Guard & Grace, which we could see from our bedroom window, is
one of the top steakhouses in a city of destination steakhouses.
I'd thought of STK, but that seemed mundane by comparison, 
especially because as it turns out it's a chain with an outlet
in San Diego. G&G is a chain of two, and this is the first one,
(though not the first Troy Guard restaurant), so there's a touch
more authenticity I suppose.

The hotel's facilities have all been closed, which meant that the
bar, financially marginal to begin with, is gone for now and
likely forever, but we were antsy so decided to make the 300-ft
trek and have an early celebratory drink at the restaurant. We
checked in at the door and headed to the bar (Lilli had looked at
it on line and been pleased) for a round. I had a Courvoisier for
old times' sake, she an Angel's Envy on the rocks. Both tasted
good until I discovered that they charged $24 for a modest pour
(according to my math, this is over $400 a bottle, or 10-15x retail,
as much as bottle service in a whorehouse. At least mine was VSOP. 

When we were half done with our drinks, the host offered us our
table outside. It was 75 with fading sunlight, our spot in
semi-shade right by the improvised shrubbery barrier from the
polloi. As usual in these places, the waiter was pretty decent,
but the bus crew and the runner were better.

We started with the house potato rolls, buttery to the point of
greasiness (I didn't mind) and strewn with coarse salt (I minded).

For dinner we shared a flight of three 4-oz filets, I believe all 
from Snake River Farms. The waiter, points in his favor, asked if
we wanted the house steak seasoning and the house sauce. I pled 
heart patientness and asked for light salt and pepper on the meat
and sauce on the side. What came, perhaps in recognition that we
were out of our financial range, a 4, a 5, and a 6, so generous
cuts, split between two plates, a pitcher of quite delicious 
chive-enhanced demiglace on the side.

The grass fed was grass-fed, beefy, with a bit of a chew, fairly
nice, but I thought it needed the sauce. Lilli liked it a lot, as
the flavor profile was very familiar, and she's into very familiar.

The 49-day dry aged USDA Prime was not to her taste - it's a 
little cheesy (a proper aged steak has an almost Camemberty
aspect, goes well with wine) with a soft and almost squishy texture 
going on towards powder. I'm used to this and don't mind it, so I 
gave her most of my grass-fed in return for most of her Prime.

"Wagyu" is of course not Wagyu but some kind of crossbreed between
Black Angus and some kind of black Japanese cattle. It is nicely
marbled to American tastes but a joke by Wagyu standards. Snake
River claims to use some kind of modified Asian upbringing, but 
the texture is so different that I call bull. That said, it is
amazingly tender and great-tasting, could be the best beef a lot
of people have ever had (as it should be for $10 an ounce), but 
in no way is it comparable to the real thing. To give an example, 
I could easily scarf down a pound of this; with a real A4 or A5
Japanese steak, 5 oz would almost undoubtedly be my limit, and
when I've had a 3 or 4 oz serving it's been perfectly satisfying.
It was her birthday, so I gave Lilli extra of mine.

The sommelier, an MS named Conor, was there to cater to our needs.
I saw something to like for not awfully too much money, the 2017 
Artemis Cabernet, the favorite wine of Stuker, the world's premier
frequent flyer (last time I had enough of it to bathe in it was at
a party of his), but what they'd just gotten a shipment of was the
2018, which costs and apparently is worth $20 less a bottle, so
I rejected that. We chatted a little, and he apparently deemed us
worthy of his own value choice, the Gramercy Cellars Lower East 
Cabernet (Columbia) 16, made by a fellow Master Sommelier 
(genuflect, genuflect), a nicely peppery wine with lots of dark 
fruit and some clove notes, a pleasant yeastiness, understated and 
nice with the meat.

I didn't see anything special on the dessert list, so I had a glass
of Royal Tokaji 5 Puttonys 13, which was surprisingly light - more
like Sauternes than what I think of as Tokay. It was medium sweet 
or maybe a little more, well botrytized, apricotty and pineapple
flavors.

Chocolate cheesecake bites came out as a birthday present; nice
dark chocolate flavor, a topping of salty graham cracker crumbs.

==
UA 540 DEN SAN 1745 2112 739 8BC
was 1559 DEN LAX 1600 1730 739 21AC
and 5435 LAX SAN 1845 1935 E75 7CD

So we loaded up in Denver and discovered right around 
takeoff time that there weren't any brakes; in due time they
offloaded us. We hightailed to the club and had the helpful 
agent reschedule us on the nonstop, which would get us in 
only a couple hours later than scheduled, the only penalty 
being a day's parking fee. Okay, since it was unlikely that
if we stuck with our original flight, we'd have twiddled 
our thumbs almost as long and ended up in LA long after our
connection had left, which would have meant either waiting
until next day (okay if they paid for the hotel room) or
getting cabbed to San Diego, a lengthy annoyance. The 
flight we ended up on got us back with moments to spare on
our grace period, so we sailed out of there without having
to pay for that extra day's garaging.

All told, the trip cost approximately what our last blowout
birthday celebration did, only this was a long weekend in
Denver, and the previous one had been ten days in Turkey
including dinner at the (former, burned down, restored) 
palace of (former, assassinated) Sultan Abdul Aziz.