Is it possible that Bandito Latin Kitchen and Cantina may never open? According to a source close to Mike Minor, the Chef has given up being involved with the project and has told friends and family that he couldn’t get behind the restaurant because it wasn’t going to have his vision of a unique Mexican-inspired BBQ and was going to become another “Americanized flavorless restaurant with super sweet alcoholic drinks.”
Ken Harman, the owner and partner of the Bandito Restaurant released a very diplomatic statement however, “While the two men remain friends and have a mutual respect for one another, they were not able to come to an agreement on the final vision for the project. Harman remains on track to open therestaurant in late April or early May. Mike is one of the most talented chefs in the city and I wish him nothing but success for his next project. We are moving forward with Bandito, though we are eliminating the BBQ aspects of the menu, which reflected Mike’s signature cooking style. Bandito will still aim to serve the best Latin food in town, with a heavy emphasis on the food of Mexico, along with great cocktails and service all within a friendly, neighborhood restaurant vibe.”
This creates a unique problem for the restaurant, as its investors and supporters were looking forward to it opening specifically because of Chef Minor, who had been experimenting with his unique style of Mexican BBQ dishes in his food truck, including burnt end burritos with Oaxacan barbecue aioli, cole slaw, duck fat fries and Monterey Jack cheese; smoked chicken enchiladas with Oaxacan string cheese, caramelized onions, mole Colorado, cotija cheese and crema; and al pastor sopes with crispy corn masa, al pastor meat, guacamole and habanero pineapple salsa.
The website as of this writing hasn’t even changed mentioning that Chef Minor is behind the genius of the restaurant, and even Eater Las Vegas implied that it might not even open despite the press release. It’s still slated to open this spring, but with only a few months to find a new chef or create a non-chef inspired menu, one can only hope that it doesn’t become another The Mixx disaster.
Brett Eldredge, CMA’s New Artist of the Year in 2014, will be the first country entertainer to hit the stage in Las Vegas’ newest entertainment venue Park Theater at Monte Carlo Resort and Casino Friday, April 28. Popular singer-songwriter Tyler Farr is scheduled to kick off the evening’s festivities at 8 p.m.
A 2016 ACM Male Vocalist of the Year nominee, Eldredge has six consecutive No. 1 country singles to his credit including his latest chart-toppers, “Wanna Be That Song,” “Drunk On Your Love” and “Lose My Mind,” from his sophomore album Illinois. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Album Chart as well as No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200 Album Chart. Eldredge has earned his place among country’s finest young artists due to his poignant songwriting and soulful vocal style.
Ray Charles, Ronnie Dunn, and Frank Sinatra were the “big voices” that influenced Eldredge in his younger days. When his parents bought him a guitar and a small sound system, he didn’t immediately take to the instrument – “I never could sit still long enough to learn it,” he admits – but the sound system and its wireless microphone became a cornerstone of his early musical training. By age 15, Eldredge was a performer in demand for local functions. “I really grew to love the feel of the crowd,” he says.
After he finished college, Brett moved to Nashville, relearning the guitar and becoming a singer-songwriter. Brett’s talent as a songwriter let him to work with some big country music legends, including “Whispering” Bill Anderson. Brett co-wrote Gary Allan’s hit, “I think I’ve Had Enough.” When Brett broke out on his own, his first three singles charted, with his third, “Don’t Ya,” reached the Top 20 of the Hot Country Songs. The song reached the No.1 spot on the Country Airplay charts in Aug. 2013, the same month he released his debut, “Bring You Back. Brett’s rising success in the music world has led him to tour with some big names. He was on the Red Tour with Taylor Swift in 2013, the 2014 Pain Killer Tour with Little Big Town and, in 2015, he joined Darius Rucker for the Southern Style Tour. That year, he co-headlined the Suits & Boots Tour with Thomas Rhett.
The new 5,200-seat Park Theater, with its industry-leading audio and visual technology, provides artists an exclusive space to create one-of-a-kind productions where every seat allows guests to feel up close and personal. The new venue is the first step in the reimagination of Monte Carlo. The transformation, taking place over the next two years, will include two distinct hotel experiences – a Las Vegas version of the Sydell Group’s famed NoMad Hotel and the launch of a new luxury hotel named Park MGM. Each hotel will feature fully redesigned hotel guest rooms and innovative food & beverage offerings.
When The Mixx was planning its opening, I was one of those people who was insanely interested in going to try it. Learning that Chef Bryan Ogden was going to return to Las Vegas and make an innovative new restaurant off the strip got my culinary juices going. Describing itself as a “premiere dining destination for locals,” this huge endeavor boasted that they would have amazing DJs from all around the world, and a menu to match this mix.
However, the restaurant that among other things, promised that you’d be able to “see the chef and interact with the chef” soon lost their chef and entire culinary team almost instantly after opening. Chef Ogden and owner JP Teresi did not get along well according to staff who said they were at each other’s throats constantly, with Teresi often second guessing how things should be cooked and pretending to play chef.
I had wanted to try the restaurant a while back, but I almost never try a new restaurant until a few months after opening. Now with the Chef gone, I wish I would have tried it as it was supposed to have been.
When you go in there, you notice that the restaurant is huge, and made to seem even bigger by the fact it’s virtual empty.
Good news is that you can always get a table.
The three times I stopped by to look over it, there wasn’t a single person anywhere to be seen. When myself and my guest dined there, there was two people at the bar and another person eating in the dining room– and the place almost echoed with the pain of previous diners.
The menu makes almost no sense to anyone who has no idea what they are doing, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that the barely dressed waitresses didn’t even attempt to explain the menu. Our waitress, wearing a strip-club inspired bustier wasn’t familiar with the menu at all, and seemed almost confused what the mix-and-match menu was about. She didn’t even try to explain it but instead threw our menus down in front of us with a tennis-like grunt.
From what I could understand, with the “Fresh Market Menu” you could somehow create your own dishes using ingredients, and then tell the Chef to mix them all up in a sauce use the Mongolian grille in the middle of the restaurant, and hope for the best.
She also started our dinner with bringing us a set of completely dirty plates, which should have made us want to leave instantly.
I decided to try a bunch of the appetizers, which unlike the strange “do you own” part of the menu, looked pretty good.
It was at that point that John Curtas, the famed Las Vegas food reviewer noticed that I was at The Mixx, and sent me the following message: “Run!”
We tried the Mini Advocado Burgers, the Mac and Cheese Gratin, Chicken Lettuce Wrap, the Ahi Tuna Tartare and the Truffle Fries at first.
The mini-Burgers (aka sliders) were overcooked, and used what seemed to be cold store bought buns that were ripped apart straight out of the bag. Not a good sign for a restaurant that was attempting to have a “high-class” cuisine, when it’s obvious they were buying their bread from the local Albertson’s.
The Asian inspired Ahi Tuna Tartare wasn’t horrible, and definitely the best part of the Appetizers, but at the same time, with the strip-worthy price of $16, it should have been a lot better and more unique. At least the fish seemed somewhat fresh.
I am not sure what they were trying to do with the truffle-fries to be absolutely honest. They were shoe-string potato fries that were almost inedible from whatever rancid oil was used to fry it, and then dosed with what I can only assume was the salty tears of whatever cook was forced to pretend to be a trained chef.
Of course, they were cold from the start, as shoe-string fries aren’t very good at keeping warmth in a huge frozen empty establishment as this. We found the fries strange, because in the pictures in previous reviews, they weren’t shoe-string sized and actually looked better.
My son wanted the Mac N’ Cheese, and immediately told us that it “tasted like poo.” I assumed he just didn’t like the cauliflower and smoked bacon, so I tried it myself, to almost correct him that it tasted like S$&t. It was absolutely horrifyingly nasty, and the cauliflower cheese mix seemed perhaps to have come from the throwup of dog that ate too much Velveeta.
The Chicken Lettuce wraps were presented with some sort of lettuce that may have been found in the dumpster or just had wilted out of shame. The cremini mushrooms mixed with pickled fresno chiles just didn’t seem to mix well, although drowning them with Hoisin sauce to put them out their misery made us all happy.
At that point we took John Curtas’ advice and decided it would be the best idea to leave. Even though were were only one of two parties in the entire restaurant, it took forever to get our check, and didn’t help that when it was being presented, our waitress’ breasts decided to release themselves from their bondage and require her to adjust them back into place. My girlfriend got pretty upset as I started to chuckle at this slip.
If The Mixx would like to become a strip-club, they might actually do better.
However, as a restaurant, they are lacking in every way possible – including expensive price points that are barely inedible off the strip. It could be one of the worst conceived restaurants I’ve seen in a long time, and I highly doubt will be around much longer. I assume the staff has given up already, and that’s why the service is horrible. As one of the waitresses at another establishment told us, she’s never actually seen more than few people in there, and that the staff of TheMixx regularly eats next door at the Cheesecake Factory.
Koch Brother’s lackey and part-time man slave, Juan Martinez, who is also the State Director of “Americans For Prosperity,” a political action committee that tries to convince people that smoking is healthy, gasoline is drinkable and that McDonald’s is healthy food, has made it clear he will be bribing… I mean donating, money to Senator Heller to vote for Betsy DeVos.
Already Senator Heller issued the following statement: “Due to her commitment to improve our nation’s school system for all students and her focus on increasing parental engagement, I am supporting Betsy DeVos as our nation’s next Secretary of Education. She shares many of the same points of view as Governor Sandoval when it comes to our nation’s school systems. Having his support weighed heavily on my decision to vote for her confirmation. Betsy DeVos understands the need to bring back education control to state and local boards, and I look forward to working with her to empower our parents, teachers, students, and local education officials. As the husband of a teacher, I believe Betsy DeVos is the right choice for this position,” said United States Senator Dean Heller.
However, the Las Vegas Sun reported a grass-roots campaign was looking to prevent this:
Sen. Dean Heller is feeling pressure at home as constituents, Democrats and others unhappy with the new Donald Trump administration stage protests and an aggressive campaign to sway the Nevada Republican’s votes on presidential appointees and other issues.
A coalition of labor, women, minority, religious and environmental activists planned vigils in Las Vegas and Reno this evening, calling for unity and urging the state’s congressional delegation to stand up to what they describe as “American values currently under attack by the Trump administration.”
Hundreds of people turned out in Las Vegas and Reno last weekend to protest Trump’s travel ban after thousands rallied on both ends of the state for last month’s Women’s March. Police estimated 10,000 in Reno alone.
“People are engaged and looking for ways to get involved. I think this is only going to continue to get bigger and bigger,” Annette Magnus of the Las Vegas-based Battle Born Progress coalition said Thursday.
Great news for journalists, bloggers and anyone who loves freedom of speech in Nevada. Superstart attorney Marc J. Randazza has successfully defended the Nevada anti-SLAPP statute in constitutional challenge to its validity in Shapiro v. Welt.
Nevada’s original anti-SLAPP statute, Nev. Rev. Stat. 41.637 et seq., adopted in 1993. Its protections were limited to speech “in furtherance of the right to petition,” and thus it did not provide adequate protections to free speech rights in Nevada (and by extension, beyond, See Adelson v. Harris, 774 F.3d 803 (2014)).
With the signing of Senate Bill 286 into law on June 3, 2013, that changed. It now protects “the right to free speech in direct connection with an issue of public concern.”
For those who aren’t familiar with anti-SLAPP Statues, they are laws that help prevent malicious or frivolous lawsuit that chills speech. In many cases, large corporations, or those with money would sue defendants just to prevent them from telling their opinion, or the truth. Under most such statutes, the person sued makes a motion to strike the case because it involves speech on a matter of public concern. The plaintiff then has the burden of showing a probability that they will prevail in the suit — meaning they must make more than allegations of harm and actually show that they have evidence that can result in a verdict in their favor. If the defendant prevails on the motion, many of the statutes allow them to collect reasonable attorney’s fees from the plaintiff.
In Shapiro v. Welt, the appellant challenged the constitutionality of the statute. Given that the statute relied in large part on the Washington Anti-SLAPP statute, this was of some concern. The Washington Supreme Court struck down the Washington statute as unconstitutional in Davis v. Cox, 183 Wash. 2d 269, 274, 351 P.3d 862 (2015). However, in 2015, in response to a legislative challenge to the Nevada law, we amended the statute to conform more with California than Washington. That change, however, did not guarantee the survival of the Nevada law.
Now, with Shapiro, the Nevada law faces no similar fate.
A secondary issue in the case, and an important one, is that the Nevada Supreme Court recognized that Nevada and California Anti-SLAPP jurisprudence are essentially one body of law. This is not entirely new law. In John v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist., 125 Nev. 746 (2009), the Nevada Supreme Court held similarly, but this was discussing the prior version of the law.
The Shapiro court reversed the lower court’s decision that the Defendant’s speech was a matter of public concern. While this, on its surface, might seem to be a “bad” decision for free speech proponents, I don’t see it as that troubling.
The Anti-SLAPP law requires a two-step inquiry. First, is the speech a “matter of public concern?” Second, does the case have enough merit to move forward? This appeal was all about “matter of public concern.” While this is not a high bar, the Supreme Court found that the trial court did not engage in enough inquiry to figure that out.
The good news is that the Court reaffirmed the John v. Douglas County pronouncement that Nevada courts should rely on the rich body of California case-law in interpreting the Nevada statute. Given the scant case-law we have in Nevada, this is a godsend. California has interpreted “matter of public concern” as extremely broad. Meanwhile, I have seen Nevada trial court judges looking at the standard as much more narrow.
This is a good decision that brings more predictability to Anti-SLAPP litigation under the Nevada statute, and ultimately will function to keep Nevada’s free speech protections aligned with its free-speech-protective neighbor.
Randazza Legal Group represented amici curiae, the Nevada Press Association, TripAdvisor, and Yelp in this matter.
Goldman Sachs seems to not be interested in giving money to finance Mark Davis’ $1.9 Billion NFL Stadium, once again making it clear that the Raiders may never leave Oakland to Las Vegas.
Just yesterday CEO of Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson said he would be backing out of financing the new Las Vegas Raiders Stadium, but some were holding onto hope that perhaps the rumor that Goldman Sachs would put in the money.
With only $750 Million guaranteed from the State from a raise in room tax, this means that there is no one else left to “donate” money to this project.
“Without Adelson, there isn’t a deal,” Fenno reported on Twitter late Tuesday morning. Vince Sapienza of Las Vegas TV station KVVU confirmed the news after reportedly speaking with Goldman Sachs representatives.
Some people are saying already that after backing out of the deal, Adelson perhaps made a secret phone call to Goldman Sachs, and made it clear they shouldn’t be involved. However, a spokesperson, of course denied that this was the case – even though the companies do a lot of business together.
Sheldon Adelson, billionaire and CEO of Sands Corp., pulled out of the funding deal for a $1.9 billion NFL stadium for the Raiders in Las Vegas, according to ESPN. Adelson had committed to funding $650 million toward the project, but reportedly withdrew after being excluded from the team’s recent lease proposal which made their lease only $1.
Adelson said that the deal, “sent shockwaves through the community,” and his representatives implied it was a betrayal to Las Vegas.
After Adelson announced he would no longer offer financial support to the proposed venue, the Raiders said the team would raise its contribution to $1.15 billion to cover Adelson’s portion. The shakeup has led other investors to reconsider their commitments, potentially putting the project in jeopardy, ESPN reported.
Any lease agreement for the Las Vegas stadium hinges on NFL ownership approval of the Raiders relocation request, which they formally filed earlier this month. The NFL has been hesitant to consider Las Vegas for a franchise because of the city’s legalized gambling industry, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said that he will not prevent a team’s move to Las Vegas.
Steve Sisolak, the Clark County Commissioner has written a statement condemning the “Muslim Ban” issued by Donald Trump
I stand with my fellow Nevadans and other elected officials around the country in defending our laws and our Constitution. When we close our borders to those seeking refuge from oppressive regimes, we cease to be the America our forefathers envisioned. I strongly condemn the President and will work with our state and federal leaders to make sure our country continues to be a safe place for people of all races and religions.
The Save Red Rock (SRR) petition, created by a grassroots citizen’s organization, generated an outpouring support of concerned Clark County residents as it surpassed more than 30,000 signatures to preserve the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (RRCNCA).
SRR’s initiative, for more than a decade, is to protect the rural and recreational scenic nature of Red Rock Canyon. Additionally, one of its goals is to educate the public to con- sider the long term effects this 5,000 proposed home development by Gypsum Resources LLC’s (Gypsum), will bring to this fragile desert ecosystem.
Gypsum is asking for approval to rezone and destroy land, located on the top of the mountain directly south of the Red Rock visitor’s center.
The SRR group, led by Heather Fisher, owner Vegas Cyclery and Escape Adventures, expresses the location will not be able to sustain the impact of the high density development, causing increased pollution, traffic and raised water costs for all Vegas Valley residents which will pose a pronounced threat to the notable tourist attraction.
Save Red Rock encourages the public to share its concerns during the next Clark County Planning Commission meeting, scheduled for Feb. 22, 9a.m., as the commissioners decide on the fate of Red Rock Canyon. This crucial meeting follows the SRR and Clark County Commission’s newly scheduled court date, of Feb. 9, where Save Red Rock will be fighting the County’s claim to bar the public from raising issues with the development.
Supporters are encouraged to advocate and support SRR by signing the petition, emailing their County Commissioners and donating to the cause at www.SaveRedRock.com.
“Save Red Rock is encouraged by the support of the community, nature lovers, and pub- lic rights advocates, who all show their desire to protect the rural character of Red Rock Canyon and this majestic feature located in our own backyard. Building a master planned development is not sustainable at this location. Red Rock is filled with recreation, wildlife and peaceful trails, providing a serene get-away from the city that we want to be able to share with our friends and family for years to come,” explains Heather Fisher, SRR president.
This past Friday, Mayor Goodman welcome big time the year of the Cock with Fashion Show in a special opening ceremony and ribbon cutting affair. To kick off the celebration, guests were invited to partake on a journey to China and experience cultural performances by the Sichuan Song and Dance Theater Company. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman began the festivities and welcomed visitors and guests to Las Vegas.
Distinguished dignitaries including Michael Goldsmith (Vice President of International Marketing of LVCVA), Jim Heilmann (Senior General Manager of Fashion Show), and Xiao Xiayong, (Cultural Consul of Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco), along with Mayor Goodman joined together for the ribbon cutting, painting of the eye ceremony, and authentic lion dance to welcome the Year of the Cock.
Guests were then treated to a runway show from Saks Fifth Ave sporting this year’s best looks in hues of red and gold. To round out the celebration, the lion dance continued on with a ceremonial blessing of the department stores where team members fed the dragon red envelopes to bring good luck for the year.
restaurant in late April or early May. Mike is one of the most talented chefs in the city and I wish him nothing but success for his next project. We are moving forward with Bandito, though we are eliminating the BBQ aspects of the menu, which reflected Mike’s signature cooking style. Bandito will still aim to serve the best Latin food in town, with a heavy emphasis on the food of Mexico, along with great cocktails and service all within a friendly, neighborhood restaurant vibe.”
