate you letting me show you the Vegas that I know, which is a little bit of something for everybody. So cheers.

CPK: Cheers

AL: Cheers to Las Vegas.

CPK: Al Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this special episode of Milk Street Radio. And now, I’d like to tell you about our sponsor and collaborator on this episode, Las Vegas.

During the last year, I have traveled to Las Vegas for the food – from the

high-end restaurants to the downtown dive bars.

And what I discovered is that Vegas has a special culinary energy – it’s a

city based on hospitality and that enthusiasm for serving customers makes

the food scene a real pleasure.

What also impresses me is the diversity of the experience – from Peking

Duck and the Bloody Chyna cocktail at Chyna Club, to the drinks from

Stray Pirates downtown including Get It Kraken and Tito’s Toad Venom.

There is always an element of fun and surprise – from the botanical

gardens and fountains at the Bellagio, to the scene at Atomic Liquors

where the rat pack used to hang out after hours.

You find just about any dining experience you want – from food courts to

Wolfgang Puck to local chefs who have created the evolving downtown

culinary neighborhoods.

More so than with any other American city, Las Vegas has a culinary food

scene that is evolving rapidly – come back six months later and you’ll find a

host of new places and new experiences.

That is the fun of Las Vegas – something new, something old and a food

scene that is part fantasy and part excellence catering to almost any taste...

So try a taste of Las Vegas – you will be well-fed and well-met.

To learn more, go to visit las vegas dot com slash culinary.

This special episode is produced by Milk Street.

Co-founder, Melissa Baldino.

Executive Producer, Annie Sinsabaugh

Editor, Nancy Rosenbaum.

Senior Producer, Sarah Clapp.

Producer, Caroline Davis.

Engineer, Myron Kaplan.

Audio Mixing by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole

Massachusetts.

Special thanks to Melissa Allison, Jeff Towne, and of course my guide and

co-host Al Mancini. You can find Al’s Vegas restaurant guide at neon feast

dot com. And his podcast is Food and Loathing.