Las Vegas, NV: 6/10/10 - 6/13/10

The Venetian invited us to the first event of their new "Grazie Cooking Series," which featured Chef Mario Batali. Batali has three restaurants in The Venetian/Palazzo and numerous others in New York City and Los Angeles. We were treated to an hour long live cooking demonstration with Chef Batali in The Venetian Showroom, given the recipes to take home, and received a complimentary prix-fixe meal of the food we watched him cook.

Even though neither of us are cooks, we found the demo to be very interesting and entertaining as Mario was very personable. My favorite quote from him, which he shared as summarizing his philosophy on food: "At the end of the day, there are only two things you put in someone to pleasure them. One of them is food."

We enjoyed our prix-fixe dinner at Carnevino, which is located in The Palazzo, just inside the doors to the walkway that connects to Wynn. We added on the wine pairing for $35, which featured wines exclusively from Joseph Bastianich, and tea for $6.50.


We also watched The Lion King @ Mandalay Bay this trip. I used TZOO40 (from Travelzoo) to get 40% off side orchestra tickets. It was $69.50 per ticket, which came to a total of $156.75 once all the fees were included. The show was extraordinarily creative and it was one of the best opening acts I've seen. I also felt Mandalay Bay did a great job creating the theatre venue.