Cheer Up With Food

In the past few years there have been a rising popularity of tapas style restaurants in Las Vegas.   Forte European Tapas Bar & Bistro  has got to be one of the top tapas places in town!  Just upon entering I saw vibrant European art all over the bistro and the music selection was great - I really wanted to dance, but of course had to eat!  Forte serves a variety of tapas/comfort foods from regions all throughout Europe like Russia , Spain , and Bulgaria .   To see more of their menu, click here : A cocktail to start off the night.  To see what they make, click here :  Plov  ( Uzbeki style vegetarian pilaf )- the spices used to make this plov was pleasing to my palate!  Eating any type of rice is my weakness: Adjarski Khachapurri - this is a traditional Georgian boat-shaped bread filled with Georgian style pickled cheeses and a cracked egg.  Forget pizza, I could eat this all day: Their clay pot...

I went to a family dinner (with my good friends from UNLV) at Reggie & Dan's place.  Isn't this set up nice?  The main dish was  borscht  - a common Eastern European soup.  Saying the name of this soup may sound harsh, but it doesn't taste like it!  The main ingredient may be a beetroot or tomato and can be served hot or cold.  This version was cold with cabbage and potatoes.  To add more flavor, put however you want of paprika and sour creme: I ate this soup with toasted bread rubbed with a clove of garlic.  That was the first time I've seen that!  I rubbed a lot of garlic into my bread haha... I think this way is better than eating garlic bread because you choose how much garlic you want on your bread!

Reggie introduced me to Jones Market & Deli - they only sell Eastern European foods. Everything looked and felt so foreign (esp. when Reggie was talking Russian to the workers) to me because I'm just used to going to Asian markets! Later I went to her place for a lovely dinner. Here's what we had: This milk chocolate is full of pores, so when you eat it, it kinda taste fluffy! This design looks way more appealing than Hershey's. This lavsh bread is like a tortilla. You can eat pretty much anything with it. This cavier was SUPER salty. I couldn't put too much on my bread like Reggie, she loves salt way more than me! These were our four main courses. I never realized how much similarities these foods had to certain Filipino dishes as in the taste (same amount of vinegar used) and ingredients (the dish with eggplants reminded me of the veggie dish, Pinakbet . This is Reggie's kitten, Pushkin, he was begging for food the whole time we were eating. It was har...

On Orthodox Easter, Reggie introduced to me some of the traditional Russian foods eaten for this holiday. I kind of had an idea of what she'd prepare because she made me side foods before like carrots and onions marinated in vinegar. I asked her to help me out with this entry (her words are in italic) because I don't remember everything that was in each dish. Thanks Reggie Name: Kvas Contents: fermented rye bread, carbonation (can be compared to American Root Beer) Kvas tasted way better than root beer! The awards on the side of the bottle proved it: Name: Venigrette Contents: potatoes, pickles, sauerkraut, beans, beets, vinegar, & a little bit of veg. oil I absolutely loved the strong vinegar taste to this salad, I miss it: Name: Olivye Contents: potatoes, carrots, sausage, peas, eggs, pickles, sour creme & mayonaise, pepper & salt. This potato salad tasted like any other potato salad I've tasted except it was lightly flavored. I liked it this way because...