Zoo and I ate a family-style dinner at the Basque restaurant BilToKi. It was amazing. Very farm-style food. Started with a tomato/onion/cabbage soup, some awesome bread, then a trio of sides: Beans, Steamed (soft) veggies and some pasta with red sauce. Then came the meat (sorry for the quality - it's a phone):
A perfect, giant-sized pair of filet mignon, and high-heat seared-to-perfection pork chops. And fries on the side. Needless to say, neither of us cleaned out plates. Holy bloat. So, we headed back to the hotel to ride out the food coma and blog.
Apparently, Elko has the highest concentration of Basque in America. Thank you! Dinner was outstanding.
Wednesday night in Elko is neither dead nor hopping. At the suggestion of the gal behind the counter at our hotel, we headed over to G's for some drinks. What was that noise as we approached? Karaoke. You know it! We had a few brews, sang some songs and enjoyed getting to know the locals better. Friendly people, but kinda stuck... Stuck in circumstances, stuck in beliefs that they will never escape.
Take the glitz and glam on Las Vegas, mix in a rodeo, the Basque, some mexicans and Native Americans (lots of mix blood around here) and you get a really interesting cross-section of cowboy gambling drinking farmer young stuck in the town feeling. Kind of desperate, but resigned. It's charming if you like gritty (and I do), but as I mentioned in my night shots post, it had a slight edge of danger because a few people had a chip on their shoulder for out of towners.
We popped out heads into three brothels, just to see what it was like. Zoo Broker will be going to Amsterdam shortly.
Now we head off to... (to be posted)