You Should be Goan to NAMASTE

An average Italian restaurant gets more customers in a week than a good Indian restaurant gets in a month. – Calvin Trillin

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What can we say about Namaste?

When it opened two years ago, we spent hours writing and crowing about it — everywhere from this website to the Las Vegas Weekly to KNPR  to Channel 8’s Dishing and Dining.

Within a few short months of receiving all that praise, the head chef (the one we wrote was taking it to a whole new level of Indian food) left. Then it went through another ownership change (or two – these things can be hazy when you speak with foreign nationals), was closed down twice by the Health Department, and wound up in one Melque Rodrigues’ lap six months ago. Most intriguing of all: Melque (pronounced MEL-kee) is a trained vocalist, with major chops in the fragrance-selling and singing fields, but none in the food biz.

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CENTRAL Plywood Report!

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ELV hates to go all EaterLA on you, but his staff thought you’d like to see some snaps of what’s going on with the construction of Central (pronounced sen-TRAL) over at Caesars Palace. Expect this stylish café (pronounced ka-FAY) — replacing the old Augustus Café near the Caesars’ check-in desks) — to redefine the hotel coffee shop, featuring food from D.C.’s finest French chef —  Michel Richard (pronounced MEE-shel rish-ARD) — and to open sometime in September.

ELV suspects that, in food and appearance, it will greatly resemble Richard’s  original Central in downtown Washington (D. C. not Connecticut)…and that’ll be just peachy keen with us.

CARNEVINO Cocktails with Abby and Nicole

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Batali/Bastianich Group mixologist Lucas Swallows has one of those names that’s too good to be true — you know like the florist named Rose Flowers or a lumberjack named Mark Wood. Hugh Alexander Curtas (d.o.b. 10-15-84 – The Official Number Two Son Of ELV) once had Mr. Earthman for a geography teacher, and there is actually an attorney in New York called Sue Yoo.

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