With our most recent culinary adventures focusing on small, uber-local restaurants contained within the countless strip malls, we figured we'd take a trip to ther other end of the spectrum and visit a high-end joint in a big box casino. So, with that in mind we jumped in a cab at the Rio for the short trip over to Caesar' Palace to visit Chef Bobby Flay's restaurant, Mesa Grill.

Eating "common" food at a strip joint restaurant can be an amazing experience, but when it comes down to it, there really is nothing like eating food prepared by a well-trained, artistic hand. The combination of flavors and the immaculate presentation are just not easily duplicated, especially when it comes at the hands of Chef Bobby Flay.

The restaurant itself is well-appointed and even without reservations on a Thursday night we were able to take a seat at the bar for an hour while a seat opened up. While at that bar we indulged in a Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale (amazing) and a Black Widow Mojito (sublime). The mojito was especially good as it was made just like a basic mojito but with dark Guatemalan rum and a splash of cola, so good.

Upon being seated by the super-courteous wait staffwe ordered goat cheese "queso fundido" served with blue corn tortilla strips and  and a spectacular Spanish Rioja to go with it. We followed that up with a main course of 16-spice duck breast with a corn tamale with chorizo and the other dish was a chile relleno stuffed with Manchego cheese and roasted red peppers. Holy. Crap. Both were unbelievable in the subtle way that the flavors melded and the spices exploded, just an amazing experience.

We capped the meal with a warm chocolate cake with dulce de leche ice cream, another glass of wine, another beer and, you guessed it, hit food coma. Again.

We really can't recommend this place enough, so save up your spare change in your piggy bank…for a long, long time, then head over to Mesa Grill while you're in Vegas enjoying the WSOP.

Keep in mind, however, that last year’s WSOP food options could’ve been improved upon by serving offal and warm dog turds.

As the name indicates Miranda offers two things: sushi and noodle soup. The quality of fish was decent and failed to make us wretch. This pleased us. But of all the things you can screw up with sushi somehow they managed to fuck up the rice. It tasted like it had been sitting in the cooker overnight. The soup is decent though and at $8 one of the better values in the Rio.

The main problem with the Miranda, besides the fact that it’s set in some backroom catering kitchen with rickety décor slapped up along with a few bamboo plants, is that they decided to only provide a wait staff of two.

These poor bastards are the servers, bussers and hosts. When a tournament goes on break they get absolutely murdered and beaten down with endless complaints from WSOP players with nothing on their mind but getting back to the poker tables.

You can see the pain in the server’s eyes like they just came back from Iraq where they watched their buddy’s face get blown off. That salty flavor in your soup at the Miranda, yeah that’s the waiter’s tears.

Considering that during the break all Rio restaurants become hopeless zoos on iniquity it’s probably the best option that the Rio has to offer.

Sounds fun doesn’t it? Well you’ve got one last chance to qualify for the WSOP if you haven’t already. Bodog’s is running their final 2008 WSOP online satellite this Saturday at 3:15 p.m. ET. Check it out and hopefully we'll see you at the Miranda.

Just a click down the road from the Rio is a strip mall with a Hollywood Video, a generic Mexican place name Ricardo's (does not fit the adage because it is a satellite of the strip mall) and about 14 smoke shops. In that strip mall is a little store front that The Fat Greek calls home. An inauspicious space with a counter across the back, baby blue walls with white trim, several Greek flags and a collection of small tables with plastic tablecloths. One can almost smell the Windex.

The restaurant was not very full but seemed as though it was as busy as it gets. We were greeted and sat by woman with Middle Eastern accent (it was probably Greek, but our mastery of accents is not quite that throrough, and we'd hate to say that if, in fact, she's Turkish or something) and proceeded to order hummus and tzaziki sauce with warm pita to start and a Mythos beer to wash it down.

A quick perusal of the menu provided us with an easy decision. It's been a while since we've had a decent falafel and this seemed like the perfect place to remedy that, so the falafel plate it was. The hummus was a little on the oily side but the tzaziki sauce was more minty than it was dilly, which is how we like it, so that was delicious. The falafel, however, was amazing. Crispy and flavorful with cucumber, tomato and lettuce and little tziziki sauce. Throw in some hot sauce added by our own hands, and it was just about damn perfect.

A couple more Mythos' and some baclava and we hit that legendary food coma status again. For the love of all that is holy, we're gonna need a stomach pump and two seats on the plane home by the time we're done here. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Stay tuned for more WSOP Las Vegas dining hot spots brought to you by your intrepidly expanding Beat reporters.

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.

Red 8 doesn't focus in on any one particular Asian cuisine, preferring to settle for a pan-Asian menu that features the best of Chinese, Thai, Korean and Vietnamese foods. From Dim Sum to Korean ribs and Mongolian Beef to Pad Thai, the menu really has a little something for everyone or, in our case, a little everything for someone. (There's another food coma coming, can you feel it?)

We started out with some vegetable spring rolls, shrimp wonton and Korean ribs with our new favorite Korean lager, Singha, but really these things just postponed the main goal of the trip. So, in our previous visits to this restaurant we've only ever ordered one thing and being creatures of habit and tradition, we ordered the exact same thing again. The Chilean Sea Bass come either steamed in a ginger soy sauce or deep fried with salt and pepper and, with all thoughts of eating healthily out of the window, we went with the fried version.

The unassuming dish comes out in simple white bowl with a large spoon and just looks like a bunch of fried fish pieces thrown in a bowl. Once tasted though, it is melt in your mouth tender with just an edge of salt and spice. The key is to make sure that you mix the bowl up thoroughly and get the sea salt hanging out at the bottom to coat the pieces of fish and then make sure that each bite you take has a piece of fresh jalapeño with it. Some people like to use soy sauce to up the flavor, but we really enjoy it just as it comes.

After every bite of that was savored and washed down with another Singha, you guessed it, we were on the verge of yet another food coma. The good thing is that we now walk back and forth from the Rio hotel rooms to the Amazon Room like 14 times a day, so that should burn off at least one piece of fish. Feel…fatter….daily.

With great power comes great responsibility, or something like that.

Stay tuned for more WSOP dining guides from the Bodog Beat and come enjoy some of these Vegas restaurants as part of a $12,000 WSOP VIP Prize Package. WSOP online satellites are going on daily in teh Bodog Poker room for as little as $1.50.

We drove up and down and back and forth for about an hour desperately trying to find this place, with every intersection holding the possible keys to our culinary salvation, but no dice. Eventually, we wound up back down close to the Rio and in a different strip mall at a place called Thai Spice, which had been voted best Thai food in Vegas since the beginning of time. We never did find out who the voters were, but whatever, we were hungry.

Upon entering, we sat and ordered some appetizers, including vegetable spring rolls, pot stickers and beef satay, and some Thai beer, Singha (pictured above), to wash it down. We then ordered our entrees, each opting for something different and expecting to share. The waitress became our favorite person in the world when she asked us how spicy we would like our Vegetable Pad Thai with Egg and Tofu and our Pepper Garlic Tofu and Shrimp, instead of just assuming we would want it mild. We went with a seven out of ten.

The food was just spicy enough, a little sweet, the right amount of ground peanuts and bean sprouts to cool the heat and absolutely amazing. Another Singha to help with the sizzling in our mouths, and we passed out into yet another food coma. The second in three days and again only after we snapped the above pic. We may need to find somewhere to excercise….

Stay tuned for more Las Vegas dining suggestions and tips and more live updates from the 2008 WSOP.

Food…blah, blah, blah. Mediocre…blah, blah, blah. Greasy pizza, decent salad…blah, blah blah. Delicious Fat Tire in a bottle….blah, blah, blah. WTF?!?!?!? What the hell happened to the girls outfits!! Seriously? The best thing about this place were the runway-ready girls beautifully clad in tight little black dresses with a diamond cut-out in the front displaying gratuitous amounts of model-perfect abs. But, no more.

Now, the waitresses are dressed in black ribbed tanks (that being the politically correct version of what we normally call those kinds of shirts) and black shorts, which looks like an outfit our wives would wear to bed (love you, dear). This is not what we came to Vegas for. Well, technically, we came here to work, but whatever.

Not sure that the food is good enough to make up for the lack of vista, but since all we've got to choose from is this place or the *shudder* Sao Paulo Cafe and All-American Bar and Grille, then we will probably drag our disappointed eyes back to the bowling lanes and maybe stick to the Fat Tire and one of their salads.

Humph.

Stay tuned for more tips for dining at the WSOP and come back later for all your regular World Series of Poker tournament updates, especially as the always-entertaining $1,000 w/Rebuys event starts in just a few minutes. There's always a few poker pros who try to outdo each other with the number of rebuys they can get in.

(Although, if you don't like Indian food then your decision is obvious. We're just saying on a name basis. That's all)

Anyway, after hanging out at the pool for a while and visiting Circus! Cirus! (to be highlighted later in a post called "Casino's We're Glad Aren't Hosting the WSOP), we decided to make a trip to our absolute favorite restaurant from our sojourn at the Rio last year, Gaylord Indian. We were not disappointed in the slightest as it lived up to every delicious memory that we have.

Tucked away in a corner of the Rio, down a side hall between the high-limit slots and high-limit table games, the entrance is just a small doorway adorned with traditional Indian statues and artwork. More importantly, there is barely ever a wait, especially if you are a poker player, as the staff is super-accommodating to those who may have a limited time in which to eat.

Last night we started out with a rather large Taj Mahal, an Indian craft-brewed lager (highly suggested), an order of the Vegetable Samosas and Sindhi Aloo Tikki (potato mint cakes) before moving onto a selection of curries including Chana and Vegetable Masala, the ever-present Chicken Tikka Masala and some naan bread and raita sauce on the side. Then we passed out in a food coma right after snapping the above picture.

Needless to say, we highly recommend the grub and the experience. We like to consider ourselves self-styled Indian food connoisseurs and this is the second-best Indian place we have EVER been to. A ringing endorsement if we do say so .

Stay tuned for more mouth-watering updates live from the 2008 WSOP. Man, we may have to head back over there tonight. Is there such thing as curry-poisoning?

Obviously, Vegas is home to restaurants from some of the best chefs in the world and we are spoiled for choice in every category of cuisine. However, last night felt like a sushi night, so we headed out to arguably the best sushi place in Vegas, Social House at TI. Started by the chef from Nobu, the restaurant is one of the Vegas spots where the beautiful people are spotted and for good reason.

We started with the yellowfin tuna sashimi, which comes adorned with tempura jalapeño chips and is probably the best thing on the menu. To go along with that we had some black cod miso, kobe beef skewers and a little kelp salad. Then, since none of us could agree on a selection of things to share from the menu, the whole thing devolved into a selfish, hungry ordering of deliciousness. The piece d'resistance, however, was the curried lobster roll with cucumber and avocado, followed closely by the Kobe beef sliders. Wash it all down with some cold, unfiltered sake and you've got yourself an incredible culinary experience.

We'll try to venture out from the Rio a few more times over the next several weeks to give you guys some tips on where to grab some incredible grub in this city of sin. So, stay tuned for that and your regular live updates from the 2008 WSOP.

Calling all cheap bastards: get in line for your free iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, then head to McDonalds for your free chicken sandwich.

When you're trying to make it in the cutthroat world of business, especially the cutthroat world of coffee, doughnuts and McChickens, giving away free shit will always bring 'em in.

Therefore, today, Dunkin’ Donuts is hosting its second, nationwide Free Iced Coffee Day from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Whoot! Never one to take a back-burner, McDonald's is also weighing-in on free shit day — by offering free sandwiches. McDonald's customers who buy any medium or large drink can receive a free Southern-style breakfast biscuit (a.m.) or chicken sandwich (p.m.).

In conclusion: today, there is such a thing as a free lunch. Go get yours.

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