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We’ve been to Off The Strip once. Two Saturdays ago. The place was packed.

We have a feeling this place is packed every Saturday night. And Friday nights for that matter. In fact, the pickins are so slim in this neck of the woods, we imagine OTS is the go to place for anyone in this neighborhood with a mortgage and a leased Lexus who wants to get out of the house.

As we walked in, Eating Las Vegas — www.eatinglv.com (a website you might be familiar with) — was on the screen of a laptop sitting on the bar.

The owner spotted us and was more than welcoming, and more than eager to put half the menu before us. That owner, Tom Goldsbury, who runs the place with his chef/brother Al Hubbard, is a veteran of a number of on- and off-the-Strip restaurants and steakhouses, including Smith & Wollensky, Ruth’s Chris, and the gone and mostly forgotten Pacific Fish Company.

Which explains the crowd-pleasing nature of their food. And why it skews so heavily into pasta-steak-and-sauce territory.

Subtle this cooking isn’t. The very good shrimp come bathed in so much Thai sweet chili sauce that half a cup of the stuff is left after you’ve finished your crustaceans. Likewise, the pork roulade should be rechristened “kitchen-sink pork” since it contains mozzarella, Parmesan, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, mushrooms and enough wine sauce to cover three more orders.

But filling it is, which also explains the appeal of the “rolled New York” — pounded sirloin wrapped around asparagus and provolone and dressed with a Marsala mushroom sauce. Tender, beefy and cheesy, it was nevertheless, a bit much for a starter course — a theme that runs throughout the appetizers.

A bit lighter were the (excellent) fried calamari, and the baked Green Lip mussels oreganata– topped with a beurre blanc that brought nothing to the party.

If you haven’t guessed by now, Off The Strip is an Italian restaurant — even if it doesn’t call itself one. It is tiny (40 seats), charming, reasonable, and just what a neighborhood like Southern Highlands needs, wants, and will support. (In fact, it has done just that for two years now.)

Overall, this kitchen is so fond of heaping ingredients on ingredients you would swear Todd English was behind things. This tendency appears to be a-okay with OTS’s many fans (it’s the number one-rated local restaurant on Yelp!), but many recipes are a tad inartful for a cranky critic.

That being said, those looking for a (very good) meatball fix, or jonesin’ for a decent Bolognese over perfectly cooked rigatoni, will feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven.

Those looking for a little more discernment (and a little less sauce) with their Italian eats may want to stick closer to Las Vegas Boulevard.

Our meal for two was comped.

OFF THE STRIP

10670 Southern Highlands Pkwy. Suite 102B

Las Vegas, NV 89141

702.202.2448

http://offthestriplvn.com/

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In honor of the opening of Brasserie Puck in Crystals Mall at City Center (that is neither a city, nor in the center of anything), we thought we’d feature three of the most professional-looking hostesses to come down the pike since Perle Mesta was in her prime.

Boy, have we come a long way baby…and we at ELV wish to thank Katelyn, Morgan and Jessica for making any stroll through this half-empty, obscenely expensive, mega-mall worth it.

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On the last Saturday of the the last five months, Chef Geno Bernardo and his crew have been conducting a cooking class high above The Strip at NOVE. For $75 you get lessons in salads, pasta making, sauteeing and sausage, followed by a kick-ass lunch of the very recipes you just saw prepared by professionals.

Each dish comes with a well-chosen wine, and is infused with lots of information and personality from Chef Geno.

It might be the perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon…if your idea of a good time is learning about top-shelf food, and getting personal with a first class restaurant and its chefs.

All of the instruction takes place in the NOVE kitchen, you can question Geno and his sous chefs to your heart’s content, and you get to mangia mangia on the very stuff you’ve just learned about.

Yeah, it doesn’t get much better for an Italian food aficionado, and is one of the many reasons we consider NOVE one of our best, and most passionate Italian kitchens.

We at ELV also consider NOVE our most unsung Italian restaurant (even though we sing its praises all the time). The trouble with it isn’t the food (which is fantastic); or the decor and view (outstanding), or the wine list (very good), or the bar (stacked with hotties most weekends), or the staff (highly competent and friendly).

No, the problem is: it’s 51 freakin’ floors above the ground, making impulsive “let’s drop in and see what Geno’s cooking up?” moments few and far between.

But if you park in the Palms east parking garage (near Valley View), it’s a lot easier to get to than any restaurant in the MGM, and on the last Saturday of every month, you can eat our town’s most spectacular lunch, and learn a little something to boot.

NOVE

In the Palms Hotel and Casino

4321 West Flamingo Road

Las Vegas, NV 89103

702.942.6856

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You’re going to be hearing a lot in the near future about how The Fat Greek is, by far, the best Greek restaurant in the Vegas Valley, but we at ELV thought you deserved a sneak peek (ahead of our review in the Las Vegas Weekly) at some of the extraordinary food this place is now putting out.

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ELV went scotch drinking the other night. Which is pretty extraordinary since he’s a bourbon drinker.

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No, not the geezers you’re gonna see at the Super Bowl. These guys, in their prime:

Why are they the best rock band of all time?

1) They played there own instruments and wrote their own songs;

2) They sounded better live than they did on their records;

3) They were the forerunners of punk, hard rock, and just about anything else that came after them;

4) Keith Moon was the greatest rock drummer of all time, and rock and roll is all about drums;

5) Pete Townsend was no slouch either;

6) They put an exclamation point on true rock (read: rebellious) music that has never been surpassed;

7) Even in middle age, with more comebacks than Brett Favre, they played hard-driving music and never sold out with sappy love songs and even sappier “ballads”;

8) In fact, we can’t think of a single, sappy love song they ever sang (unlike The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, et al);

9) Keith Moon drank himself to death in his early thirties and John “The Ox” Entwistle* died in the Hard Rock Hotel, in Las Vegas, after playing a concert, with a stripper in his bed and an eight-ball on the night stand — true rocker’s deaths if ever there were two.

Finally, you might be asking yourself, why is ELV writing about rock bands on a food blog?

Hey, it’s ELV! We can write about any damn thing we want to!

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* Fun musical fact: Entwistle was also an accomplished French horn player - something you can hear on the Overture to Tommy.

Photo: Beverly Poppe

Every restaurant in Vegas would be a steakhouse if it could be. Ask any restaurateur on or off The Strip and they will tell you that steaks ’n’ spuds are what sells, and nothing whets a Las Vegas tourist’s appetite like a big plate o’ prime beef. What follows are our top 10 beef emporiums, listed according to the quality of their meat (and the cooking of that meat), how interesting and well-done their nonsteak items are, and the overall restaurant experience you will have when dining in them. These are the best in town (and, by extension, among the best steakhouses in the world). None of them are cheap, because great prime beef isn’t, either. But at any of them, you will get some of the best beef money can buy, and a superb dining experience no matter what you order.

A note about “wet-aged.” There really is no such thing. “Wet-aging” seals the meat in airtight plastic that actually inhibits the aging process. When done right, dry aging tenderizes and intensifies the flavor of the meat. “Wet-aged” is a marketing ploy that chefs like because there’s less shrinkage, and they can therefore make more money on more volume (but less flavor). But by valuing size over substance, they deliver a product that has a serumy/bloody/metallic edge, rather than the naturally tenderized, luscious, mineral-rich, brown-roasted, beefy flavor that true carnivores crave.

Click here for the link to today’s article in the Las Vegas Weekly, or continue reading after the jump.

1. CARNEVINO

The best steak in town? The answer is simple. If you’re a connoisseur of aged beef, order one of the 6-to-8-month-old, dry-aged beauties from Molto Mario’s Italian steakhouse in The Palazzo.

Think 30 days is “aged”? Those are for vegans. Sixty days seems like an old piece of beef to you? A mere tyke. The last one of these ancient porterhouses we had was 260-plus days old and tasted like beef from another planet. The texture is almost ham-like, the flavor like steak infused with some vague, subtle, blue cheese essence. You know you’re eating steer muscle, but it’s beef that has transcended its humble roots and metamorphosed into something ethereal—earthy, funky, silky and soft—with an umami depth charge that lasts a full five minutes after you’ve swallowed a morsel.

Carnevino chef Zach Allen tells us they are the only steakhouse in America aging their beef for this long, and if youvwant one of these “riserva” steaks, you need to call in advance. Those just wanting the second-best steak in town—Carnevino’s 60-day, dry-aged strip or rib-eye—can get one any night of the week, or also at lunch.

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Slapsie Maxie Jacobson described the kao-low beef meatball soup at Thai Pepper as an acquired taste on the far side of funky.

Or something like that.

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When we asked Lura (”Don’t call me Laura”) Poland about her ethereal desserts at Sage, she made all the noises a good soldier should make about how they all sprang from the creative mind of her boss Shawn McClain, she’s just the pastry chef, yadda yadda yadda…

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