Author: John Curtas

Letter of the Week – Tiny Bladder Tom

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Dear ELV,

I have lived in  Las Vegas for almost 10 years. Like you and your readers, I have eaten in many of the finest establishments this town has to offer. BUT I do not understand why there are no customer bathrooms in almost every casino restaurant on the strip. As a single adult I have found it rude the few times I have needed it, to be forced to go out of the restaurant to find a restroom. I cannot fathom how irritated parents feel fighting their way around a casino to the elusive restroom for their child, and then back. Is there any reason or logic as to why a simple 100 square feet could not have been set aside for the customers comfort?

Unrinatingly Yours,

Tiny Bladder Tom

ELV responds:

Dear TBT,

Your overt concern for your own comfort misses the whole point of Vegas — and that is and always will be to get the customers to the gambling tables and keep them there as long as possible. In the casino’s mind, it is “DAMN THE BLADDERS FULL HOUSE AHEAD!” Or so they would have you believe. And those of you who actually think that excretory convenience is something to be considered are obviously NOT WITH THE PROGRAM.

For decades prior to 1998, it was a rule in every single casino in Las Vegas that anyone needing to use the facilities from anywhere in the hotel/casino had to wind their way past banks of slot machines or rows of table games. The thinking of the hotel’s was: No matter how bad you had to go, if you did this, you wouldn’t be able to RESIST TEMPTATION and not stop to try some game of chance. No kidding. The average casino executive’s only thought was to inconvenience you into gambling, no matter how hard nature was calling.

All of this changed in October, 1998 when Steve Wynn opened the Bellagio. For the first time in Vegas’s history, restrooms were actually located inside some (not all) of the better restaurants. Simply put: When the food got better, so did the ability to relieve oneself when partaking of a first class meal. In short order, hotels like Mandalay Bay and the Venetian abandoned the idea of making customers wind their way through the friggin’ casino to take a leak whilst in the middle of a $300 dinner.

Unfortunately, many of the older hotels have refused to retrofit their restaurants thusly, causing the insult and discomfort you complain of.

ELV’s suggestion: Start eating in the better (newer) restaurants in the better hotels and you’ll be able to piss away the evening to your heart’s content.

Excretingly yours,

ELV

Our Favorite Italians – Restaurant Division

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As long as we’re thinking like an Italian these days, this might be a good time to point you to ELV’S FAVORITE ITALIAN RESTAURANTS (Las Vegas Division).

The Top Five are, in order:

1. (toss up) Allegro (for Neapolitan cooking at its finest)/B & B Ristorante (for the best pasta in Vegas)

3. Carnevino – possibly the best steakhouse in the country; certainly the best Italian steakhouse in the country.

4. Rao’s – Italian-American cooking at its finest

5. Buddy V’s – a worthy newcomer that, like Rao’s, does its Italian-American ancestry proud.

Special Honorable Mention:  Nakamura-Ya – which is technically a Japanese restaurant, but which does pasta better than just about any true Italian restaurant not named one of the above.

Some of you might be wondering about the omissions of perennial favorites Circo and Sirio, to which we can only say: one is closing soon (Circo) and Sirio is now being run exclusively by its hotel’s F & B department, with nary a Maccioni on site, save for an occasional p.r. appearance. None of these developments bodes well for the future of upscale, Italian eats in our humble burg.

Indeed, when considered along with the recent, without-fanfare closing of Valentino at the Venetian, and the shifting fortunes of whatever is going on at Piero Selvaggio’s flagship in Santa Monica, one might conclude that sophisticated Italian cooking is going the way of French haute cuisine in fast becoming a gastronomic artifact, as the great food of this gourmet mecca gets drowned under a sea of red sauce.

Which leads us to:

ELV’S WORST ITALIAN RESTAURANTS

The Bottom 5 are, in order:

1)-5) EVERY ITALIAN RESTAURANT IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD IN LAS VEGAS

Face it. They’re all terrible and you know it.

Our Favorite Italians

In Italy, the whole country is a theatre and the worst actors are on the stage. – George Bernard Shaw

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Dario Cecchini and Faith Willinger are two Italians of a different stripe.

Cecchini — the Master Butcher/Intellectual of Panzano — has been called the world’s best butcher. (“To beef, or not to beef?” is his rallying cry.*)

Willinger is a born-again Italian who has spent 35 years exploring Italy, from its Alps to Sicily, searching for the best food this giant, slurp-worthy isthmus of eatability has to offer. (“Good wine and bad wine have the same amount of calories.”  is one of her sayings.)

And let me tell you my friends, you can do a lot worse in an evening than sharing a ginormous bistecca a la Fiorentina:

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…with these two mavens of meat at a ristorante. In this case that ristorante was CUT last Thursday night — where they both were on hand to kick off the Venetian/Palazzo’s Italian Food Festival.

Cecchini was his usual ebullient self:

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….in fact he (along with some ginger friend of his in orange clogs):

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….practically defines the term.

And we bonded with Faith (a lady whose guidebooks we would never think of going to Italy without) like we were old friends in a matter of minutes:

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Yeah, Italians, born-again or otherwise, are like that.

Just about the friendliest people on earth.

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* To beef! …and then not to beef… is his answer.