Category: Chefs/Restaurants

Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience

Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience

Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience
Holiday Cactus Garden

🍫🍫🍫 🍷🍷🍷 🌵🌵🌵

Las Vegas during the holidays has its own kind of magic, especially in places off the Strip that locals know well but tourists often miss—like the Ethel M Cactus Garden.

Ethel M Holiday Cactus Garden

We recently attended the Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience, and it truly exceeded our expectations. What we assumed would be a straightforward tasting turned into a relaxed, informative, and genuinely fun way to savor chocolate alongside perfectly paired wines.

Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience

The guided tasting lasts about 40–50 minutes and features five seasonal chocolates, each paired with a wine selected by Ethel M’s Chief Chocolatier, Mark Markey. Along the way, we learned how chocolate is sourced, refined, and made—without it feeling technical or heavy.

Ethel M Chocolate & Wine Experience

🍫 Ethel M 🍫

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Halibut Francese

Halibut Francese

Halibut Francese

Halibut Francese is a beautiful twist on the Italian-American classic chicken francese — light, lemony, and elegant. It pairs the tender flakiness of halibut with a silky lemon-sherry-butter sauce that’s both savory and bright.

Francese means “in the French style” in Italian. Chicken Francese has its roots in Italian-American cooking, though its name suggests something more continental. Despite the “French” in the title, the dish was created by Italian immigrants in New York—thin chicken cutlets dipped in flour and egg, sautéed until golden, and finished in a lemon-butter sauce. In many restaurants, it’s still served over strands of spaghetti or angel hair to catch every drop of that sauce.

Halibut Francese

A recent meal at the fabulous new Italian restaurant, Nudo Italiano, in southwest Las Vegas, brought back memories of the classic Chicken Francese we loved in Chicago’s Italian-American restaurants decades ago. That flavor profile inspired my modern interpretation: wild Alaska halibut cooked Francese-style with an eggy twist, served with a lemon-sherry-butter sauce and complemented by caramelized baby bok choy and peppery watercress.

Nudo Italiano
Chicken Francese at Nudo Italiano

My Halibut Francese builds on that classic approach with a few refinements. A fillet of halibut is sautéed in the traditional Francese method but with the extra egg poured over as it cooks, creating a delicate, golden coating. The fish is plated over a pool of lemon-sherry sauce to keep the crust crisp, while braised baby bok choy adds gentle sweetness and contrast. A few sprigs of fresh watercress bring a clean, peppery lift. The result is a bright, elegant plate that feels both familiar and new — comfort elevated with subtle sophistication.

Halibut Francese
With Braised Baby Bok Choy Recipe

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Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle

Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle

Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle

Quick, refined, and full of taste, this filet mignon dish proves that a luxurious meal doesn’t have to take hours to prepare. Jacques Pépin’s concept of a “quick stew”—his Instant Beef Tenderloin Stew—redefines what a rich, satisfying dish can be. The tender beef cooks in minutes yet delivers remarkable depth, showing that speed and finesse can coexist.

I’ve paired it with a simplified version of Wolfgang Puck’s Spätzle, sautéed in butter with a touch of parsley to complement the sauce beautifully. The result brings together two powerhouse chefs in one memorable dinner—balanced, flavorful, and a clear winner at our dinner party.

Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle

What makes this dish so special is how each component is prepared separately to bring out its best qualities. The filet is seared just long enough to develop a rich crust while staying tender inside, the vegetables are cooked to maintain their color and texture, and the spätzle is sautéed in butter to carry the sauce without overpowering it.

By bringing everything together in a glossy, flavorful red wine–beef sauce, the dish achieves a perfect balance of richness, freshness, and finesse—all without simmering for hours.

Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle

Filet Mignon Stew with Spätzle Recipe

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Shrimp and Chayote Stir-Fry

Shrimp and Chayote Stir-FryShrimp and Chayote Stir-Fry

Adapted from The Slanted Door, Modern Vietnamese Food by Charles Phan, this stir-fry is light and refreshing.

Chayote aka mirliton is crisp, pale-green squash with a delicate flavor and tender crunch, somewhere between zucchini and green papaya. It holds up beautifully in a quick stir-fry and absorbs seasonings well.

Here, the colors and textures are part of the appeal. The light green chayote stays crisp-tender, while the shrimp turn soft pink and slightly springy. Together they create a clean contrast — cool green and warm pink, crisp and juicy against sweet and firm. Tossed with air-dried Momofuku noodles, it becomes a complete dish — the noodles soaking up the light, savory sauce and tying together the light jade and blush pink in a tangle of satisfying chew.

Shrimp and Chayote Stir-Fry Recipe

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Bryce Pork Chop

Bryce Pork Chop

Bryce Pork Chop

Grilled French-Cut Kurobuta Pork Chop
Fondue Potatoes, Thyme Roasted Carrots
Sage-Scented Croutons, Fried Sage Leaves
Pomegranate Vinaigrette

The Bryce Pork Chop is as visually striking as it is flavorful. A grilled French-cut Kurobuta pork chop rests on a bed of creamy fondue potatoes at the center of a shallow bowl, encircled by a pomegranate vinaigrette that adds tang and subtle sweetness.

Thyme-roasted carrots bring warm earthy orange tones, while sage-scented croutons and crisp fried sage leaves add texture, aroma, and a lush green accent reminiscent of the rocks, sagebrush, and evergreens that dot the landscape.

The dish’s palette—rosy pork, golden potatoes, vibrant carrots, and reddish-brown vinaigrette—evokes the dramatic layers and hues of Bryce Canyon, making it a plate that’s both artful and deeply satisfying.

Bryce Canyon National Park

The landscape itself is a mosaic of red and orange hoodoos, sandy soil, sagebrush flats, and pine forests. The contrast between the warm stone spires and the green sage and pine gives Bryce Canyon its striking, painterly beauty — the same harmony of tones this pork chop dish evokes.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Though it’s not true culinary sage, sagebrush has a similar earthy aroma, which is why the green fried sage leaves in this dish feel like a natural echo of the Bryce Canyon landscape — a nod to those silvery-green shrubs scattered among the canyon’s warm, sunlit rock.

Kurobuta Pork Chop

This dish was inspired by a fabulous al fresco dinner at Stone Hearth Grille in Tropic, Utah near Bryce Canyon.

Stone Hearth Grille at Bryce Canyon

Bryce Pork Chop Recipe

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