The southwest area of Las Vegas has recently blown up with some wonderful eateries popping up left and right within days and footsteps from each other. Cheeburger Cheeburger is one of those eateries that recently opened and has already earned a cult following in the Vegas Valley. So far, this is the only Las Vegas location, but I hope that we’ll be seeing more of them pop up in the valley soon.

A Wall of Fame greets you as soon as you open its doors. On this wall are dozens of pictures of burger lovers that have conquered their One Pounder and another set of pictures for younger burger lovers that have conquered the Half Pounder. The bubble gum pink walls, glass block, metal legged vinyl covered chairs and formica surfaced tables all add to the diner-esque feel of this burger joint. Definitely family friendly, Cheeburger Cheeburger makes you feel as if you were transformed back to the 50’s where small diners such as this one, was THE place to hang out with your friends or family and enjoy a wonderful meal and each other’s company.

Cheeburger Cheeburger is basically a “how-you-want-it-is-how-we-make-it” kinda place. From their burgers to their sandwiches to their shakes, you are in control.

Let’s start with their shake menu. You can either order a single flavor or combine a bunch of flavors to come up with your own personal flavor. As the sign says, there are 378,000 combinations. With all the different flavors that they offer, I don’t doubt it.

We kept it simple this time. Here’s a picture of 2 of the shakes that we ordered: Oreo Cheesecake Shake (left) and White Chocolate with Oreos Shake (right). All of their shakes start off using Dryer’s ice cream. SUPER YUMMY with chunks of oreos at the bottom. They even served it to us in the the metal cup that they made it in. Cute.

If you’d rather have a soda with your meal instead of a shake, they offer Pepsi and only Pepsi, that you can tweak with cherry syrup, chocolate syrup or vanilla syrup. So if Cherry Pepsi is your thing, they can make it. Chocolate Cola more your style, they can make that too.

On your table, in a plastic basket of other condiments and a set of trivia cards to keep you occupied as you wait for your food, is a bottle of their Zesty Seasoning. A mixture of salt, pepper, granulated garlic, use this sparingly over your burger and your fries and rings, if you want an extra dose of seasoning.

Now for the burgers.

First, you choose what size of a burger you want/need. They’ve got 5 different sizes: the Famous Pounder (actually 20 oz.), Delirious (3/4 lb.), Serious (1/2 lb.), Semi-Serious (1/3 lb.) and the Classic (5.5 oz.).

Then you choose how you want it cooked – medium, medium well or well.

Then you choose a cheese if you want cheese on your burger.

Then you go crazy and pick whatever toppings you want on your burger. Whatever you want. Don’t be shy – if you wall all 25 or so toppings, go for it – it’s included in the burger price. There’s really no limit to your imagination here. They also offer 3 “premium” toppings (bacon, sauteed mushrooms and grilled onions) for about a buck a piece.

After you’ve ordered your burger to your liking, you wait – for a bit – while they create your special burger. (This is when you make use of those trivia cards that they place on your table.)

It’s definitely worth the wait, as what you get is a burger that’s so close to one you’d make at home. Served on a roll instead of your usual sesame seed hamburger bun, the hamburger patty looks as if it were hand shaped and cooked to perfection without the excess grease that you’d get at some random drive thru burger place. Good food is definitely worth the wait.

Serious, medium well, pepper jack, 2 onion rings, grilled garlic, bacon

Semi-Serious, medium well, cheddar, 2 onion rings, bacon

Semi-Serious, medium well, with Swiss Cheese, tomato, bacon, guacamole and mayo

Best of Both Basket

A sampler of all 5 sauces for the rings and fries:

Texas horseradish (top left), Chile Lime (top right),

Creamy Cheese (center), Habanero Jelly (bottom left) and Creamy Jalapeno (bottom right)

*****

Cheeburger Cheeburger

8390 South Rainbow Boulevard

Las Vegas, NV

Phone: (702) 220-3912

Check out their website for their other locations across the US.

I’m taking a break from writing about food to tell you about my new favorite adult beverage – FRUITY BEER. My new favorite being Lindeman’s Framboise. (It’s the one on the right in the picture below.)

Delirium Tremens & Framboise

I’m not a real big fan of beer, but I’ll drink it if 1) it’s icy cold or 2) it’s an icy cold Corona with Red Bull. But being that I was at the Yard House and they have a gazillion beers on tap, I just had to try something other than what readily available at any supermarket. So I decided to try the Framboise at the suggestion of a semi-beer-connoisseur friend that was with me.

The Framboise, served in a goblet at Yard House, embodies every essence of raspberries - its color, aroma and flavor. A light red, not quite pink, in color, it had the sweet-tartness of raspberries and at first seemed like cabonated raspberry juice. Kinda like a wine cooler, but without the cheap-wine-cooler-headache-after-effect. It is light, crisp and clean. Definitely refreshing! Perfect for summers in the desert!

This beer is sooooo addicting that I picked up a couple of bottles at BevMo! in Arizona when I was there (and I gladly shared – this time) and I also picked up a couple more bottles the other day at my neighborhood Lee’s Discount Liquor here in Las Vegas. At Yard House the Framboise costs $9.00 per goblet (half price during Happy Hour which is Monday through Friday from 4pm to 6pm). At BevMo! and Lee’s Discount Liquor it costs about $9.00 for a 750ml bottle or $6.00 for a 12 oz. bottle. The bottle that it comes in looks like a bottle of wine – it even has a cork!

I wonder how Framboise would taste like if it were FROZEN - like a granita…. or ice pops… Looks like I’ll be doing some experimenting….

*****

Yard House

Turnberry Town Square

6593 Las Vegas Boulevard South

Las Vegas, NV 89119

Phone: (702) 734-9273

*****

BevMo!

7230 West Ray Road, Suite 4

Chandler, AZ 85226

Phone: (780) 961-9100

*****

Lee’s Discount Liquor

10935 South Eastern Avenue

Henderson, NV 89052

And on this farm he had great food E-I-E-I-O…

With a Fontina Burger (outside) here

And a Fontina Burger (inside) there

here a Pesto Chicken Sandwich

there a BBQ Chicken Pizza (house specialty)

here some Fried Zucchini Slices

there some Onion Rings

Young Joe Johnston had a farm… E-I-E-I-O…

When I saw Guy Fieri’s (of Diners, Drive Inns and Dives on the Food Network fame) segment on Joe’s Farm Grill, I had to give the place a try. Joe’s Farm Grill takes fast food and “eating local” to a different level. Their offerings are what you would basically find at any fast food establishment – burgers, fries, pizza and shakes. But they do it with a twist. They use locally grown beef and chicken, along with vegetables grown on their own farm. With the use of such fresh ingredients, the food has to be good.

You can be a puss and order a basic burger. We opted to try the Fontina Burger that had roasted red peppers, grilled mushrooms, arugula, pesto and fontina. Let me first say that the burger was good… but… I was a bit disappointed. It seemed as if the other ingredients overshadowed the actual burger and made it seem more like a vegetarian sandwich. There was too much going on with the burger. Too much “action”. Maybe if they added 1/8 of a pound more beef, it might have made a difference. The other flavors were good though and melded well together. It would have made a great roasted salad.

The Pesto Chicken Sandwich was amazing – Gruyere, grilled red peppers, grilled mushrooms and farm-made pecan pesto, served with a side of cole slaw. Now this was really good. Where the other ingredients overshadowed the burger in the Fontina Burger, the other ingredients served a supporting role in this sandwich and made the chicken breast shine. The chicken was perfectly cooked, delicately seasoned and juicy.

We also tried their house specialty grilled pizza, the BBQ Chicken pizza – chicken, bacon, blue cheese, tomato, red onion and bbq sauce. I’m not a big fan of bbq sauce on pizza, so I was a bit skeptical. But this was pretty good. The thin, crispy crust was charred just so and the toppings were double the amount you’d expect on a pizza. And it was HUGE. More than enough to feed 2 people or 4 as a first course.

Because our eyes were bigger than our stomaches , we also ordered their Fried Zucchini Slices and their Onion Rings. Perfectly fried to a golden brown, though in a non-greasy way. Crispy, crunchy, and definitely not over-battered. They serve the zucchini with a basic marinara sauce and we asked for some ranch dressing for the onion rings.

Thank goodness we didn’t order their shakes or else we definitely would have had to take a nap under the shade of the trees before heading home. We’ll save the shakes for next time. Or the next time after that. The line here gets pretty long, pretty fast, but it’s worth it.

*****

Joe’s Farm Grill

3000 East Ray Road

Gilbert, Arizona

(480) JOE-GRIL

(480) 563-4745

Earlier this year, I flew out to Arizona for the weekend, for my soon-to-be (at that time) sister-in-law’s bridal shower. Although she knew about the shower, she didn’t know what we had in store. Hints about Nogales, Mexico and pitchers of margaritas served as a decoy to what we really had in store for her. We “accessorized” the bride-to-be’s outfit with a pink feather boa, gaudy tiara and blindfold, then whisked her away, semi-abduction style, for a day with the girls before she kissed her single days goodbye.

We spent the early afternoon at the spa, where we set up our little party area with flowers and our version of spa food – fruits and veggies, cheese and crackers, and let’s not forget the chocolate and at least 3 bottles of bubbly…

After hour-long drool producing massages, followed by hour-long facials and by-this-time tipsy manicures and pedicures, the 6 of us somehow made our way to dinner at Sushi Eye in Motion for more girl bonding time and even more drinkies.

Sushi Eye in Motion is a fairly new sushi restaurant in the Gilbert-Chandler area, having just opened in November 2007. Sushi Eye in Motion is a “conveyor belt sushi” restaurant. For those of you not familiar with the term, let me take a moment to attempt explain it to you.

A conveyor belt sushi restaurant is a sushi restaurant where plates with sushi are placed on a conveyor belt that winds through the restaurant. Most of the tables are situated at right angles along the conveyor belt, or in Sushi Eye in Motion’s case, a counter type table is placed along the conveyor belt, making it easy for each person to grab their own sushi.

Basically, you pick up what you want from the selections that are moving along the conveyor belt. If you don’t see anything you like on the conveyor belt, you can place a special order with the sushi chef(s) on hand. Each plate is color coded to represent a different price. The most inexpensive item is usually on a plain or white plate. More expensive items are usually on ornately decorated or gold colored plates. At the end of your meal, the plates are counted and totaled up accordingly to the price.

Some conveyor belt sushi restaurants step it up a bit and get a little fancy-schmancy where instead of plates, they use “sushi boats”. Similar concept – the bigger the boat, the bigger the bill.

Conveyor belt sushi restaurants are usually considered the bottom rung of sushi establishments, as many use lower quality ingredients as compared to traditional sushi restaurants. But what makes Sushi Eye in Motion different is that the sushi here is actually good, and not just ok. They use quality ingredients and offer a lot of different sushi selections as well as other Japanese appetizers like edamame (steamed soybeans) and shrimp tempura. Their special roll menu is also quite extensive, offering many creative sushi rolls. The sushi chefs here also take great care in the presentation of the sushi.

My favorite sushi is hamachi (Japanese yellowtail) and let me tell you, the hamachi at Sushi Eye in Motion was on point.

Super fresh, a bit sweet in taste, buttery and melt in your mouth good. I had the hamachi both nigiri style (over a small mound of rice) and sashimi style, which I preferred.

We also tried some of their special rolls, but my favorite that night was what I consider a masterpiece. I don’t remember what it was called, but here’s what it looked like.

Several plates of this sushi taunted me as it passed before me. I couldn’t figure out what was in, on or around the sushi, so I asked the manager/owner. When she told me what it was made of – part of me cringed, part of me was intrigued. The next time another of these pieces came around, I got up enough courage to finally pick it off the conveyor belt to try it for myself.

This particular sushi starts off with a mound of rice that serves as the base for the other elements of this wonderful creation. The entire piece had to be at least 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Along one half of the perimiter of the sushi is a long piece of maguro (bluefin) tuna, sliced thin. The other half of the perimeter is covered by thinly sliced, ripened mango. The maguro and the mango served as a “barrier” for the remaining ingredients. Within the “barrier”, on top of the rice, was a heaping amount of tobiko (flying-fish roe), which shamelessly overflowed onto the plate. Then the piece de resistance, and what had me intrigued in the first place, was a raw quail egg yolk, delicately placed on top. The entire piece was then drizzled with a sweetened, mayonnaisey sauce.

Basically to eat this, you either had to open up your mouth pretty wide, risking some major lock-jaw (and possible choking) and eat the entire piece in one bite.

OR… do what I did – eat each half separately.

I decided to start with the half with the maguro “barrier”. My chopsticks deftly grasping the half with the mango, I put the maguro half in my mouth and bit through the quail yolk, leaving half of it still on the other half of the sushi and also dripping on to the plate.

OH MAN, WAS I IN HEAVEN!!!

The tuna was fresh and its taste was unobstructed as I opted to not dip it in the usual soy and wasabi sauce. The tobiko crunched and popped ever so slightly and somewhat oddly in my mouth, with the miniscule egg sacs lodging themselves in unsuspected places in my mouth. There was a lot of tobiko – maybe a bit too much. But what held it all together, I have to say was the quail egg yolk. This one element made this sushi over-the-top, toe-curling good!

I waited a bit to eat the other half, truly enjoying what I had just experienced. I was a bit skeptical about the ripe mango aspect of it all. It seemed like an odd combination – mango, rice, tobiko and yolk. But rest assured, the remaining half made its way to my mouth.

And you know what, I not sure which half I enjoyed more. While the half with the maguro was pretty amazing, the half with the mango made the sushi a perfect balance of sweet and savory… And the quail egg – already puddling on the plate that I had to use the bottom of the sushi to act as a sponge to soak it all up – just rounded out the different flavors with a buttery finish.

It took a lot to stop me from licking the plate, it was so good.

After this masterpiece, I didn’t want to eat anything else, for fear of forgetting just how good it was.

Well… almost anything…. We went out for gelato afterwards = )

*****

SUSHI EYE IN MOTION

58 W. Buffalo Street, #110

Chandler, AZ 85225

(480) 686-8183