If you’re reading this, it means you are among 42.9 million Americans who visited a food-related Web site in the past month. And if you’re a big fan of Everyday with Rachel Ray — and let’s face it who isn’t — you are part of a 6.2% jump in her magazine sales recently. Jumping into the thick of this cornucopia of food ‘zines comes Food Network Magazine, a joint venture between Scripps Network Interactive and Hearst Publishing. It becomes the latest among 336(!) food magazines currently available in Amerika. With an initial publication run of just two(?) issues, ELV thinks its chances for success are about as great as his are of ever doing this.

Read all about this plethora of palate-pleasing periodicals here.

El Sombrero on Main Street (circa 1950) has a bright new sign painted on its exterior wall. This would hardly be news but for the fact that The Big Hat is Las Vegas’s oldest restaurant. It still has the same cheap prices though (pegged to 1980 these days instead of the We Like Ike era), plus some of the best salsas, chile colorado, chile verde, menudo, huevos con chorizo, service, sopapillas and smiling, satisfied customers in town.

And we’ve never noticed after eating here maybe a hundred times over the years, but apparently Chef Jose Aragon (a Vietnam vet who took over the restaurant in 1970) also used to be a bull fighter…or perhaps he just likes groovy old Spanish posters.

Click here to listen to State Of Nevada host Dave Berns introduce (and punctuate) my latest commentary on KNPR by calling me a curmudgeon, a kvetch and a whiner….who doesn’t usually like the house wine (true). That Dave…he’s so full of compliments, I almost forget not to listen to his show every day.

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He calls himself one of the Dirty Dozen — along with Jimmy Schmidt, Jeremiah Tower, Jonathan Waxman, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Paul Prudhomme, Mark Miller, Bradley Ogden, Charley Trotter, Michel Richard, and last but not least Jean-Louis Palladin — chefs who forever changed America’s eating habits. In no small way, every time you pick up some fresh ginger root or raddichio at the supermarket, you owe a quiet ‘thank you’ to this group.

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For reasons that remain a mystery to ELV, Gyro Time on West Charleston Ave. has remained open for 30 years. This makes it, according to our calculations, the seventh oldest continuing service restaurant in Las Vegas.*

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In Los Angeles, $3,000 tuition now gets you two entire months of training (and presumably) a certificate as a real, live sushi chef — suitable, no doubt, to make Walmart-worthy tekka-maki to your heart’s content.

As ELV has noted, the training in Japan takes ten years.

Read all about it here, and prepare to get depressed.

SUSHI JUMPS THE SHARK (Part Deux)

Sushi Samba in The Palazzo is practically the poster restaurant for how bastardized sushi and sashimi menus have become. Is it a Japanese restaurant? A Brazilian churrascaria? A Peruvian-fusion ceviche joint? Who knows? You certainly won’t after a meal there, and ELV couldn’t figure it out after three.

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Tune in October 5th (a week from this Sunday night) at 9:00 pm PDT to the Food Network to see me and my fellow Food Network judges eat more (insert secret ingredient here) than any person should consume in a decade.

And if you’d really like to have some fun, join Robin Leach, NORM! and Channel 8’s Denise Valdez and yours truly at Marche Bacchus for a special Viewing/Dinner/Competitive Cooking Party starting at 6:00 that evening. Seating is limited, so call 702.804.8008 to reserve your chance to critique the critic critiquing (and eat and drink like a Burgundian Duke.)

Marche Bacchus Chef Jean-David Groff Daudet will be doing his own riffs on this ingredient in competition with a very prominent local chef whose identity (like the winner of the competition) we are forbidden from revealing.

Be advised: This may turn into a full contact battle of wits, so brickbats, bad puns and rotten tomatoes will be checked at the door. When the producers first sprang the “secret ingredient” on us in Kitchen Stadium, ELV must admit there was a bit of a letdown…..but the chefs — Iron Chef Michael Symon and David Adjey from Toronto — pulled off some stunning dishes.

MARCHE BACCHUS

2620 Regatta Drive #106

Las Vegas, NV 89128

702.804.8008

www.marchebacchus.com

When you get John C. Dupont talking about the art of cocktail mixing — not something hard to do — he becomes a proselytizer, a teacher, a raconteur and a pal all at once. He’ll explain to you the finer points of bourbon making, what makes a good vermouth, and how he developed his “New World” cocktail recipe (he wanted to force every bar in America to buy a second bottle of Galliano) at the drop of a hat. But he also wants you to leave his bar a smarter drinker than when you walked in. From the arcane to the practical (e.g. what type of ice to shake or stir into what type of drink), he is there to help…and an education never felt so good.

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La dama es muy caliente! …is all we can think of whenever Silvia is taking us to a patio seat at the Border Grill. Chef Mike Minor may make some the best Mexican food outside of Mexico, but she could even make roasted chapulines with fried cuchuma over braised chinicuiles taste muy perfecto.