At the end of July, drawn in by an unusually green spring and our city's bright lights, millions of grasshoppers swarmed Las Vegas. Inspiration struck, and your intrepid hosts decided to catch and cook some grasshoppers for ourselves (and you, dear listeners). With the help of artists Mikayla Whitmore and Brent Holmes, we managed to trap a few doze…

Love it or hate it, the casino buffet is a mainstay of the Las Vegas experience, for tourists and locals alike. First up, writer Cindi Reed (who writes under the name C. Moon Reed) gives us the historical lowdown, starting from the very first casino buffet in the 1940s. After that, we head to AYCE at The Palms, where we meet up with Yelp Elite memb…

Hello Spicy Eyes listeners! We've got some updates for you in between episodes. Thanks, as always, for your patience and for tuning in — we put a lot of work into research, field recording and producing this show, which takes time! But in the meantime, here's what's in store in this bonus episode: We got a chance to hang out with a few very cool Ve…

Every month, the Cupcake Girls deliver dozens of hot pink mini cupcakes to strip clubs and legal brothels in hopes of connecting sex workers with resources. In this episode, we discuss the sex work landscape in Las Vegas, what a cupcake symbolizes and why it's the perfect metaphor for our city's restrained, contained hedonism. This episode was prod…

We've got Hawaiian food all over town—and that's because Las Vegas is also known as the Ninth Island. Seriously, it's home to the largest Hawaiian population outside of Hawaii. Turns out, there are a lot of reasons for that, involving a clever casino operator (and perhaps a bowl of oxtail soup), plus some pretty serious land issues back in the 808.…

Las Vegas is home to 20,000 Muslims, but halal food can still be hard to come by. We talk to an imam, two Muslims who grew up here, the owner of a halal market and a Halal Guys rep to learn more about what it means to eat halal in Las Vegas. This episode was produced by Kristy Totten.De către Kristy Totten, Sonja Swanson

We're hard at work on a couple of new episodes — one about eating halal in Las Vegas and some of the difficulties of finding halal in the city, and another episode about Hawaiians and how Las Vegas came to be known as the state's "Ninth Island."De către Kristy Totten, Sonja Swanson

When you ask anyone about good food off the Strip, you're definitely going to hear about Thai food. Everyone has a favorite — Komol, Weera, Lotus of Siam. How did the cuisine become popular in Las Vegas, and why does it have such staying power? Turns out clever marketing , government intervention and a glowing Jonathan Gold review go a long way. We…

Welcome to Spicy Eyes, a podcast about food and culture in Las Vegas, hosted by Kristy Totten and Sonja Swanson.De către Kristy Totten, Sonja Swanson