Bodog Beat

The 'burrito vegetariano' and a Dos Equis at La Cocina Reyes in Las Vegas during the 2008 WSOP. (Bodog Beat Image)

As you may have noticed, we've changed the title of these posts to "WSOP Food Coma" because that is the state into which we are rendered after every outing in search of the perfect WSOP culinary diversion. Oh, the sacrifices we make on behalf of you, our loyal readers.

Anyway, last night we had a hankering for some regular, good ol' Mexican food and places that serve this kind of food should be plentiful in Vegas. However, you HAVE to get out of the casinos and their faux gourmet Mexican fusion messes and get yourself to a stip mall. The rule we live by is, "The older the strip mall, the better the Mexican food." This has proved itself true over and over again to us, so off in search we went.

Not far down Flamingo from the Rio is an older strip mall that contains a Smith's grocery store and a couple of other food distribution outlets (sandwich shop, Chinese place and possibly a Korean place). More importantly, we found La Cocina Reyes and its unassuming glass door and neon Dos Equis beer sign. Immediately seated, we were served fat, fresh tortilla chips and a delicious tomatillo salsa to go along with our 23 oz. Dos Equis Amber lager. Can you see the food coma coming already?

After eating fried food/pizza/bags of chips/rubber sushi at the Rio for a couple of weeks we were looking forward to getting an infusion of vegetables courtesy of this outing. So, immediately we began searching for a dish that could deliver this and settled on the Vegetarian Burrito (it was a toss up between that and the mashed potato tacos….mmmmmm), a spectacular mix of spinach, mushrooms, zucchini, bell peppers, pinto beans and Queso Panela all smothered with a sweet chipotle sauce. The burrito was the size of a small child's arm and, combined with the side salad that came with it, put us very close to a comatose state. Another Dos Equis tipped us over the edge and we found ourselves uncomfortably full, embarrassingly distended and altogether satisfied.

Oh, and like our other new favorite place in Vegas, Thai Spice, they serve a certain soft drink that is not readily available in this cursed town. Useful knowledge if you're on a WSOP dinner break and need to maintain a sober state of mind to continue playing and are tired of drinking the inferior product of this certain soft drink's competitor.

To sum up, La Cocina Reyes is highly recommended if you find yourself in Vegas for the WSOP and will probably put us into several more food comas before the last card of the 2008 World Series of Poker is dealt.