The Green Shack
The Swiss Cafe
The Alpine Village Inn
The Hilltop House
Larry’s Villa (the steakhouse, not the toothless stripper joint)
Ferraro’s when it was trimmed in pink neon
Nora’s when it wasn’t any wider than an SUV
Chateau Vegas when it was a mob hangout
Hugo’s Cellar when it was cool
The Golden Steer when it was good
When you first ate a Capriotti’s “Bobbie” (probably around 1996)
When the Rio Wine Cellar was run by a weird-ass Brit named Barry Larvin
Don the Beachcomber
Morton’s and Palm being our two best steakhouses
When there were only 3 sommeliers in the entire town
Little Joe’s BBQ joint at Plant World
Cosmo’s Underground
Taco Cabana’s roof caving in
The House of Lords
Nick’s Supper Club
Lillie Langtry’s and its carved wood interior:
That’s Italian – which barely was…since it was owned by a smarmy Frenchman who smothered everything in cream sauce
When Andre’s was the coolest place in town
Nicky Blair’s
Bob Taylor’s Ranch House… when you had to look for the blue light
Frogeez
Pamplemousse when it was a celebrity hangout…not a tourist trap
The Monte Carlo Room at the Desert Inn
Dickinson’s Wharf
The Dome of the Sea….with a moveable harpist!
Commercial Center when it was crawling with decent restaurants….a dozen of which were Asian, with 4 Korean joints in the middle of it all
The Venetian being where Herbs & Rye now is located
Prepare to eat, prepare to DIVE:
The original Bacchanal Room
Piero’s when the chef was actually named Piero
The Palace Court when Burt Reynolds hobnobbed with men in leisure suits:
Finally, you really know you’re an old Las Vegas foodie if you remember…
Women in helmet hair dining with men in tuxedos in a purple fern bar:
(The Imperial Room at the LV Hilton)
Many thanks to Classic Vegas for many of these tasty Vegas snaps.
I can’t believe nobody remembers “the Flame” steakhouse, mid-Strip. Great Old Vegas, adults restaurant.
I remember the Flame when it fed us kids for free in the wee hours. The alternative, I was told, was to throw it out at closing. So, yes, free food. Prepared and served real fancy. Those days are long gone.
I even remember Alias!! Alias, Smith and Jones, again in the wee hours, when the “show kids” would converge on it. Twain near Paradise.
I never ate at Johnnie’s Food Factory nearby, but I remember it. And his brother Tony, whose son, Vinnie, gave me Tony’s telephone when he and his mother, Nancy, finally moved out of the hood.
Yes, I remember Don The Beachcomber, a favorite on Prom night. During the day it was always the Sahara coffee shop downstairs.
And Bob Taylor’s Ranch House, always a rare treat because so far away and so hard to find.
I even remember Louis Prima and Keely Smith’s Black Magic, way out in the boonies, now a corner of Paradise and Tropicana, but I was just a kid and mom never took me there.