Start Spreading the News... It's Graham's Birthday Today

After a day yomping up and down the strip and marvelling at the host of clever marketing ploys that are designed to part a fool and his money in the briefest of time frames, we headed to New York, New York for a celebration...

Graham Chapple, of Garden4You, notched up a birthday here in Las Vegas and with his focus set on a juicy steak we headed for New York, New York where we correctly surmised you could probably find a convincing facsimile of a New York steakhouse - this is the casino with a third size Statue of Liberty outside - alongside the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island roller coaster!

However, blissfully there was a wait for a table at Gallagher's Steakhouse (a good sign on a Tuesday in a city as accommodating as Las Vegas!) so we looked for alternative entertainment... and stumbled into perhaps my favourite place in this crazy place: The Bar at Times Square - or more specifically that should be The Piano Bar at Times Square!

For this is the home of the globally renown duelling pianos. I first saw them in 1998 and it was fabulous to see that the pianos were still duelling, the crowd still whooping and a host of crowd pleasing tunes were belted out.

You can nominate tunes with a crisp dollar or five and they will encourage more people to chip in before the chosen tune is played - however if you step up with a $20 they will do pretty much anything - such as help Graham celebrate his birthday.

More specifically they invited him up to sit on the piano while they improvised a smutty ditty to the tune of Itsy Witsy Teeny Weeny Little Polka Dot Bikini! Graham was a good sport, the crowd loved it and a complete stranger bought him a beer. Gotta love this city!

Once at Gallagher's were were positively drooling over the menu and were quite dehydrated by time the food eventually came; and then we were left stunned! I had a sirloin steak that would have fed our family for Sunday lunch! However Graham had a monster hunk of meet that was possibly a fairly mature calf going on size alone. The flavours were fabulous by I was defeated by mine, although the birthday boy did his real justice!

Here we are at the optimistic part of the meal: