suspended in the center. jose: this is the idea of, what if we will be feeding our chickens truffles. will their eggs become like this? anthony: served with onion puree, cream and finished with more, lots more, shaved white truffle. waiter: this is crispy chicken skin and escabeche. anthony: i m sliding this off, right into my face. jose: incredible. anthony: mm. waiter: gentlemen, this is your portion of the salt roasted foie gras. then brian s going to come finish it with a clementine sauce for you. jose: light is key. light and flavorful. waiter: gentlemen this is your next course, kokotxas al pil-pil. anthony: this is squid ink, the sauce? jose: yep. anthony: awesome. waiter: this is secreto ibérico de bellota. secreto, or the secret, it s a secret cut of the iberian pig. located underneath the front shoulder. anthony: ah, yes. jose: this is an homage of the goodness of the sea meets the goodness of the earth. you know the work that goes into creating
$160, $320 anthony: and it just keeps going. robert: yeah. anthony: it seems to me a losing battle to try to keep your grass green. do you really need a lawn in the first place? robert: well, every most everyone that lives here came from the midwest or the east coast and it was all lush and green, and that s what vegas was 20 years ago. anthony: it was lush and green? robert: sure, sure. anthony: the city assigns watering days to control usage and also encourages xeriscaping, a landscaping style focused on drought-resistant plants and efficient irrigation. and if you don t get with the program, there s a hole out there in the desert for you, then. okay, not really. you get like a notice pinned to your door or something. but some people, they want the lawn. they got to have it. robert: yep. and they can have it, just don t water on the wrong days. anthony: how critical is it? robert: very. i mean, there s no snow on the western sierras, so we don t get any contin
anthony: is that worse than before, or bondi: that well, the wrong is that there are people with that kind of income who could put it to so many thrilling uses and can think of nothing so crass and boring than to wave the money in the air and throw it away. how loathsome. and within us, within those of us who live here, is that challenge. this has always been who we are. jet: you are sitting at lotus of siam, best thai restaurant in vegas, by far. one of the best thai restaurants in america. anthony: jet tile has been here before. an la guy, he came out here to do 4 years as executive chef at encore, a wynn casino on the strip. he s a reigning authority on thai food, but really, everybody
money. so i think it s very, very special. it s a special kind of place where people can take their basest instincts and just let it, let it fly. i think that s good. i have no problem with that at all. anthony: when you come to vegas, you see this. the lights and smoke and mirrors, the casino floors. but who manages the machine? where do they come from? beneath the floors, behind the walls, above the winking surveillance camera lenses a whole other world. manned by thousands and thousands of waiters, maintenance people, repairmen, chefs, engineers, plumbers, and croupiers. three shifts a day, they slip in and out of the casinos almost unseen through their own entrances. but it s these people who ve seen it all. seen everything. night after night.
bondi: it s so easy to say i come out here because it s the land of opportunity, well, that s really great, you know? but if you re not here for why else are you here? there s the good old wreck your life, you know, scenario. that s always pretty popular. but if you change your mind about wrecking your life, now what do i do? there s a lot less self-reflection about why people are here than there is about most other places. what a lost opportunity that is. anthony: sinatra and the mob are gone, but there remains, still, a certain sentimental attachment to the way things used to be. there were rules then. a way that things were done. and when they weren t done, there was always the desert and