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Planet Dailies at Planet Hollywood – Las Vegas, Nevada

It was American Thanksgiving when we came to Planet Dailies inside Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas strip. We were originally going to eat at the Spice Market at Planet Hollywood, but they were doing a special “Thanksgiving Dinner” buffet for lunch, which we didn’t want to eat that much – so we settled down here instead.

I ordered a Patty Melt which is a sandwich with marble rye bread filled with an Angus beef patty, sauteed onions and melted Swiss cheese. Of course, I got this with fries, which was nice and crispy on the outside, and tender on the inside. Also, it was served with Thousand Island dressing on the side – which I thought was a little odd, but the tangy taste of the dressing actually was quite refreshing with the sandwich!

As it was Thanksgiving, we ordered a Thanksgiving Lunch Special with slices of Turkey, some fresh vegetables, and mashed potatoes with gravy. It’s kind of your typical Thanksgiving lunch, but it was good! The turkey wasn’t dry at all, and the vegetables was fresh and crispy!

Then, we ordered a pasta dish, and had the Chicken Primavera with tons of tender chicken sauteed with shallots and garlic, tossed with broccoli, yellow squash, zucchini, asparagus, tomato and gemelli pasta. This pasta dish was light enough to be a pasta salad, and it was refreshing!

Planet Dailies at Planet Hollywood was a great place we popped into! It worked out better actually, and the food is great! Our waitress was super cute and so happy that she could make anyone smile – no matter how bad of a day! The food was excellent, service was great and prices was reasonable too!

Planet Dailies

3667 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 732-1222

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Asian BBQ & Noodles in Spring Valley Las Vegas

So, the last time I went to Vegas, we had a combination of food from tourist locations and local. We went for some Chinese cuisine in areas where locals are more likely to go. We went to Asian BBQ & Noodles located in a strip plaza, which really wasn’t too far off the strip, but definitely easiest with a rental car. This stop was more like a second lunch, or a snack so the 3 of us only ordered a few things to share.

We enjoyed a plate of Yang Chow Fried Rice, and in fact it was a fairly large plate, especially for it’s price. I don’t currently remember any of the prices, but I know they are very reasonable with large delicious portions. It definitely was enough to share everything! The fried rice had lots of ingredients in it, and seasoned perfectly! it’s so easy to eat the entire plate by myself because it was so good!

A bowl of Wonton Noodle Soup was something that really hit the spot! There’s nothing as calming for me than a bowl of noodle soup – especially when the soup is “clear” versus soup with lots of things in the soup or very flavourful (spicy, coconut milk, etc). The wontons here were enormous!

And has some Gai Lan with Oyster Sauce, as we needed some vegetables. Sure, the gai lan looks a little big, but they cooked it just long enough where it’s still crisp, but tender! Good job for them with the boiling of it! 🙂 It was just the perfect plate of veggies for this snack!

Overall, I do enjoy this location! It was actually busy – even at these odd times of day where it wasn’t lunch or dinner. People were coming in and ordering from the hot buffet section and their phones was ringing off the hook for take-out! It’s nice to see such success for little restaurants like this!

Everything tasted really good and the prices were extremely well priced! This is definitely a place to try if you’re craving a little local Chinese food that is worth your pocket change!

Asian BBQ & Noodles

3400 S. Jones Blvd, #5C
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 202-3636

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Homemade Dong Gua Tong – 冬瓜湯

Wintermelon Chinese Soup

In my family, most of my Chinese soups begin with the same base, and for the most part, this soup is no exception.

1 lb of pork bones
1 slice of dong gua
5 or 6 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tablespoons of dried shrimp
1 or 2 dried scallop
2 tablespoons of ginger
2-3 carrots
1 piece of dried orange peel

It is good to rehydrate all the dry ingredients a few hours ahead if you can. If not, it’s not a big deal as it all cooks together and will soften.

First, take a pot of boiling water and cook the pork bones in the pot of water. Then, when it’s cooked through (or most of it), rinse it with cold water and place into a soup pot.

In a the soup pot with the cooked pork bones, place peeled carrots which is cut into large chunks, dong gua into chunks as well – which I usually leave the peel on as well, so make sure you clean everything, and the ginger! Then, I place all the dry ingredients into the pot and fill it up with cold water.

Once the water boils, reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for at least 3 hours. The longer you let it simmer, the more flavours get developed into the soup. When you’re ready to enjoy, skim the fat off the top and add some salt to taste! Then, serve and enjoy this refreshing winter melon soup!

This particular time, we bought the edge of the dong gua and my other half decided it would be fun to make a bowl out of it as a dong gua zhong – winter melon pot. If you’re doing this properly, you steam the soup in this bottom piece and it then acts as a serving platform. Here, we just carved it and he used it as a bowl.

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Cantina Grill at Denver International Airport

So, not all layovers at an airport is bad! We had a stop over at Denver International Airport (DIA) for awhile, and we needed to eat lunch. We went to the second level of concourse B where we found Cantina Grill for Mexican cuisine.

We had to be a little quick, so I ordered the Chicken quesadilla and it was really good. There’s never too much to say about a quesadilla, but this one was gooey with cheese and filled with cheese and chicken goodness! It was very satisfying for a food court!

We also ordered a Chicken Qdoba. (Gumbo) and it was also very impressive. It came in a bowl with beans, rice and stew on the bottom, and topped with cheese & salsa! We mixed it together for a delicious bowl of goodness as every spoonful was full of flavour!

The best part of Cantina Grill is the fact it’s on the second floor where there seems to be less passengers – so the line ups for food isn’t nearly as long! If I’m in Denver airport again, I wouldn’t have a problem sitting down at Cantina Grill for another meal!

Cantina Grill in Concourse B

Airport: Denver
Concourse B 8500 Pena Blvd
Denver, CO 80249
(303) 342-6860

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Aji Japanese Canteen in London

We walk by the Aji Japanese Canteen every time we walked from our hotel to the tourist areas and every time we did, there always was a nice crowd inside – which made me think it’s not bad! It’s located on the South bank of River Thames just after you cross the Waterloo bridge. One evening, we finally popped in as it was a cold and rainy evening… and they had free internet which we were looking for a place to sit down and use!

It’s a different concept in this restaurant, or what they call Canteen as the space is large, but it is a seat yourself like a food court. Then, you order from the menu an they servers will bring you your food. We each ordered our own dish, and the food came out really quickly. They didn’t mind us staying there longer than we needed to, or anyone doing that actually!

I ordered the Kara Age Don which was ginger flavoured crispy fried chicken, boiled eggs served in a bowl of rice with shredded cabbage, Japanese QP Mayonnaise and Shiso flavoured Sauce

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The other entree we ordered was a Soup Noodles, where you got to pick the kind of noodle you wanted, the type of soup, and the topping you’d like! So, this was fun as we got to personalize our noodle dish. We chose to have Ramen, which is a thin egg noodle, (one of our favourite types of noodles) with Shoyu soup which is a chicken broth that is kind of “soy sauce” flavoured. Then, we topped this bowl of ramen with Cha-Shu and garnished it with bean sprouts, shitake mushrooms and bamboo shoot.

Overall, this place is decent. It’s not the best, but it definitely hit the spot and it served our purpose of getting some nice noodle soup in our bellies, use the internet, and wait out the rain. This isn’t a location I would return to mainly because there are a lot of Japanese resturants that have opened up along the banks of River Thames.

AjiZen Japanese Canteen

Waterloo
Riverside Building County Hall
Waterloo, United Kingdom
(0871) 962 0035