Exploring the Culinary Delights of Life Is Beautiful 2015

If you saw all the food booths and trucks at Life Is Beautiful and thought, “Well, there are lot of options” and then still got on line for the nachos, you may have missed the point. Not that there’s anything wrong with nachos (I got some, and they were delicious), but if it seemed like all the culinary villages—not to mention the culinary demos in the Downtown Stage VIP area and all the booths at Grills & Guitars Thursday night at the SLS hotel—were just there for a little nom nom in between the boom boom, well, we have to have words. Food is culture, too, and the choices weren’t just random vendors. They were curated options from the best of Vegas’ thriving food scene. Wondering what you overlooked? Here were seven of our favorites—and where you can experience them beyond the festival.

Truckin’ Up
Vegas may not be Portland, but we do have some dope food trucks. Our favorites are the ones that twist different food inspirations in ways nobody else has thought of—like Buldogis (we dig that ChiCha Dog with chicharrones, pico de gallo, five-cheese mix and chipotle mayo), Dragon Grille (those Korean galbi fries with furikake) and Truk-N-Yaki (Japanese burritos—enough said). We gotta pay respect to Slidin’ Thru for holding down the Ambassador Stage VIP, too. They were one of the first trucks to call Vegas home.

Fleur
Maybe you grabbed one of their HK Hangover Burgers and thought, “Yeah, this is a little better than the average festival burger.” You probably didn’t realize you were biting into some serious Vegas history. “HK”—acclaimed French chef Hubert Keller—actually started off the gourmet burger craze on the Strip with his Burger Bar over 10 years ago. He also sells the uber-expensive Fleurburger for $5,000. And yeah, that older dude with the ponytail manning the booth was actually Keller himself. Check out Fleur and Burger Bar in Mandalay Bay/Mandalay Place.

RM Seafood/RX Boiler Room
Another local favorite returning to the festival for a third time, Keller’s Mandalay Place neighbor and fellow Celebrity Chef Rick Moonen brought two bites representing his two spots: a lobster roll from the classic RM Seafood, and his wacky, shrimp-based Moonen Doggie from the gastro-punk Boiler Room. Both spots should be on anyone’s serious dining list for a Strip visit.

Drinky Drinks
Did you get one of those awesome spiked coconuts at the Troubadour village, some iced coffee from the Café Bustelo booth or Makers & Finders, or even a glass of Taittinger Brut Champagne? Life Is Beautiful’s insane beverage selection reflected the diversity of watering holes in Vegas, from Atomic Liquors and Oak & Ivy right in the footprint to East Fremont’s Vanguard and Tokyo 365, Main Street favorite Velveteen Rabbit and the Strip’s Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that drinking is easy in Las Vegas, but it might surprise you that it also gets very good.

Garden Grill
Among a really ample amount of veggie options with actual restaurants (Strictly Vegan, Vegenation), we still hankered most for Garden Grill, which is just a pop-up booth appearing at the local Intuitive Forager Farmers Markets and other spots. Those beer-battered avocado and BBQ pulled-jackfruit tacos? As good as it gets.

Nobu
Okay, you get that some serious restaurants are represented, but maybe the most serious was Nobu, which not only offered salmon and yellowtail sashimi, but also their classic black cod in butter lettuce and pork belly sweet soy anticucho. I mean, seriously. The booth was staffed by Vegas’ original Nobu, which is in the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, but you can also find the country’s largest Nobu inside Caesars Palace. It has its own hotel tower!

…and the Outliers
Not from Vegas? If you call San Francisco or Dallas home, two of the best culinary demo appearances happened to come from chefs out of those cities, both of whom coincidentally were once chefs for RM Seafood here. Adam Sobel, who demonstrated zatar-crusted cured salmon on Sunday (and also served bacon-wrapped sausage rolls at Grills & Guitars), can be found at Michael Mina’s shapeshifting Test Kitchen in San Francisco. John Tesar, who showed us how to make roasted pig’s head carnitas tacos (yeah, you read that right) on Friday, serves serious beef and other meat at Knife Dallas, which many call the best steakhouse in the beef-crazy town.

Bonus Session
If you were one of the few lucky ones back in the artist tent, you got to check out local chef Brian Howard’s crazy outdoor smoked meatery, with all kinds of good stuff cooking on a unique contraption built specially for the occasion. We hope you got to check at least a couple of these. If not—next year, come hungry!

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