“But wait!” The leftists cry, “the money is not going for abortion! its going for health care services”. Let me break it down to a level where even they can understand. If my budget is $20 for the day and has to feed me for all three meals I am clearly paying for all three meals with that money. If my friend buys me lunch, he didn’t pay for my dinner, but now I have more money to spend on dinner, so his money effectively helped pay for my dinner. In no way honestly can I say that he didn’t help me pay for dinner, even though the money came from the “lunch fund” The only way I could make that claim is if I did not eat dinner at all.

Over 97% of Planned Parenthood’s business is abortions. They only offer other services so they can claim they are more than an abortion mill. They are not gonna stop providing referrals for mammograms, they do not perform them, regardless of them getting funding cuts. Instead all the money that goes for “mammograms” just funds more abortions. The money they would have had to spend to promote their referral program and for other costs will now be used to fund abortion. But since the money now being used to pay for this didn’t come from the “abortion fund” we are supposed to be ok with it.

As an employer with strong moral convictions I cannot pay for contraception and or abortifacients, but your gonna tell me I still need to buy plans from companies providing them? Our glorious leader says the insurance companies will pay, not the employers. This is unconstitutional by any reading of the constitution, unless I missed the part where the President can force a private company to do things. However that isn’t the crux of this issue. The real crux is where is the money gonna come from Mr. President? Are you so dense that you don’t think the insurance companies are gonna raise all the premiums to cover this add cost? When they raise the premiums, as the will without a doubt, the employers are again paying for that which they are morally opposed to. What happened to conscience clauses?

Thank God the U.S.C.C.B. among others are standing up to this corrupt and morally bankrupt administration. It is time that we as morally responsible citizens stand up for what we believe in. The morally decomposition of this country has been forced by the left for long enough. We are the majority it is time to start acting like it.

First impression wow this place is small. Ten or so small tables and a small, sense a theme? eating bar. The place was packed to the gills with a big crowd standing around outside.

Luckily for us we were the only two top waiting and we were seated almost immediately. Sadly this put us dead in the middle of a the dinning room, this had us beset on all sides by both servers and customers. In most cases I would have passed on this table. I am not at all a fan of being in the middle of a room like this. However looking outside and realizing that we would be waiting at least an hour for a table otherwise I decided to put up with it.

With the place being packed the noise level was really high. Usually I loathe loud restaurants, I like being able to hear the people I’m dinning with, but somehow it just seemed to work in Boon. The decor was simple but had nice little touches that made me like it.

Even with the place being packed the service we received was very good. They gave us our own carafe for water, but we never had a chance to fill out own glasses as the service was so spot on. I was very impressed how even with a full house the servers kept things running smoothly. The only thing that happened that annoyed me was when the server made a lame excuse blaming the kitchen for how long our food took to come out. The wait for our entrees was not excessive and required no explanation. As a former chef it always bothers me when a server blames the kitchen for something. There is something just lame about blaming people that can’t defend themselves. The place is packed of course food isn’t gonna fly out. This aside Boon’s servers provided us with some of the best service I’ve ever had.

We were super hungry and decided to order two appetizer. We got the burrata with beet pesto and the truffle fries. Both were quite good

I love burrata, it might be my favorite cheese, this was a very good example of it. Great taste and texture, it could have been a bit creamier however. The beet pesto was a new concept to me. I hesitate to call it a pesto because it has next to nothing in common with a standard pesto. Maybe it spent some time in a mortar and pestle like a pesto should and that’s how it earned the name. It was however delicious and actually upstaged the burrata. Where this dish fell down to me was the fact that they serve it with two rather small slices of grilled bread, We could have used at least double the bread for all the burrata they gave us. Bread isn’t expensive so I doubt it was a food cost issue. It’s a minor quibble, but it really did dampen my enthusiasm for the dish.

When the truffle fries came out I was less than impressed. They were pretty thick cut. I personally love thin fries and can generally do without thick cut fries. I also tend to find that for truffle fries they almost need to be thin or you lose the truffle taste in the bland potato taste. In this case I was happily surprised. The fries were cooked perfectly, just the right ratio of crispy to potatoey I’m looking for, this is almost unheard of in my experience, another example of how talented the chef is. The fries were served with a house made ketchup and a garlic aioli. I am not a ketchup person at all. I almost never use it and would have skipped it here if my GF hadn’t made try it. Man would I have missed out. If all ketchup was like this I would put it on almost everything. The garlic aioli was good as well, but it had nothing on that ketchup. Seriously they should bottle and sell it.

For our mains I ordered the Herb Roasted Chicken and the GF ordered a slow braised pork dish that was served over polenta. The presentation on both of the dishes was outstanding and really made you want to dive right in.

My chicken was an airline breast (wing on) and was served over toasted farro with grilled radicchio on the side. The chicken was perfectly cooked and seasoned It was super juicy with just the right amount of crispness on the skin. I adore farro and this presentation was spot on. The radicchio tasted burned, which was odd because it wasn’t. Maybe the grill imparted the flavor via something burning below it. Sadly it was basically inedible. The chicken and farro more than made up for it and the dish was still a winner.

I didn’t get to try much of the pork dish, my GF gave me a small piece to try, and the look on her face, rapture, told me not to ask for any more. Luckily for me, and unluckily for her, she forgot her left overs at my house and I got to eat them the next day. Even reheated this dish was great. The polenta was very creamy and perfectly seasoned, so often I find it to be under seasoned. The pork itself was melt in your mouth tender and tasted sublime.

Though we were both rapidly approaching food comas the food was so good that we had to try dessert. She ordered a peach and berry cobbler and I got the buttermilk panna cotta. I don’t like peach, so I only tried a small bite of the cobbler topping, but it was really good.

The panna cotta sounded really intriguing to me. First off I’d never heard of a buttermilk panna cotta so I was already interested, then I saw that it was served with a blueberry thyme compote. Thyme in a dessert? I had to have it. The panna cotta was so silky smooth and the slight tartness from the buttermilk perfectly accented the sweetness of the blueberry compote. The thyme brought an interesting counterpoint to the compote and was a welcome addition.

Boon eat & drink is a great place to eat. The food and service are wonderful. It is well worth braving the crowd and loudness when the experience is this good. In truth its worth a drive for this meal.

We had looked at several different menus online and Bistro des Copains stood way out of the pack. We made reservations for 6:30 but were running late and didn’t get to the restaurant until 6:45. The host was very understanding and we were seated immediately.

When we arrived the restaurant was mostly empty and this worried me a little bit, however the place filled steadily and was packed by the time we left.

As you walk in you can see into the kitchen and it was pretty impressive with a beautiful lay out and wood burning oven. Overall I liked the decor, I found it to be bright and classy. It was however not very french. I didn’t really get the french bistro vibe, but I did like the vibe it did have. Even with all the tables full the volume never got too high to have a comfortable conversation.

The tables were covered in butcher paper and each had a small dish of fluer de sel with a little spoon in it, as well as a baby pepper grinder. Good food should not need either pepper or salt added, but I really like that they offered the best should you choose to add it. So many good restaurants totally miss this and put iodized salt and ground pepper on the table.

Even though I did not order off it I did look over the regular menu and it was really impressive, its not often that I want to eat almost everything on the menu, but here there were so many things I wanted I was glad that the prie frix menu limited my choices a bit.

We brought a bottle of wine and the server opened and served it well, but no offer of a decanter. This isn’t unusual, but when you are charging corkage I like to see it at least offered. However as corkage was only $10 i can’t complain too much.

The bread was a thick sliced french loaf served hot and served with a diced olive spread. I usually prefer butter, but the olive spread was amazing. I was totally taken aback by this and was very excited for the rest of the meal.

For my app/salad course I ordered the “Crispy hot purse of Gruyere cheese with mesclun greens, sun-dried cherries and citrus vinaigrette”. I really liked this dish though it really was two dishes in one. The gruyere purse was very good, though its hard to mess up deep fried pastry wrapped cheese. I enjoyed the salad under the purse even more than the purse oddly, this is not to say the purse was bad in any way just that the salad was so good. The mesclun greens were dressed perfectly and the slight tartness of the citrus vinaigrette was matched perfectly with the sweetness of the dried cherries.

My friends both ordered the “Roasted beet salad, micro greens, almonds, feta cheese and sherry vinaigrette”. I didn’t get to try this, but it looked very good. A nice sized serving piled high with lots of almonds and feta. Lots of altitude and very appealing to the eyes. They both loved it and all but licked their plates clean.

My main course was Pan roasted Liberty duck breast with blueberry sauce, baby turnips, and carrots with red rice from Camargue. I love duck, and duck with any fruit based sauce is always a winner in my book therefore ordering this entree was a no brainer. My faith was rewarded with an exceptional dish. I ordered the duck medium rare and it came out cooked perfectly. The skin was crispy and the thin layer of fat just below the skin was just starting to render and was just awesomely flavorful. The sauce was good, but if I hadn’t known it was a blueberry based sauce I would not have guessed it to be. The duck was served on a bed of red rice. The rice was well seasoned and properly toothsome. I had never had red rice before and would compare it to wild rice. Maybe not the best description, but close enough to pass along the idea.

The only part of this dish which really fell down in my opinion were the side veggies. The plate came with two baby carrots and 4 baby turnips. They were well seasoned, but undercooked to my tastes, The turnips were right on the edge and if the carrots had been more done i probably would not have noticed their rawness. However the carrots were basically raw. This is not to say they were gross or anything, I just feel that if your going to serve them warm as a side they should be cooked and not just warmed raw carrots.

One friend ordered the “Fish of the day bouillabaisse style, PEI mussels and rouille sauce”. Luckily both my friends in a sharing mood so we all got to try everything. The fish of the day happened to be cod, which I am a big fan of. The bouillabaisse was well flavored and rich. At first my friend wasn’t sure about pouring the rouille sauce into her bouillabaisse but I talked her into it. The sauce really accented the bouillabaisse and made the dish. The fish and mussels were perfectly cooked and the broth was so good it demanded bread to soak it all up. My friend is notorious for saving part of her meal to take to lunch the next day but this time her willpower failed and she finished the whole bowl.

My other friend got the “Roasted butternut squash risotto with asparagus, braised chard, parmesan cheese and herbs.” This dish was sublime, I know its cliche to say that, but there just isn’t a better way to say it. Risotto is so good when cooked correctly and yet so many places over cook it. Here the rice was flat out perfect and the flavor was just wonderful. I don’t think it was named correctly however. There were pieces of butternut squash in the risotto and they were very good, however the did not really share their flavor with the risotto. With the given title I was expecting a butternut squash flavored risotto, not a risotto with butternut squash pieces in it. Regardless this dish was easily the best of our three exceptional entrees.

For dessert we were given the whole dessert menu to choose from. I felt this was a nice touch and it was totally unexpected as most of the prie frix menus for restaurant week had a single set dessert from what i saw. I would have been happy with literally anything on the dessert menu but I ended up ordering the house made giant chocolate truffle. It came with a rasberry coulis, fresh berries and housemade whipped cream.

The truffle was so dense and rich it was hard to finish, but it was so good i powered through it… This dessert was five stars all the way, so decadent it should be illegal. The housemade whipped cream was divine too. Why do so many places mess this up?

My friends ordered the “Pear Tart Tatin”, and the Hazelnut Torte”. Both of these were very good, but my truffle just blew them away. The tart was cooked just right with the pears still having a little bite to them and the pastry being slightly doughy and wonderful. The torte looked like they had just chopped up a ton of hazelnut and stuffed them into a pastry shell. At a glance it was so tightly packed it looked like there was nothing binding it together. It tasted great, but due to the density was a little tough to get a fork through. Not really an issue except for the funny looks you get when your fork continually crashes into your plate.

Service was good. Our server was attentive and knowledgable. Our empty plates were cleared in a timely fashion, and our wine and water glasses were filled quickly. Bread was brought out and refilled several times.

Overall I would highly recommend Bistro des Copains. I can’t wait to come back and try the regular menu.

The one part of Vegas I love is all the world class restaurants. The selection and quality of restaurants in Vegas is hard to beat. Especially in such close proximity to each other. So when I go to Vegas I want to have at least one amazing meal. Cost be damned, thats what I’m looking for. On my recent trip it seemed I was the only one who had this interest and while I could go alone it just seems sorta pathetic.

Our last night in Las Vegas I convinced my best friend Manny(Sendog), and his brother Mike(Landolf) to go out to eat with me. We were staying in The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, and while I’m sure I could have talked them into hitting just about any Casino on the strip for dinner, I knew they wanted to hit the clubs so I decided to limit our choices to Mandalay. Mandalay is stuffed with good restaurants. I want to try them all… High on my list are StripSteak, Fleur De Lys, RM Seafood, and Aureole. Manny had taken one of our cocktail waitresses to RM for sushi so that was out. Steak had been mentioned all weekend so StripSteak seemed the likely choice, however, on a previous trip to Vegas I ate at Aureole and it was easily the best meal I’ve ever had so I was sorta leaning towards a return engagement.

On our way through the hotel lobby to the casino we passed the lounge entrance to Mix every trip. I had never given the place any thought since I didn’t realize it was a restaurant. However this time Manny stopped us at the door to look at the menu. He told us that he had eaten there on a previous trip and that he had enjoyed it. Looking at the menu I wasn’t impressed so I was trying to get Manny and Mike to move on down the road to the main cluster of restaurants. The Mix bouncer however had different idea. He jumped into our conversation and said you guys should eat here. This is an Alain Ducasse restaurant he is the top chef in the world. Now I think Ferran Adria and Thomas Keller among many others might have something to say about that. The bouncer had a point though, Alain Ducasse does have more Michelin stars than any other chef in the world.

Taking his recommendation we headed into the elevator. Everything else aside Mix is an impressive place to visit. Being on the 64th floor of The Hotel at Mandalay Bay the view is incredible. Since Mandalay is at the end/beginning of the strip you see the entire strip from Mix. There are two entrances to Mix a lounge entrance and a restaurant entrance. We came up through the lounge entrance and as such had to walk through the lounge to get to the restaurant. This place seemed like a great place to hang out, I will without a doubt be spending time in the lounge next time I hit Vegas. The restaurant has a very striking look. Its all done in some sort of off white, almost a gray. Which is not to say it looks dirty more of just white but not bright. This is helped by the muted lighting. The main dinning room is surrounded by thousands of hand blown clear glass bulb which serve to separate the restaurant from the lounge and kitchen. Inside the dinning room tables line the windows providing the full view of the strip there are also several “pods” that you can eat in. The “pods” remind me of a white version of the cars you ride in The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

Since we didn’t have reservations we could not get a window seat, however there was a pod available so we took that. The table settings were nice, all white and silver, as you would expect in a restaurant of this caliber. Our server was at our table very fast after we were seated and took our cocktail order. He returned shortly after to explain the menu to us. The menu is in two parts, the first part is dishes Alain Ducasse has made famous at his restaurants around the world and the second is the menu he developed exclusively for Mix. If this restaurant falls down anywhere for me it’s in the menu. I love food and as such when I see a menu I usually have a hard time deciding, often I can’t narrow my choices down to 3-4 let alone one. At Mix nothing really stood out to me in the entree section, and only one appetizer caught my eye. I found out later that they offer a tasting menu, but it was not offered to us, perhaps because it was Sunday night.

I had decided to order the dry aged fillet, and some sides, not surprisingly the steaks were a la carte. When our waiter returned to take our order Manny asked him what he thought was best on the menu. Our server recommended the Filet Mignon Rossini. This raised my suspicion a bit as this was the most expensive item on the menu by a good amount at $69. His description of the dish however showed that he was well educated in the menu but it also showed he really did like the dish. Upon his recommendation we all ordered the Rossini. We also ordered creamed spinach, the mix mac and cheese with ham, and a wild mushroom fricasee for sides. Seeing as how the one thing that stood out to me on the menu was an appetizer we had to order that as well so we ordered the Charcuterie sampler.

Pretty much as soon as our waiter took our order the bread course arrived. This bread basket was anything but ordinary. It contained 5 different types of bread, small french rolls, sliced sourdough, black and white sesame seed rolls, a walnut and raisin bread and focaccia. This was served with a lightly salted butter and peanut butter. Peanut butter, weird I know, but this was not ordinary peanut butter. For one it was sweet, but only barely and had a depth of flavor that I was not expecting. It was also chunky but only slightly as if they had almost ground the peanuts to smooth but stopped just shy. I personally felt the regular butter was too lightly salted, but I’m a salt lover so this is probably a personal issue. The peanut butter however was amazing and complimented the walnut bread perfectly.

Charcuterie sampler:

This sampler consisted of San Daniele secolo prosciutto, Italian rosemary cotto ham, assorted dried sausages. It was accompanied by finely sliced cornichons a house made whole grain mustard and lightly grilled sourdough bread. The meats on this plate were for lack of a better word perfect. The prosciutto stunned me, I love prosciutto its salty goodness is one of my favorite tastes. This prosciutto was sliced paper thin and was etherial in taste. It almost melted on your tongue and the taste was delicate but at the same time flat out awesome. I’m not a huge cotto fan as i find it to be to strong, again what we got was clearly cotto, but somehow something more, yet another amazing meat. The dried sausage we got was a duck sausage and while the serving was not in any way skimpy it wasn’t enough! I am not a fan of either pickles or mustard but both of these condiments were well done and complimented the charcuterie perfectly. This appetizer seriously raised the bar for what I expected from the main course and thankfully I was not dissapointed.

Filet Mignon Rossini

The Filet Mignon Rossini is a dry aged Filet topped with pan seared Foie Gras and sliced black truffle. The filet is served on a wine and beef reduction and with a side of “fork smashed” potatoes. As a disclaimer I hate mushrooms, I loathe them, they are without a doubt one of my most hated things on earth. I am also not a fan of liver, though up till this point I had never tried foie gras. You might be asking yourself why would a person who hates mushrooms and liver order this dish. Well the say what happens in Vegas… Seriously though I’m trying to breakdown whats left of my food dislikes, and I figured if there was a place to try new things this was it.

This dish looked impressive, I was expecting a small filet with a tiny slice of Foie Gras and a sliver or two of truffle. As you can see from the picture this was not the case at all. The Filet was a good size and the Foie Gras was at least an inch thick and almost covered the whole filet, the angle of the pic doesn’t show this well, but I promise seen from the top only a thin slice of the beef was visible. The truffle slices where seemingly everywhere.

I ordered my steak very rare as I almost always do. If you are not ordering your steaks rare, stop, just stop. Order chicken or go to Denny’s either way stop wasting perfectly good steak by over cooking it. The steak was cooked perfectly as I would expect it to be, but it still must be stated, this steak was cooked perfectly. I made sure my first bite had a little bit of everything to give the dish a full taste. I have eaten many fine meals in my life but this first bite blew me away. I sat there for the better part of two minutes just savoring the taste of this steak. It was one of if not the best steaks I’ve ever had and then you add the Foie and truffles, this should be illegal, seriously i almost didn’t want to continue but how could I stop when there was so much more to eat. The seared Foie Gras was so good I could probably live on nothing but. I saved some till the end of the meal which was a mistake as it wasn’t as good cold as it was hot but it was still very good.

The truffles were not at all what I expected though to be honest I’m not sure what I expected. They had an earthiness about them that was reminiscent of mushrooms but so much more. I cannot say I loved them, but I do not hate them. I did find that I liked them much better when eaten with the steak and foie gras than by themselves. Their taste was overpowering and not that pleasant to my palate on their own, but with the richness of the steak and foie gras their flavor was part of the symphony and not the discordant note they were on their own.

With the Rossini came a side of “fork smashed” potatoes. I figured this was just hype and that I would be getting rough mashed potatoes. What I got was exactly what was described. Shocking I know! The texture of these potatoes was only vaguely that of mashed potatoes, overall I loved the texture and I will be trying to recreate this as home. The texture really added to the dish and each bite was a reminder that this was not an everyday meal.

Manny had ordered several sides to go with our meal. I didn’t like the mac and cheese with ham, I don’t know what the flavor was but I did not like it at all. I think it might have been the ham they used combined with the aged cheese I’m sure they used. I would not recommend this dish, however Manny and Mike loved it and almost liked the plate clean. The creamed spinach was exceptional, I ate most of this myself as my compatriots were gorging on the mac and cheese. We also had the wild mushroom fricassee but I did not try it. I had tried enough new things for one meal. Mike also avoided this dish, as well as the truffles. I learned later he like me dislikes mushrooms. Manny ate and enjoyed the fricassee.

Oddly for food of this caliber and richness I was not stuffed and uncomfortable after the entree and was looking forward to dessert. Mike wasn’t into dessert, I think he was wanted to get to the clubs, but Manny said, and I agree 100%, that you can’t not get dessert with a meal like this.

As opposed to the regular menu the dessert menu has many items that interested me. I narrowed it down to the chocolate souffle, the napoleon, or the mix candy bar. In the end I went with the souffle since it came with pistachio ice cream and I love pistachio ice cream. Mike and Manny decided to share and order of the pistachio ice cream with caramelized nuts and a peanut butter banana sauce. My ice cream came on a bed of meringue curls, I have no idea how they made this but it was good. The souffle was ok, not bad in any way just not amazing. The ice cream was the same though Manny seemed to enjoy it more than I did.

After our dessert they brought us a house made madeline with a warm Nutella dipping sauce. This was a nice touch and they madelines were excellent though the sauce didn’t seem to add much in my opinion. Then came our check. It came to $370 and while not cheap considering we each had two cocktails, appetizers, filet mignon, and dessert I do not feel it was over priced at all.

While writing this post I had to look back at the Mix menu to get a few details and oddly enough having eaten there, several things on the menu now call to me. I guess I just wasn’t in a trusting mood when we sat down. I would love to try the Rack of Colorado Lamb, the Cod Brandade and the Pressed Chicken and Foie Gras among others. I guess in the future I need to through caution to the wind and just trust the bouncer. On our way down I had to shake the bouncers hand and thank him for his recommendation. He smiled and told me never doubt a fat man when he tells you about good food. I will take this lesson to heart.

Our country has a massive problem with illegal immigration.  We spend billions of dollars providing services for people that pay nothing into our system in taxes.  Even worse so many of these people send their paychecks back to mexico, that this source of money is the second largest influx into Mexico’s economy after oil.  Part of what makes a countries economy work is when people take their paychecks and then buy goods and services.  This employs other people and keeps the local economy rolling which in turn passes tax money up the chain and keeps out state and federal government running.  However when an illegal takes their paycheck and wires a huge chunk of it out of country this doesn’t happen.

So you have a large group of people that pay no taxes, spend very little money locally and pull billions out of the system in services.  You have drug cartels ramping up the violence on both sides of the border in an effort control more of the billions in drugs that cross the border every year.  To top it off Phoenix is now the #2 city in the world for kidnapping.

These things, and many more like them, should unite us in our efforts to control our southern border.  Instead we have large groups of people doing everything in their power to stop any sort of border control being enacted.   These people are easy to find just listen for their rallying cry, “comprehensive reform”.  Comprehensive reform is of course something we should strive for, however unless the tide of humanity is stopped at our southern border any sort of reform to our immigration policy is a joke.

Much like you have to stop the water before you can start cleaning up the mess, you have to seal the border before you can figure out how to fix the problems with the people currently here.  The Obama administrations reactions to the Arizona law on illegals is much akin to nothing.  Sending 1200 national guard desk jockeys to the Arizona Mexico border is like throwing a few paper towels on the floor and declaring the burst pipe fixed.  Then again I’m sure this is Bush’s fault.  What isn’t?