Vegas: Part III

The conference was at Mandalay Bar Resort and Casino located on the stip. One night Jim and I were invited to the Foundation Room (members only club/restaurant) at House of Blues, located on the top floor of Mandalay Bay. The party started around 7 PM just in time for us to watch the sun go down. With two full bars and one bar of specialty cocktails created by a mixologist, the beverage portion of the night was covered. My favorite food that was served was a beautiful large wheel of brie, it was HUGE and baked in a flaky golden crust with toasted pecans and apricot preserve. Awesome! This is me with my co-worker Debbie, sipping on one of the crazy cocktails - oh so good, smooth and dangerous!

After the party in the Foundation Room, we went to a fundraising event at House of Blues. The Kinks were playing, and there were LOTS of people here. Drinks were available, but hard to get to. Plenty of food, but we had already stuffed oursleves in the Foundation Room.


I had to take a picture of our lunch, I thought this was really clever. These chinese take out boxes were filled with different noodle dishes and topped with two chopsticks. This was great grab and go lunches, a nice upgrade from the "box lunch" that you would normally expect.

The dessert bar was again oustanding. I only allowed myself to have one, but how in the world do you choose when faced with table after table of the cutest pastries you've ever seen? I think I decided on one fo the cheesecake bites topped with fruit. Yum.
One of my favorite sessions was a "back of the house" tour at Mandalay Bay. They can feed 12,000 people in 45 minutes out of this kitchen. This property has 30,000 CHAIRS in storage. Mandalay Bay has one of the largest convention centers I've ever seen. Walking behind the scenes in their kitchen and seeing the dishwashing machine (looked like a car wash) and the number of silverware they have on hand on how they organize everything, it's just unbelievable.
This is the pastry kitchen and I took a picture of the chocolate sculptures the pasty chef was working on. Can you believe these edible centerpieces - awesome.

The last night in Vegas we attended the closing reception at the Mandalay Bay beach. There were food stations hosted by different casino restaurants featuring one of their signature dishes. We sampled food from casinos all over the strip. My favorite were some Kobe Beef Sliders with jalapeno mayo and melted cheddar cheese. I sipped on a chocolate martini sponsored by the Hershey Conference Center. It was sinful and spectacular. There were several "party" areas at this event. The main attraction was the stage hovering over the wave pool at the beach. Stix played. Another hip section had a dj spinning records and these nearly naked dancers performing.


Notice he isn't wearing a shirt but does have on a scarf. It's because this area all around us was all in ice. There were ice chairs, ice bars, an ice pool table! Seriously! I took a picture.

The most memorable part of this party however was in the ice section - ice shots! The "bar" was made of ice and had the Ketel One Citroen logo chizeled into it. As we walked closer we were handed a glove...

It made me feel like Michael Jackson. THEN, the coolest part is that they were serving Ketel one shots in ICE SHOT GLASSES!

This was pretty cool (cold too) and I've looked up online where you can buy the molds to make your own ice shot glasses.

Wouldn't this be a neat for a "winter theme" party?

I'm ending with this... a few more beautiful pictures of cute bite size desserts. And Jim and I sunburned and ready to get back to Austin.