A nice lunch at Swish Shabu-shabu

Waking up early to enjoy a Pre-Valentine's day lunch at Swish Shabu-shabu and sukiyaki, a little place in china town that features hot pot style cooking (think Asian Melting Pot), I must say it was a great place that provided constant attentive service
 the menu provides appetizers and bento boxes alongside the traditional shabu-shabu(cuts of meat and veggies cooked in a mild seaweed broth) and sukiyaki (meat and veggies cooked in a flavorful sauce similar to stir-fry style cooking).

The awesome server helped us choose from the pretty vast menu and we started off our lunch with  calamari which was tossed in a sweet chili sauce that was fant-abulous!(yes it deserved a combination of words)

It was a mesh of crunchy sweet-savory goodness that made me rethink how i eat my calamari, and no dipping sauce required. Infact leave the sauce at home kiddies,you'll only ruin perfection


During our saucy snack we went ahead and ordered the main dishes with me ordering a 6 oz portion of Kobe Rib-Eye to cook shabu-shabu style (seriously i think i'm going to run around yelling that from now on)
and my lovely fiance ordering Kobe chuck beef to cook sukiyaki  style.

                                             look at that marbling up there ...yum:)

                                                 The just as yummy chuck beef

                                               the shabu-shabu pot warming up

                                                  the wok contain the flavorful sukiyaki

The food came with accompaniments of noodles and a side seafood plate and two sauces, the first Ponzu sauce which was the color of soy sauce but light and citrus like was delicious and kind of the base of a yummy dipping sauce i created by adding things like green onion,garlic,and chili oil. The other sauce called Coma  was a yellowish sesame sauce that tasted like an ultra light peanut butter. both served as perfect dipping for our meats and veggies, I actually poured my Ponzu over my rice which was crazy good.

                                                    you have no idea how happy this food made me

                                             scallops and octopus i believe sprinkled with some chili powder and
                                               Coma sauce 

                                           beef cooked sukiyaki style and in the midst of being ravaged

                                              veggies and meat boiling in sukiyaki goodness

To sum up our whole meal, I'd have to say it came as close to authentic as I've ever come to finding, everything was light and held its own unique flavor it wasn't an overload of  heavy too salty or sweet sauces it was just simple components that melded together well no matter how one chooses to combine them.
I hope to make this place a frequented spot especially during lunch hour where the specials are well worth advertising
my Kobe Rib-Eye  which is usually about $40.00 for a small but filling portion is about $30.00 or less between 12-5 pm. We truly enjoyed our meal and from the time we walked in to the time we stepped out it was a truly enjoyable experience.

Firefly Tapas kitchen & Bar (my first entry:)

Ok so this is my first entry to my food blog repping Vegas' many good food spots and so i figured I should start it out with a place I've been to a few times (3 of the 4 times at a different location in Vegas).

So welcome to Firefly !

  Firefly is a Las Vegas born and bred Tapas restaurant Focusing on making fairly simple dishes unique and able to be paired deliciously with whatever your drinking! especially their house made sangria.

Now Like I've said, when it comes to this little gem I'm no stranger, so instead of blogging about all of my trips I will just write about the last visit, which was yesterday afternoon with the Mr.

On any given night (especially weekends) this place is pretty full so coming here for a nice lunch is a good idea but late night is pretty awesome if you want to be in a lively environment you can really take your pick since the place is open 11am to about 3am. But this time i chose to do an early-ish lunch with my fiance' and as always was greeted by a friendly  face and seated promptly (this could be due to it being fairly empty and i had reservations) our server showed up about 40 seconds after we were seated and was friendly and engaging giving us time to order without hurrying us or disappearing.

Were no strangers so we knew fairly quickly and ordered as follows

for drinks i ordered the sparkiling sangria (pictured below) and the Mr. ordered a sprite(seriously)

and then we got down to it and ordered,

the calamari which is always seasoned well and delicious (definitely in my top 3 places to go for some good calamari)

 the Firefly fries ( say that 4 times fast after 2 glasses of wine)fried crisp and topped with Parmesan cheese and chives i believe,served with an aioli that tastes sour creamish to me, the fries are definitely  good on taste but eh on texture 

                                          It's like jenga but with fries

one of my favorites the petite filet,which is the tiniest filet mignon medallion with mushrooms,spinach and baby potatoes in a red wine reduction and topped with herb cheese and  lightly fried onions, seriously can we say delicious! its always perfectly cooked (I usually go with medium rare) and juicy and the veggies in the reduction are so tender and wonderfully good!

We also had the crispy duck rolls which are one thing you can safely skip when visiting and weren't worth a picture (actually I forgot to take one, but seriously they aren't the best)

and to cap the meal off we ended it with their baby back ribs which are steamed and then covered in a mango bbq sauce, these i must say are pretty yummy but honestly after eating ribs the old fashioned way for so long I would have preferred if they were grilled or smoked....that really would have knocked the flavor up a few notches but all in all they were great!

All in all our meal was fantastic, beautiful place, pretty good food and with everything being no more than 10 bucks (seriously most of our stuff was in the 4-6 dollar range) this will be a regular spot for me.

look he loves it 

 go ahead take a ride to one of their 3 locations ...(well two since the one downtown is closed due to renovations at the plaza) you will love it at first bite!

Oh yeah this is also a great place for groups as most of the stuff can safely give 4 people per dish a generous portion