WARNING: may contain nuts

Folks, when I go to Vegas, you can always tell. I always come back with some crazy stories, usually a couple extra pounds I now have to starve off, and occasionally a new tattoo-  I’m just kidding. I’d never do that: starving is for losers..

And I have a few rules for these semiannual visits; one rule is never take a pamphlet from a guy on the street, another is no buffets… just don’t… it’s like crack for rednecks, these places. I’ve sat there and watched them — they can’t stop. It’s like watching an animal drown itself, it’s horrible. Stay away! My final rule is always try something I’m a bit scared of. The incredible thing is that this was a restaurant that was inside a casino! The candy coated wonderland of commercially proven eateries! This was new- and it was frightening as all heck.  It was KJ Dim Sum and Seafood. Inside the Rio.

My first clue that I was in for a ride was that we were the only non-Asian people in the entire place. We went in for the dim sum, because who doesn’t love a little nosh. And they must be good at it, after all Dim Sum was right there in the name. When we gave our Dim Sum order to the waiter he laughed.  He actually laughed and said “we have no dim sum today. It’s Tuesday”. As if we had just said the stupidest thing ever. Ok. I was taken aback but I was still hungry so we scanned the menu for other offerings we could recognize and spotted something that looked perfect for adventurous tourists, the Appetizer Combo. “Oh, you won’t like that, don’t order that.”  Well now I wanted it so I asked, why not. He said, “It’s traditional, like medicine, it’s like some duck and tofu and tripe, and penis and”…what-what? Penis? I asked my table mate: did he say penis? Cuz it sounded like he said penis. Was that a joke, I asked? “No joke, you won’t like. It’s penis. It’s medicine for Chinese men”. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so sure, so positive that I, a little American female, would be unable to appreciate the sheer masculine power and appeal of a traditional banquet of flambéed phallus, and laughed at my estrogen imbued low-ness, well maybe I wouldn’t have ordered it. But….I’m me. Just in case we also ordered the orange peel beef and creamy walnut shrimp, which were both, by the way, delicious. But we were focused on our penile platter, our anatomical amuse bouche.

So, we get our combo, served with a dish of soy based dipping sauce. Lovely presentation. It was the little bowl of stewed wieners though that was so menacing. Once you get past the squeamishness and “eeeee” factor they are a lot like tripe, not made out of meat, exactly, kind of an inedible be it oddly shaped chunk of octopus. It was Lousy, in fact, as most medicine tends to be. I guess the broth was ok, but think about what’s been floating in it made it a toughy… and the man at the table, who should have been able to come to terms with our dinner, being in kind of his own element, was even more terrified than me. No, I had to lead this weird wiener-fest. After all, eating this way is supposed to grant health, vitality, long life, and power!  And after tasting these things I’m thinking they can keep it!  I don’t wanna live forever if it means eating periodic portions of pig putz. Although I did feel some peer pressure from the waiter, whose sensible yet sexist advice I had ignored, to make a dent in the pile. For dessert, the quivering cubes of coconut and red bean Jell-O were a wobbly reward after cartilaginous carnal cutlets.

“You’ve been great,” I say to our waiter as I take his smiling picture. “You lot of fun. You come back.” Kind and welcome words from a man appropriately named Wang.