During my years as a journalist, I’ve met, interviewed and occasionally socialized with hundreds of rock and pop stars, quite a few Hollywood actors, a handful of professional athletes, and even a politician or two.  I’ve been backstage at dozens of award shows and countless concerts, and hung out on more tour busses than I care to remember. But the one event that gets the most attention from my friends is the one week a year I spend covering the AVN Awards – otherwise known as the Oscars of porn.

People just love the idea of being around porn stars.  They always want to know what they’re like in person.  And they seem to think that the AVN’s are just one non-stop orgy. Sadly, if there are orgies going on at the event, I’ve never been invited to them.  On the contrary, the vast majority of the ladies I’ve interviewed, and occasionally socialized with, are smart, serious businesswomen.  Sure, they have sex on camera.  But in a world where even congressmen send nude pictures to strangers, does that really make them all that different from the rest of the world (except for the fact that people actually want to see these ladies naked)?  So I was surprised to find certain casinos a little reluctant to allow me to film a video with Joanna Angel and Jenna Haze in one of their restaurants. 

I’ve known Joanna for a few years.  Her publicist is a longtime friend, and I’ve interviewed her numerous times at various AVN events.  I also love her because she’s the woman who popularized hardcore porn featuring women with tattoos, piercings and crazy hair colors – my kind of ladies!  But we’ve really never hung out socially.  So when I got an email telling me she and her friend Jenna Haze were coming to town for a vacation this Memorial Day Weekend, I decided I had to include them in one of my video shoots.

Since the ladies weren’t here on business, I knew I had to make it worth their while to leave the pool for a few hours and hang out with me.  Running through the topics I was planning to cover for Dining Invasion, including them in my lesson on steak just seemed perfect! Bad double-entendres began flashing though my brain faster than I could write them down: “Al Mancini shows porn stars his meat!”; “Chef slips the beef to adult film actresses!”– you get the idea.

The ladies loved the concept. And I immediately got offers from chefs who wanted to host. Unfortunately, with just a few days to arrange it before the holiday weekend, some casino executives were a little reluctant about rushing to jump into bed with a pair of porn stars – at least on camera.

But getting STK to participate was amazingly easy.  I’ve known Stephen Hopcraft since he was head chef at Michael Mina’s Sea Blue.  And when I bumped into him Thursday night at a big food festival at The Palazzo pool, he was in a great mood. (It may have been all the free cocktails, or maybe that was just me.) I told him I was having trouble finding a steakhouse that could clear my shoot, and he immediately called over an STK big-shot to approve it on the spot.  By the next day, everyone at STK’s corporate offices and The Cosmopolitan had approved it.

Once you view the video, I’m sure you’ll agree that nobody had any reason to be nervous.  Like every other adult film actress I’ve ever hung out with socially, the ladies were classy, smart and funny.  Just as importantly, they were anxious to learn about the different types of beef available, and taste samples of them all.  And while I was originally going include a lesson on Scotch whiskeys, they told me they were actually fine wine aficionados, and STK’s sommelier was more than happy to satisfy their needs. (Damn, there I go again.)

Like every episode of Dining Invasion, I hope this one serves two purposes.  First, of course, I hope it gives regular people some knowledge that will make them more comfortable when they dine out.  But I also hope it also proves that foodies come from all walks of life, and no restaurant should ever judge a customer by what he or she looks like, does for a living, or any other outdated criteria.  Thanks to the people at STK and The Cosmo for understanding that fact!

Enjoy the video!

Brandon is something of a mad-scientist, always experimenting with new products.  And he uses me as a guinea pig.  I let him do whatever he wants to my hair.  What the hell, it’s only hair.  If I don’t like it I can always shave it off and start over, right? (Which I’ve never had to do, BTW.)  And in exchange for that freedom, Brandon has always cut me incredible deals on whatever triple or quadruple process he does for me.  Sometimes I even pay him in food, like I did in this video.

Brandon could easily work at the best salons on The Strip – the owner of one of the biggest has repeatedly asked me to put me in touch with the guy who does my color. But he loves working at Roni Josef. So I gladly schlep all the way to Green Valley to let him work his magic.

The fact that Brandon works at a salon less than a mile from Carla Pellegrino’s restaurant Bratalian made this a perfect fit for a video.  Carla is one of the only other reasons I hike to that part of town.  She’s a manic little spitfire who’s as much fun to be around as she is drop-dead gorgeous! She may be the craziest chef I know – and that’s saying something.  But more importantly, she’s an incredible chef.  I loved her cooking when she ran the kitchen at the Las Vegas incarnation of Rao’s (one of the most famous Italian restaurants in America), and I love it at both Bratalian and Baccio by Carla Pellegrino in The Tropicana.  But Bratalian is the only place she shows off her Brazilian cooking skills.  And while it’s easy to find a churrascaria rodizio (Brazilian barbecue restaurant) in Las Vegas, I don’t know anyone else who does this kind of Brazilian food.

So what could be better than bringing the guy who makes me look wild and crazy to learn about Brazilian cooking from one of the wildest and craziest chefs I know?  Enjoy![/private]

Since I spent 15 years interviewing musicians for a living, I used to attend great rock concerts as frequently as I visit great restaurants today.  Yet I’ve never seen Mushroomhead live.  When I heard they were coming to Vegas, I was dying to see the show.  Unfortunately, it was during a week packed with food events, and my schedule was full.  But since the president of their record label is an old friend of mine (we used to do a show together on our college radio station), I decided to do the next best thing: take one of them out on a Dining Invasion shoot.

It was the first time I’d ever met the band’s drummer, Skinny.  But as you can see in the video, we hit it off right away.  And given the fast food bands are usually forced to exist on while they’re on tour, he was thrilled to hit a gourmet restaurant with me – even if it was just for some snacks.

I decided to take him to Morels in The Palazzo for two reasons.  First, a morel is a type of mushroom – and I’m a sucker for that kind of bad play on words (just look at my porn stars and beef video).  But more importantly, I’d been dying to do a video on cheese and oysters: two very simple foods that still intimidate a lot of people.  There’s no restaurant on The Las Vegas Strip that has a better cheese selection than Morels.  And the month we shot there they had a pretty amazing selection of oysters.

Shooting with Skinny was a blast.  And he seemed to have a great time.  He and Chef Robert also hit it off.  In fact, when I left the chef was making plans to check out the band’s set later that night.  Unfortunately I had another engagement, so I wasn’t able to film that dining invasion.

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For those of you who don’t know about Parhump, it’s famous for one thing: it’s the closest town to Las Vegas with legal prostitution!  And the only times I’d ever been out there prior to this trip were to visit a brothel. One of them throws a big barbecue every year where all sorts of people show up to eat, drink, listen to a band and tour the themed sex rooms.  I’ve been a few times with my wife.  We’ve actually met a lot of very nice prostitutes in the attached sports bar, although we never did anything more than chat with them. (I’m fairly sure anything more would have been a bit out of our price range!)

What very few people know is that there’s also a large community of people in Parhump who run small farms.  A lot of people think you can’t grow anything in the desert.  But these guys are proving them wrong.  I’d heard about cool little farms out there that supply the big Strip restaurants for years, so I was thrilled to check one out. And the fact that Geno and his friends are doing it organically – without any chemical pesticides or fertilizers — is pretty impressive!

Having The Bad Brains roll into town on tour just two days after my visit to the farm was a bummer, since Dr. Know runs his own organic farm in Woodstock, New York.  I would have loved to have brought him out to Parhump to see what Geno and his friends were doing.  But I showed him some home video (pretty rough since I couldn’t see the screen at all in the desert sunlight and was shooting as I hopped over fences and plants). Then I introduced the two of them so they could talk organic farming. And as you can see, they hit it off pretty well.  It’s just more proof that people from all walks of life can always come together over a shared love of great food.

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A year or two ago, when I was researching caviar for a story in Luxury Las Vegas magazine, I had no trouble finding experts like Rick Moonen, Gary LaMorte (of Andre’s) and Bellagio Executive Chef Edmund Wong to give me their insight into the delicacy.  But for a broader overview, I went to Brett – who supplies countless types of caviar to some of the town’s finest restaurants.

So when I wanted to do a video on caviar for Dining Invasion, I called Brett to give me a refresher course.  The fact that he had recently acquired some live sturgeon also had me itching for a visit to see them.  (Some people might consider it cruel to eat an animal’s eggs in front of its relatives – but I just thought it would be pretty bad ass!)

Dirk Vermin, on the other hand, is my go-to guy when I want a new tattoo. I don’t have a lot of ink, but everything I’ve done in Las Vegas has been done in Dirk’s studio, Pussykat tattoo. So when I wanted to commemorate the release of my book Eating Las Vegas: The 50 Essential Restaurants with a new tattoo, I asked him to do the job.  It was a much smaller piece than what Dirk normally does, but he’s always been cool in working with me on pieces that are clearly below his level of talent.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about the color of tattoo ink smeared across a work in progress that reminds me of the color of caviar – or, more specifically, the color of broken caviar eggs. So doing both on the same day, and having Dirk come along to learn a little something about caviar seemed like fun.  And it’s a hell of a way to bribe a guy for a free tattoo!

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