Market research

I'm on the hunt for a delicious alternative for when those moments my sweet tooth gets the best of me.

Starting off the quest with these three nutrition bars in variations of chocolate.. Appetite suppressant and sweet tooth cure? We shall see!

Update: And then there were (2). Apparently the Pure Organic Chocolate Brownie Bar (top) contains Walnuts, I overlooked this factor during the purchasing process. So, in an effort to live a bit longer I had to toss the Pure bar out of the equation. (I'm pretty alergic to walnuts).

We're traveling to the Middle of the East Tonight!

http://www.thevillagelasvegas.com/

The Village Las Vegas is where our travels shall lead us this evening.  Mediterranean, Persian, whatever you want to call it, I will keep you posted on our experience this evening.

Stay tuned for featured photos from tonight's dining extravaganza and of course beloved commentary from yours truly on the family dining experience as a whole.

The Review:

With my camping gear packed, water bottle filled I made the trek to the West side of town to The Village.  Courtesy of a good friend of mine, this joint came highly recommended.

It's hard to miss the restaurant from the street with the beautiful purple trees outside (also found inside).  We barged right in, shoved two long tables together and waited for all (8) family members to arrive.  The dining space is huge! It almost seemed like after all the dining patrons have gone home the staff could easy shove all the tables aside and turn it in to one huge after hours dance party. A better analogy would be to describe the inside of The Village as a cafeteria, is that better?

On to the menu. A one-sided card with menu items listed there didn't appear to be anything over $10.00 on the entire menu; now you're speaking my language!  The hummus was eh, the pita bread was decent, and chicken kabob was ok.  Each entree comes equipped with it's own little mini "salad" <-- I have placed salad in parenthesis because it was literally 4 pieces of lettuce, 2 cucumbers, and 2 slices of tomato; obviously not the highlight of the meal.  The chicken kabobs were decent, healthy portion of rice served with this dish (never a bad thing in my book), but you have to order the yogurt sauce as a separate side; I didn't therefore my chicken lacked a tad in flavor.

All in all there's not much to report regarding the service since it's pretty much a "fast food" type Mediterranean eatery where you seat yourself, order, pick up your food and grab your own drinks from the drink station. 

It's a cute concept but for me, not being in my neck of the woods and all I doubt I will find myself driving 25 minutes specifically to eat at The Village.

Price is fantastic, food quality decent, and nice purple trees?

*Insert Intermission Music Here*

There have been lots of dining experiences that have taken place since my last post, however, none have been our "official" Family Dining experience, hence my lack of posting.

Conflicting schedules have led to the postponement of family dinners, but tentatively we are scheduled for Persian eats Friday the 20th.

Stay tuned!

Thai me up please

Eatery chosen for this weeks family dinner:

Despite having our reservations being taken down for Saturday verses our request for Friday night (oops, hostess mistake), we arrived early for our 8:30pm FRIDAY night family dinner.

The lovely ladies of Lotus of Siam acknowledged their error and quickly scrambled to find a table to accommodate our party of (9).  Low and behold, I am impressed! Miscommunication with the dining reservation and all; we were comfortably sat 6 minutes prior to our "reservation" time!

Our friendly beverage taker was quite prompt in taking and delivering our thirst-quenching drinks.  A glass did not go empty the entire meal..again, impressive.

With all of the family accounted for our food server for the evening promptly took down our appetizer orders. Much to my continued surprise by the stellar service at this Thai house of awesomeness, our food arrived in a timely fashion and our orders were not only CORRECT, but none forgotten! 

The only glitch in the evening was during dinner service; one or two meals trickled out behind the rest. When I inquired within, it was explained that they have several cooks preparing at different stations so the timing for each meal prepared is not always exactly on point with the rest. With that being said, all is forgiven for these delicious eats.

 It's quite a daunting task for most restaurant establishments to place the correct order, number one, let alone place it and not forget to bring it all to the table at the same time.

My take on food quality is this. Quite tasty. Featured above is a crunchy chicken and shrimp noodle dish. Taste consistent with sweet and sour sauce, texture was a mix of crunchy and super sticky. 

Below is the oh so unoriginal Pad Thai that I ordered. I know, I know.. for someone so creative there is a lot to be said about my creativity while dining..but I digress.

The Pad Thai was exceptionally delicious, not dry, noodles cooked to perfection. Dislike: the server did fail to ask me at what heat level I would like my dish therefore I was left with absolutely NO spice what so ever. I may be unoriginal in dining dish decision making, but I do like to spice things up..with spices.

Next we have the vegetable fried rice. There seemed to be a lot of vegetables and I found myself fishing for healthy bites full of the actual rice. Also I found that all together the portion sizes in this joint weren't created with deep needs to subside a ferocious appetite.  More food less plate please!

Fellow family member and long time friend ordered the dish below. A seafood, Thai spaghetti medley that he quite enjoyed. I'm not a huge proponent of seafood so I merely offered to photograph his dish and make note of it's superior level of deliciousness.

In closing, Lotus of Siam's exceptional customer service, attention to detail (& ability to overcome clarical errors), and hell attention to our large party in general would have us coming back for more.

THAI ME UP PLEASE, this was delish!

Welcome to the Dish on Family Dining!

Time gets away from us all more often than not. With that being said my friends and I have indefinitely declaired that every Friday we will be hosting a "Family Dinner".

Our Family Dinners are designed to keep the friendship connections, life updates, and lines of communication open between our circle of friends. Sure you can follow us each individually on Facebook, but live interactions are much more entertaining!

The guidlines: Each "Family Member" has the opportnunity to select a dining establishment of their choice; each week a different member makes the dining decision.

Our Family consists of aproximately 20 members at this time. Our dining group numbers range from 4 people to 15 at any given time, based on who is able to and wants to join for that week.

Here is a brief summary of what you can expect in my future Dish on Family Dining blogs..

Reporting on a different venue every week will give you insight on a variety of local eateries, their service standards, food quality/presentation, and ability (or lack there of) in accomodating large parties. This food blog will include commentary from family members, photos, and of course my personal opinions on each dining experience.

I have found in recent years that service in this fabulous Sin City has taken a real turn for the worse. Call it poor staffing, improper training, whatever the internal issues may be, stellar service in this city has been few and far between.

Let's put our local eateries to the test, see who comes out on top!