Doug Daulton

Storyteller (Words & Images)

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NAB for the Foodie

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As I live in Las Vegas and enjoy a good meal, I’ve offered to field questions about local eateries for incoming NAB attendees. I am taking questions in Twitter, but 140 characters is problematic for describing why a place is great. So, I’ll keep this post updated with my responses and point folks here in Twitter.

Breakfast

  1. Hash House-a-Go-Go inside of the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace has, frankly, seen better days. Which makes the Hash House a real gem on the strip. The restaurant features gourmet takes on diner and farm food classics. Calling the portions enormous may be the understatement of the year.
  2. Brunch at Le Village Buffet at Paris! – Hands down the best breakfast buffet in town. Long lines can be a hassle though.

Steakhouses

  1. Craftsteak, by Tom Colicchio from Top Chef. Craftsteak is in the MGM Grand. About three years ago, I went to an event after party there and had the best steak I’ve ever eaten. I found Top Chef through Tom Colicchio, not the other way around.
  2. The Golden Steer. Just a bit off-strip on Sahara, it looks like hole-in-the-wall, but looks can be deceiving. Once you are inside, it is a slice of old-school, Las Vegas. The Steer has served Sinatra, Elvis and more than a few mobsters in it’s day. Why do they all come? The steaks and sides are absolutely top notch. Their prime rib is outstanding.
  3. Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay. The Brazilian BBQ/Steakhouse food is good, but not spectacular. Rum Jungle is on the list for the experience. All you can eat meat, carved in big hunks. And, if you make your reservations from 8-9 PM on a weekend night, you’ll already be inside when it turns into a fun, unique dance club for the evening, so no waiting in lines. Think Go-Go dancers and drink runners all dressed in white, working in black light from suspended dance cages and a two-story bar.

Burgers

  1. Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay. The Burger Bar is the brain child of Chef Hubert Keller, most recently seen on Top Chef Masters. Absolutely amazing. If you only eat one burger in Vegas, make it from the Burger Bar!
  2. In-n-Out Burgers – No big surprise here for West Coast folks. But if you are coming from anywhere else, you owe it to yourself to go to the In-n-Out Burger on Tropicana & Dean Martin. If you are already a fan, this location is also a company store where you can pick up hats, shirts and other gear. Without question, they have the best fast food fries in the city. Each batch is made from fresh potatoes.
  3. Le Burger Brasserie Sports Grille in the Paris! – Home of the $777 hamburger! The rest of their menu outstanding as well. All high-concept burgers done well. I think they may have the best fries in Vegas.

Buffets

  1. Cravings at the Mirage – I am admittedly biased because I used to eat there a couple of times a week when I worked for the company. Disclaimer aside, it is the best value for a high-end buffet on the strip. Everything is outstanding. Vegetarians will love the salad bar where you pick the ingredients and they build a huge, hand-tossed salad. Service is high touch, which is not so common in a buffet.
  2. Le Village Buffet at Paris! – Lunch and Dinner are great as well, but they really shine for breakfast/brunch.

Comfortable Shoes and Other Lessons

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We wrapped Day 2 of NAB shooting and I thought I’d share some lessons already learned from the experience. These are presented in no particular order.

  1. Redundancy is your friend. Always assume some important part of your kit will fail. Have a back up ready to go. We did not experience any major problems that prompted this lesson. It just seems to be a core principle of the PXC ethos and it lines up with my own POV well.
  2. Three things your kit must include:
    1. A small toolkit with a flathead & phillips screwdriver, needlenose pliers and a quarter.
    2. Extra batteries of all shapes and sizes.
    3. A knife of some sort.
  3. Gaffer’s tape is an amazingly useful tool; even better than duct tape.
  4. When storing gear for a long time between uses, remove all batteries. A corroded battery probably cost me a good set of Bose headphones.
  5. Speaking of headphones, always keep at least three sets of iPod earbuds on hand. Don’t use the iPhone earbuds with the mic as an audio monitor.
  6. My Beachtek needs a slightly longer screw to connect to the Canon HF10.
  7. The Zoom R16 is one sexy little mixer.
  8. When you have a wide shot of a group, do not pan between the speakers. It causes artifacts when streaming and is visually distracting. Cutting from speaker to speaker is really the job of a 2- camera shoot with a producer calling the camera changes to be managed by a video switcher.
  9. There is no such thing as having too many SD cards on hand.
  10. Tapeless workflow is where it at!
  11. The iPad is going to be a really big deal. I already knew that, but NAB has only confirmed this for me.
  12. I learned how to properly wrangle cable.
  13. Always have and use a pre-roll checklist.
  14. While I have a few minor quibbles, the LiveU unit is a pretty amazing piece of gear.
  15. Even at a show filled with broadcast and film pros, some people don’t recognize the camera and walk through your shots … no matter how hard you try to stop them.
  16. 3D is really here … if we do not kill it with ill-concieved conversions.
  17. Always have a spare tape/SD card in your pocket.
  18. My wife is a saint.
  19. The iPhone is an invaluable note-taking tool, especially with the video camera.
  20. Learning how something works needn’t stifle one’s sense of wonder about the fact that it does.
  21. There is no such thing as “too old”; so long as your mind remains open to new knowledge.
  22. I am woefully out of shape, but the aches and pains tell me I am making progress on that front.
  23. Running a camera is hard work, particularly when moving all around the show floor.
  24. Thanks goodness for comfortable shoes. Think of good shoes as an investment in your mental and physical health.

So, that is it for now. I’ll have more cogent thoughts when I have more time to write.

Peace,

Doug