Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin – French gastronome, author and lawyer(?!)

Every famous food town is identified with certain raw materials or recipes. San Francisco has its Dungeness crab; Seattle its oysters and salmon. Chicago-style deep-dish pizza (something we loathe), and Baltimore crab cakes (something we love – especially from Faidley’s) are part of everyone’s vocabulary. And who hasn’t heard of the Cajun/Creole delights of New Orleans? Even that bastion of culinary excellence(?) known as Denver has its Rocky Mountain oysters, for gosh sakes. Unfortunately, all we have ever been known for in Vegas is The Buffet, which is, no matter how fancy they make them, more of a culinary joke than something to be proud of. With a heritage like that, it is ironic that now we’ve achieved worldwide gastronomic fame for something exactly the opposite of cheap eats, and lots of it. For if there’s one thing Vegas is now known for, it’s the $300 dinner for two.

Will we ever have decent, locally-owned eateries in the neighborhoods that don’t cost an arm and a leg? Well, here’s some history, and some hope.

You’ve heard the story about how that all happened—Wolfgang Puck moved in one day and over the next 15 years, most of the world’s best chefs followed—and how your palate and wallet will never be the same. While it’s a great treat to do the Strip once in a while, the real live denizens of this Valley are hungering for their very own food identity, too. Is there hope or are we forever to settle for suburban franchised scraps?

Well, if you’re truly epicurious, here are a few places that serve as bastions of not only good taste, but of good progress in our city’s restless pursuit of culinary culture. They represent a few categories that every big city needs to be “metropolitan.”

THE NEIGHBORHOOD GROCERY STORE

A town’s restaurants usually are the logical and final extension of a city’s maturity, occurring when social and economic growth intersect with the region’s agricultural heritage. Since Vegas has no agriculture and, in people years, is barely a teenager, this was a problem. And like a gawky teenager, Vegas didn’t know what to extend from or to, when it came to getting something good to eat.

So, for the latter half of the 20th century, grocery choices were fairly pathetic; especially for those seeking some semblance of refinement in whatever they put in their mouths. Enter Trader Joe’s (2716 Green Valley Pkwy., 2101 S. Decatur Blvd., and 7575 W. Washington Ave.) the only food store that ever made me cry.

It was a warm October day in 1995 that found me standing before the cheese display at the original Trader Joe’s (in Henderson) with tears welling in my eyes as I lifted them toward the heavens and gave thanks to the gods for delivering us from the evils of industrial cheese. What I saw was real chevre, Gorgonzola and Roquefort, and real Parmesan (not sawdust in a green can). Compared to the tasteless, plastic-wrapped stuff filling the fridges of Vons and Albertson’s at the time, it felt like I was at Fauchon in Paris.

True cheese aficionados know the cheese selection at Joe’s is decidedly middlebrow and off-the-rack—especially compared with the wonders at Whole Foods—but to those of us who had to scour the town for a small log of goat cheese before 1995, its arrival was like manna from heaven. And all by itself, this store brought a little Southern California cool to our food shopping, and was an early harbinger of great eats to come.

It took almost 10 more years before Whole Foods discovered this market, but with two stores now going great guns at both ends of the Valley (The District at Green Valley Ranch, I-215 at Green Valley Parkway, and 8855 W. Charleston Blvd.), Vegas finally plays with the big boys with its grocery stores. In the all-important cheese department, this bastion of gourmet delights has trimmed and dumbed-down its selections from the halcyon days of its opening months—when 20-plus different chevre got their own refrigerator. But for selection and quality of meat, bread, fish, produce and cheese—not to mention 15 imported butters and lots and lots of vegetarian stuff—no major chain even comes close. Even super chef Guy Savoy proclaimed Whole Foods superior to any market he had seen outside Paris, which is as worthy a benediction as any food store can receive.

These icons of food excellence have made it possible to make great meals at home with superior raw materials—giving the novice and the accomplished cook a wider palette of ingredients to work with and subtly spreading the gospel of real, good food to a community that was barely acquainted with it until their arrival.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD ORIGINALS

The question I get asked most about eating out in Vegas is, “What’s your favorite restaurant off the Strip?” While I’m constantly explaining why the best places will always be those supported by casino money and 40 million visitors a year, there are three stalwarts of first-class cooking that bring a lot to the table every night out in the ’burbs. I am full of hope that soon there will be four. If Las Vegas is ever to truly have a gastronomic culture of its own, it will need a dozen more places following in the footsteps of these pioneers.

The granddaddy of chef-owned places is Rosemary’s (8125 W. Sahara Ave., 702.869.2251, www.rosemarysrestaurant.com). For nine years, Michael and Wendy Jordan have been earning accolades as the best off-Strip restaurant. Their menu is seasonal, beer and wine selections are top-notch, and the chef-driven (as opposed to accountant-driven) cuisine echoes the intense and often spicy creations learned by Jordan at the knee of Emeril Lagasse. If Michael’s rack of lamb with a rosemary bordelaise isn’t enough to keep his regulars returning, then it is surely Wendy’s yeasty dinner rolls or her irresistible coconut-bread pudding with chocolate sauce.

Across from Boca Park, a noteworthy newcomer named Nora’s Wine Bar and Osteria (1031 S. Rampart Blvd., 702.940.6672, www.noraswinebar.com) needs noticing for its novel and nuanced nudge of the neighborhood to the nozzle of Napa and Napoli’s natural nectars. In more prosaic terms, this offshoot of Nora’s “red sauce at all costs” Pizzeria has opened as an upscale wine bar and restaurant serving northern Italian cuisine and computerized wines by the glass. The antipasti (mortadella, braesola, proscuitto et al), is as excellent as the wines are wildly and unevenly priced; but the place has been mobbed since day one. If this many people don’t mind paying forty bucks for a glass of Luce cabernet/sangiovese (dispensed by inserting your credit card into the ATM-like slot), more interesting (and overdue eateries), are sure to follow.

At the other end of town, bucking odds even higher than those in Summerlin, Todd Clore turns out inspired food in a spare, if comfortable setting, that sits like a diamond among the zircons in Green Valley. It has never ceased to amaze me how people living in $500,000 houses and driving $50,000 cars can blanch at paying more than 50 bucks for dinner. Like everything else in life, you get what you pay for in restaurants. At Todd’s Unique Dining (4350 E. Sunset Rd., 702.259.8633, www.toddsunique.com), you get a lot of skill in the kitchen and taste on the plate for the money. Plus there’s a snappy little bar that has been adopted by the neighborhood cognescenti, who know a good deal when they taste one.

I don’t know what is more impressive, the fact that Todd’s survives in an area that thrives on mediocre cuisine or that he can churn out Malaysian barbecue shrimp (with cucumber salad, goat cheese wontons with raspberry basil sauce) and Boulud Brasserie-worthy braised short ribs (with jalapeno mashed potatoes) at such modest prices. His successful gamble has inched Green Valley forward on the dining sophistication scale.

THE ETHNIC POCKET

Every metropolis—except Tokyo—is proud of its ethnic diversity. The polyglot of cultures and unusual vittles gives character and grants worldliness to a great city and its citizens. This usually starts with the ethnic neighborhoods that grow up in the poorer pockets of the city that become cultural destinations in their own right. None of this has ever happened in Vegas because, thanks to the casino industry, our working folks earn more and live better than they might elsewhere. Instead of a ghetto, we have a crazy quilt of great Asian restaurants along three miles of Spring Mountain Road (just west of I-15), catering to Asians, residents and tourists.

It all started with an “only-in-Vegas”-style instant Chinatown 13 years ago. While this large strip mall is no more a town than Summerlin or Green Valley are “villages,” it has done a ton to raise the profile of great ethnic eats. One thing this stretch does have in common with ghettos, however, is how cheap everything is. From Dong Ting Spring at one end to the Provence (Korean) bakery at the other (near Decatur Boulevard), you can sample everything from Chinese hot pot noodles to dim sum; Vietnamese pho to Korean bulgogi; and a dozen Hong Kong bubble tea joints. A feast for two anywhere along this road will never cost more than 50 bucks, making these venues the only in town where it is difficult to impossible to spend too much money.

The adventuresome eater can also gain quite a culinary education here. Learning how to wrap tissue-paper-thin Vietnamese rice paper around an assortment of green leafy things and various herbs at Pho Saigon #8 (5650 Spring Mtn Rd. Suite B, 702. 248.6663) is a feat of gastronomic and physical agility, making this healthful cuisine something you have to work for, but no less rewarding for the effort. Likewise, a Korean hibachi at Mother’s Korean Barbecue makes grilling your own well-spiced beef healthful and fun. It is interactive food at its best.

Those looking for the original Asian fusion food need go no farther than Penang Malaysian Cuisine (5115 West Spring Mtn Rd., 702.647.9889). Malaysia is a land of a thousand islands in the South Pacific, and the vegetable meat and fish dishes of this cuisine reflect a blend of Indian, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese cooking. Whether your taste prefers the fusion of these cuisines or the real deal, a buffet of authenticity is available up and down this avenue of exotic eats. Thus our Chinatown has morphed into an Asian avenue that just keeps getting better and better. And for price-to-value ratio, its offerings give Las Vegas a food identity that far out-“Strips” all the buffets and gourmet food factories put together.

In such a way has Las Vegas solidified its food identity by having the best of the best (c.f. Guy Savoy, ALEX, Picasso, Le Cirque, Joel Robuchon, Restaurant Charlie et al) as well as plenty of cheap Asian eats. Those flavorful extremes have been claimed as uniquely Las Vegas. What we lack to this day is a decent selection of homegrown restaurants serving the middle ground. Only time will tell if those will come, but we aren’t holding our breath.