Apple dessert, Bellagio
Tempura-batter onion rings can produce a saliva-oozing sensation, as the gal experienced at PRIME in that luxury Las Vegas lifestyle centre, Bellagio (more than a hotel that happens to have a casino, it also has everything you might want to eat, drink and buy, and it works with celebrities – Sarah Jessica Parker was in her SJP shoe store three days ago, for a come-and-shop-with-me experience).
My dear friend Alvaro Valeriani invited me a quickie dinner, no time for more. We started off sharing a side, the onion rings shown. What a sybaritic start to an hour that included, honestly, some of the best beef either of us had ever eaten (but you cannot say wow to a ribeye, perhaps).
I did say WOW a few days later at a banquet for 2,000, same hotel but in Bellagio’s Grand Ballroom. Can you imagine armies, literally, of pastry chefs manning a production line filling one-time-use red apple shapes, fortunately already sliced in two, with heavenly dessert foam, and putting the tops back on again to produce a simple, yet luxury, sweet ending to a memorable ‘banquetting meal’. Another army then delivered them to tables and certainly, at my table, everyone said WOW. What a coup, yet another coup, for the justifiably legendary Bellagio.
