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| - The backround: we were planning a special dinner for my husband's 50th bday. I looked at several restaurants on the strip and settled on a recommended place in the Venetian hotel as it came highly recommended by a friend who lives in Las Vegas and has connections in the restaurant business. I spent a couple weeks working with the event manager there and had a series of frustrating half baked exchanges, menu restrictions, poor level of organization and lack of responsiveness. The last straw was after my question; "Can you do anything special for the birthdays in the group?", his response was "We can always place a candle in the dessert for the birthday guest.". Not quite the spirit I was looking for.
In comparison, the general manager at Sunset and Vines, next to the hotel where we were staying (Ravella at Lake Las Vegas) was phenomenal. He offered to print a special menu for our group with a subset of their wonderful menu choices. A subset that I could choose myself. I had no restrictions imposed. The food was fantastic. The staff was accomodating and wonderfully warm. The wine cellar was the perfect venue for our rather joyous crowd of 20. This is a copy of the note I sent to the general manager:
Dear Max,
I just wanted to thank you, Brittany and Arnold, for taking such good care of us last Saturday night. I think every single member of our party of 20 had a nice thing to say about the experience. Your help in setting up the menu (which looked great and was a hit, by the way) and the special desserts for the birthdays in the group, was exactly the kind of detail that I was looking for.
Most importantly, the food was fantastic.
Most impressive was that although this was last minute it came together beautifully. For the previous three weeks, I had been working with some well known restaurants in Las Vegas to set up this dinner. I had settled on one particular place that came through a personal contact, however, on Monday, April 23rd (after a couple weeks of working with them), I was so frustrated with their lack of organization and accomodation, that I decided to pull out. I realized it was a risk to start at square one, but I am so happy that I took it, because Sunset and Vines was no doubt, the best choice.
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