Dinner at Magnolia's Veranda (Four Queens, Las Vegas)

My husband and I are very much homestyle diners even when traveling, not fast food or gourmet or formal dining.  Our dining choices very much reflect this.  Now I can easily explain our choice as being we don't feel that fast food is a good nutritional value for our food dollar and gourmet or formal dining tends to be overpriced but you are paying for the whole experience.  Still justifying spending $250 or more for a formal dining experience is still difficult.  It's not like we wouldn't and definitely would if there was the opportunity to meet one of the celebrity chefs like Michael Smith, it's just we choose not to when traveling.  We have dined at a couple of higher end restaurants in Las Vegas but the meal was comped.  Any, we are both more comfortable eating home-style meals so tend to know where to find them when traveling.

Magnolia's Veranda in the Four Queens Resort & Casino in Las Vegas is simply delightful.  The prices are excellent and the food is very much home style cooking.  Meals are prices about $11 each with soup or salad and dinner rolls included.  We had a two for one coupon so while the meal was not comped it was quite frugal.  We ended up eating there two nights so I will share the second dinner we had next week.

My husband ordered the rack of ribs with soup of day, baked beans, baked potatoes and green beans.  They looked wonderful with a nice, tangy aroma earning two thumbs up from my husband.  This meal is about as home style as you can get!  The secret to cooking mouthwatering ribs at home is long and slow.  When I make barbeque ribs at home, I set the grill to the lowest setting then slowly barbeque for about 5 hours before using the mop (wet sauce).  The biggest mistake made with barbequing ribs is putting the mop on too soon and at too high of a temperature.

I ordered the grilled chicken special that was bonless, skinless chicken grilled to perfection served with salad, green beans, real mashed potatoes and gravy.  The potatoes were rich and creamy.  The gravy was definitely not a mix gravy either.  Real mashed potatoes with homemade gravy is one of the sign posts of home-style cooking!   The chicken was nice and tender with a lovely flavour. 

The grilled chicken would be easy to duplicate at home.  The boneless, skinless chicken breasts were pounded out and lightly seasoned before grilling.  Pounding out the chicken breasts breaks some of the fibers making them more tender.  It evens out thick spots so the chicken breast cook evenly and faster without drying out.