Major Awards – 2022

Leg Lamp From The Movie A Christmas Story – OddGifts.com

2022 was the year that wasn’t.

Everything was supposed to come together this year, remember? The Covid insanity had passed, the economy was starting to boom again, demand was pent up and the party-as-a-verb crowd was raring to go.

Instead we had inflation, supply chain teeth-gnashing, water woes and travel nightmares.

We started the year in Paris and ended it in London. In between two tasty bookends there was grief aplenty, health issues and the gnawing sense that the town and body we live in both have their best days behind them. A dear friend (original Proper Lunch Buncher Bruce Bloch), and local food writer (Greg Thilmont) — both left us far too soon — leaving us reeling from too much sadness compressed into one twelve month period. It is one thing when folks older than you kick the bucket, quite another when your juniors start checking out without warning. If 2022 will be remembered for anything, it will be recalled as the year of serious reassessment — the time when the preciousness of time and life was brought to the fore.

On the bright side, deaths tend to bring people closer together (“Even if we’re just whistling past the graveyard,” as my mom put it), so we saw more of our relatives (and children) than we have in any year in recent memory; we lost a little weight (TRUE!); regained our golf swing, and kept our hearing and our hair, so there’s that.

Another year-end bonus was a very successful Desert Companion Restaurant Awards fête, which had me tearing up with pride at how far these awards have come.

Image

From very modest beginnings, these magazine awards have endured and flourished over 25 years. In the early days (1997-2005) I was a committee of one, and for years, I paid for the tiny plaques and awards myself, and drove all over town delivering them to a recipients. (You can still see one near the front door at Sen of Japan.) Now, under the stewardship on Nevada Public Radio, there’s a yearly banquet, with all the trimmings, and they’ve grown into something meaningful to our culinary community, instead of a solo poofter bestowing them like some imperious potentate bellowing into the wind.

Which means there’s a fair amount of pomp and circumstances accompanying them…not to mention a tremendous lunch. The banquet was a big success; glasses were raised and speeches given, but not before the crowd was acknowledged as we usually do to begin the proceedings:

Peasant GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

2022 will also go down as the year where your majesty truly lost a bit of his appetite…but not so much that he cannot bestow credit where credit is due, one last time, for the myriad of marvelous meals he enjoyed.

So here goes….first with the actual, important awards (decided by a committee of Desert Companion food writers), then the Major Awards you’ve been waiting for….with commentary, of course.

Desert Companion

 

Neighborhood Restaurant(s) of the Year (tie):

Khoury’s Mediterranean Restaurant:

Khoury Mediterranean Restaurant - Las Vegas Sun News

Rosa Ristorante:

Image

Asian Restaurant of the Year: Trattoria Nakamura-Ya:

Trattoria NAKAMURA-YA | Tokyo Style Italian Restaurant Las Vegas

Restaurateur of the Year: John Arena

john_arena_csabinorr_038_bw_v1_final.jpg

– the godfather of the Las Vegas food scene, and a force of nature in the world of pizza, Arena should’ve gotten this award years ago. (My bad.)

Hall of Fame (tie):

Piero’s Italian Cuisine – which didn’t care enough to show up for the awards (or even acknowledge them), so we won’t do more than give them a mere mention here (even though it was some of my best prose in the ‘zine).

Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge – which was my father’s favorite restaurant, right down to the indelible fruit platter brimming with melon (at varying degrees of ripeness) and cottage cheese. No matter what you think of the Miami Vice lighting or gargantuan portions, there’s no denying its place in the firmament of iconic Vegas eats.

Rising Star of the Year: Eric Prato, Garagiste Wine Bar:

eric_prato_csabinorr_001_final.jpg
 – to quote the deathless prose of the wordsmith-in-residence:

Prato’s mission is educating customers to try something new, and if the steady stream of younger, adventuresome wine lovers at the bar is any indication (along with his burgeoning online sales), he is succeeding by tapping into (or helping create) a market no one in Las Vegas knew existed.

Chef of the Year: Nicole Brisson:

chef_nicole_wall_csabinorr_004_v2_final.jpg
 – Never was there a more deserving recipient. Can I pick ’em or can I pick ’em?

Strip Restaurant of the Year: Brezza – A hit right out of the gate, Brezza scored the daily double with this award and the kudos to its chef. As Heidi Knapp Rinella put it in DC:

Brezza is the Italian word for “breeze” — an apt name, as executive chef Nicole Brisson and business partner Jason Rocheleau have imbued their Resorts World restaurant with a freshness that seems to drift from the Amalfi Coast.

New Restaurant of the Year: Scotch 80 Prime – the name might not be new (this is its second incarnation), but the steakhouse that now occupies a corner of the Palms is a whole different beast that the previous tenant. Chef Marty Red DeLeon Lopez has this joint firing on all cylinders with an arresting menu of seared cow classics mixed with creative apps and killer sides. A unique addition to our thundering herd of steer emporiums. Jim Begley:

…it can be difficult to differentiate one [steakhouse] from another. But Lopez manages do so in the details. He highlights his heritage in his tiradito with the inclusion of traditional Filipino ingredients such as jackfruit, pickled papaya, and taro chips. His kitchen takes risks with burrata topped with uni and Osetra caviar, pairing seafood with cheese, and the sweet sea urchin assuming a role normally reserved for fruit. 

Restaurant of the Year: Anima by EDO – When it came time to debate ROTY the discussion was short, obvious and unanimous. No other restaurant in Las Vegas made the splash that Anima did this year.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Image

With the prestigious awards out of the way, let us further flounce some flummery, and focus on the fatuous. Here they are food fans, our favorites follies of feast and misfortune in 2022:

THE PANS

Worst Meal of the Year – Lago

Runner-Up – whatever this was (at The Pepper Club):

Image

So Not Worth It Meal of the Year – Wakuda:

Image

Cry Me a River Award – every chef or owner who bent my ear in the last year over staffing woes, supply-chain issues, and money problems, and then was spotted cavorting through Tokyo, slurping up Tuscany, or making whoopee at a Mallorcan fish market.

Saddest Closing – Saga Pastry + Sandwich

You Tell Me and We’ll Both Know Award – the inexplicable appeal of Asian hotpot…….the only meal on earth where no matter what you order, everything always ends up tasting the same:

Image(…and we’ll have the A-5 wagyu that tastes just like the U/15 shrimp…)

Schadenfreude AwardDavid Chang’s overblown, overrated, overpriced Majordomo fiasco at The Palazzo. It takes real talent to screw up a steakhouse in Vegas, but Mr. Bao Bun figured out how.

I Was Totally Wrong Incorrect GIF - I Was Totally Wrong ...

We’re So Over It

caviar

QR codes

orange wine

natural wine

any beer it takes more than two words to describe

celebrity chefs

cronuts

food competitions

pizza fetishization

gooey food videos

impossible to get into restaurants

smoked cocktails

smoked everything

smoked anything but smoked meat

communal seating

micro-greens

tweezer food

“vegan” butchers

“vegan” cheese

let’s face it: vegan anything

Japanese beef

tequila bars

Martha F**cking Stewart

Tits on a Bull Award – I’m rooting hard for you, Eater Vegas, because you could be such a force for good on the Vegas food scene. But the reliance on p.r. fluff and listicle after listicle needs some seasoning with actual opinion. On the plus side, at least Bradley Martin is nowhere to be found. ;-)

Hallelujah GIF - Hallelujah - Discover & Share GIFs | Madea ...

THE PICKS

Best Restaurant That’s Closest to My House (toss-up) – Main Street Provisions and Esther’s Kitchen

Favorite Watering HoleGaragiste

Steak of the YearSparrow + Wolf:

Image

Runner-UpCUT:

Image

Sushi of the YearSushi Hiro:

Image

Runner-UpYUI Edomae Sushi

Most Anticipated Opening of the YearLotus of Siam at Red Rock

Italians of the Year – these guys:

Image(Vetri & Trees sounds like a haberdashery)

Lunch(s) of the YearCipriani

Image

Lunch of the Year (European Division)La Tour D’Argent Paris (France, not Kentucky)

Brunch of the YearAl Solito Posto

French Meal of the YearGuy Savoy (Paris)

Image

Runner-UpGuy Savoy (Las Vegas)

Japanese Meal of the YearRaku:

Image

Runner(s)-UpSanga, Kaiseki Yuzu

Chinese Meal of the YearGenting Palace (Resorts World)

Runner-UpRainbow Kitchen

Korean Meal of the YearSoyo Barstaurant

Tacos of the Year (toss-up)Sin Fronteras Tacos and Letty’s

Image(Quesotacos FTW)

Favorite Meat-festRincon de Buenos Aires

Runner-Up8oz Korean Steakhouse

Burger of the YearMain Street Provisions

Image

Runner-Up BOTYNusr-Et:

Image

Slider of the Year – this mini-filet on a hot-buttered bun at Jamon Jamon Tapas:

Image
Brisket of the Year – this beauty from Tamez BBQ (a speck of a roadside stand) in Athens, Georgia:
Image
Hot Dog of the YearWindy City Beef N Dogs:
Image
Salad of the Year (because The Food Gal® insists we have some green on this page) – the Caesar at Esther’s Kitchen:

Image

Pleasant Surprise of the YearBalla

Runner-Up PSOTY: Amalfi by Bobby Flay

Most Expensive Meal of the Year – a $400 fagri (red porgy) at Milos:

Image

Image(It says right here: I owe $14.72 because you had the salad with the dressing on the side)

Most Fun Food Event Not Connected with Any Awards or Eating: Las Vegas Book Festival:

Image

Butcher of the YearFeatherblade English Craft Butchery

Image

Podcast of the YearEat.Talk.Repeat. – Have you been living under a rock or something?

Hole-in-the-Wall of the YearThe Daily Bread

Image

Most Visited Hotel Because It Has the Most Good Restaurants in the Most Accessible SpaceResorts World

Restaurant We’re Rooting Hardest ForMariscos El Frescos:

Image

Cappucino AwardMothership Coffee Roasters

Image

Runner-UpPublicUs

Crabcake of the Year – this concupiscent crabby concoction at Vic & Anthony’s:

Image

We Wish We Had Eaten Here More AwardKaiseki Yuzu:

Image

Food Writer to Watch of the Year Brent Holmes

Vlogger of the YearSo-Chan! (Even if you don’t speak Japanese, his videos are informative, well-produced, and ton of fun….and mercifully short.)

Lifesaver Awards – to those places we repaired again and again when our favorites were busier than a whisky concession at an Irish wedding:

Noodlehead – Szechuan noodles in a pinch

Izakaya Go – all-purpose Japanese fills the bill:

Image

Mt. Everest – friendly and fast Indian

Matteo’s – always underrated; always excellent

Delmonico – great steaks; fabulous Friday lunch

Yu-Or-Mi Sushi – so much better than The Pepper Club

Carversteak – just edged out for steak of the year by two heavyweights

Wally’s – best wine selection and prices on the Strip

Ed. note: In case you’re wondering, we didn’t include any meals/restaurants from our recent London trip to any of these categories, it’s because we are just days back from the trip and want to share our British musings with you in a separate post early next year.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

Cheers Frank Sinatra GIF - Cheers Frank Sinatra Bing Crosby - Discover & Share GIFs

Desert Companion Restaurant Awards 2021

DESERT COMPANION AWARDS 2021

Ed. Note: The Desert Companion Restaurant Awards came out a couple of weeks ago, citing our most worthy eateries for their contributions to our dining out scene in the past year. As there were no awards in 2020, they are slightly expanded this year, with multiple winners in a few categories. Click on this link to read about them in their entirety, or scroll below for the ones yours truly wrote (for the 25th year in a row). Bon appetit and congrats to all the winners!

RESTAURATEUR OF THE YEAR

Gino Ferraro

Image
You don’t know the truffles Gino has seen

To be a great restaurateur, one must be perpetually in a bad mood, or at least a world class worrywart. Gino Ferraro certainly fits the latter bill, and one suspects he is always seconds away from the former – continually bracing himself against some imminent operatic tragedy about to befall his restaurant, be it a service misstep, or anything he doesn’t think is up to snuff. This is not to say he is never happy. To see him touching every table, decanting an aged Barolo, or advising customers what to order, is to see a professional at the top of his game, albeit one who knows how vigilant he must be to stay there.

Like all Italians, his passion for food and wine runs deep. What began as a wholesale/importing business in Las Vegas in the early 1980s, quickly became a tiny trattoria/retail store on West Sahara, then a full-blown Italian ristorante, replete with wine and piano bars, then to its current digs on Paradise Road, where he and his family have flourished since 2009. Three versions of the same restaurant in thirty-five years, each one bigger and better than the last, is a feat almost unheard of in this industry. Ferraro’s has always been classic without being stuffy and old school without being hidebound, with a formula based upon hospitality first, and a menu of old favorites (a legendary osso buco) and Italian standards (a simply perfect spaghetti alio e olio), along with lighter fare (a gorgeous Caprese salad), guaranteed to satisfy the old guard and adventuresome gastronomes alike.

To pull off this feat for a decade takes the soul of an entrepreneur, the stamina of a bricklayer and the discipline of a drill sergeant. That Gino and his family – aided by wife Rosalba and chef/son Mimmo – have kept Ferraro’s at this level of excellence, never losing a step, and surviving the rigors of Covid, is a feat as impressive as his world-beating wine list. Come any night and you’ll see Gino on the prowl, eagle-eyed, surveying his guests like a paterfamilias looking after his flock. Look a little closer and you’ll see a twinkle in those worried eyes – a sense of satisfaction from knowing he and his staff have done all they can, since 1985, to ensure your happiness.

HIDDEN GEM OF THE YEAR

Saga Pastries + Sandwich

Image

Scandinavia and Las Vegas have as much in common as pickled herring and high-stakes poker. To be blunt: the words “eat like a Viking,” do not exactly roll tripping-ly off the tongue when it’s 110 degrees outside.  But there are enough Norsemen in town (and lovers of all things Nordic) to keep  this sleek and gleaming breakfast/lunch spot on Eastern Avenue humming with a steady stream of regulars — folks who lust for Swedish waffles, insanely good “Danish Dogs” (Denmark’s unique contribution to the tube steak ouevre), and what may be the most unique sandwiches in Vegas.

Those waffles come either flat or folded, stuffed with savory fillings, or dripping with berries and sour cream. One bite and you’ll see why chef/owner Gert Kvalsund proudly displays his “best waffle” accolades, and has pretty much retired the award. He also does classic pancakes, various pastries, and good Lavazza coffee, but what keeps us returning are his Saga Smørbrød: open-faced sandwiches overflowing with your choice of lightly-cured ham, salmon and/or the sweetest Arctic shrimp you’ll ever taste. (First timers should try all three.) No matter the season, they’ll fuel you for whatever conquering and pillaging comes to mind.

Image
Shrimply delicious

NEIGHBORHOOD RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR

Elia Authentic Greek Taverna

Image

Like Italy and Mexico, the cuisine of Greece is a victim of its own cliches. If you ask most Americans to define a Greek restaurant, they will describe a sea blue and white room, reeking of garlic and bouzouki music (including “Never on Sunday” played at least four times an hour), along with boring gyros, wet cardboard souvlaki, and baklava so dense it could be used as a doorstop. Elia challenged all those tired tropes when it opened a few years ago, and in doing so, immediately became our best Greek restaurant,  right down to the indecipherable Greek lettering and unpronounceable names on the menu. (Not to worry – translations are provided.)

The aim is to make you feel like you’re on a side street in Athens, sipping Retsina and eating at a local taverna, and boy did it hit its mark. Right from the jump, customers responded to the straightforward cooking, even as it was served in a modest, tiny space on south Durango. Then, when everyone else was simply trying to survive 2020, owners Savvas Georgiadis, Alexadros Gkikas, and Keti Haliasos made a bold move to a larger location, tucked into a corner of west Sahara, and never missed a beat. If anything, the new digs, complete with bar and outdoor patio, have given their cooking a larger stage — serving fresh roasted lamb, salt-baked fish, fried zucchini chips, and spicy tyrokafteri (cheese dip) to fellow Greek-Americans, and others eager to learn what a proper mezze platter and galatoboureko taste like.

Image
Go Greek and go fish

Thus has Elia become a taverna to call our own (and practically a club for the local Greek-American community), but also an education in how real Greeks eat (more fish and veggies, less pita bread and chickpeas). Las Vegas has taken to these lessons like an octopus to sea water. There is nothing by-the-numbers here; it is cooking from the heart, by Greeks eager to share their country’s food and wine. “Authentic” may be an overused (or frowned upon) word in some food circles these days, but this is the real Greek deal, and Elia wears its name like a point of Hellenic pride.

PASTRY CHEF OF THE YEAR

Florent Cheveau, Burgundy French Bakery Café 

Image
A chef you knead to know

You might be sensing a theme with many of these awards: people who have survived and thrived through the worst economy for restaurants in over a decade. If necessity is the mother of invention, then this pandemic has surely been the genesis of revolution — specifically a gastronomic uprising — affording major kitchen talent a chance to strut their stuff in the suburbs. Lovers of French pastries could not have been happier when seemingly out of nowhere,  Florent Cheveau (former MGM executive pastry chef and World Chocolate Master), opened the Burgundy French Bakery Cafe on West Sahara early this year, at a time when the prospects for success looked as sunken as a fallen souffle.

Taking over a fast food smoothie space across from the Village Theaters, his timing turned out to be as perfect as his croissants. People were hungry for handmade food, and anyone who bit into one of his macarons or cinnamon roll knew they were in the presence of something special. These were baked goods on par with the best restaurants in the toniest hotels, and here they were, for taking home or eating in, seven days a week. His savory quiches, croque Monsieur, and sandwiches are just as compelling as his sweets, but what keeps us coming back is a mille-feuille (“thousand layers”) of incomparable buttery-lightness, woven into breakfast pastries that take us straight back to Paris


STRIP RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR

Bazaar Meat by José Andrés

Image
You can’t beat this meat

When he isn’t out saving the world, José Andrés oversees a galaxy of restaurants that are the envy of every chef in America. He is more of a philanthropist than a working chef these days, but his ThinkFood Group has been running four gorgeous eateries in Las Vegas for over a decade, and their excellence continues to impress, from the molecular (‘e’ by Jose Andres), to tapas (Jaleo), to the Mexican-Chinese mashup that is China Poblano.

As good as each of these are, the one restaurant that is sui generis and without peer is Bazaar Meat. It is all about meat, of course, but also a tour de force of Iberian cuisine — from the wacky (foie gras cotton candy) to the sassy (chicken croquetas served in a shoe) to the substantial (haunches of some of the best beef on the planet). Calling it a steak house doesn’t do it justice, since you can compose a meal here any number of ways — from completely vegetarian to nothing but raw fish — and it is the go-to place in Vegas for all those iterations of Spanish pork.

Spaniards know ham like a Korean knows cabbage, and here you can indulge all your cured meat fantasies like nowhere else. Covid put a crimp in this restaurant’s style as it did all up and down the Strip, but Bazaar’s bounce-back has been impressive. Even when lay-offs were everywhere and everyone was struggling with seating restrictions, José’s showplace soldiered on and thrived in its back corner of the Sahara hotel, enduring more hardship than any gastronomic restaurant deserves, much less one that is easily one of the top ten steakhouses in the country. (Who knows what records it could set if its constantly-in-flux hotel ever gets its act together.)

Image
Candace Ochoa is en fuego

But Bazaar Meat is more than a steakhouse: it is also a wine bar, a ham bar, and a raw bar all under one roof. It announces its brilliance from your first look at the meat locker (behind a wood-fired grill the size of a small truck), and keeps the magnificence going from one course after the next The menu is shorter than it was two years ago, and the wine list is now two pages long, not twenty, but the precise cooking (now headed by veteran executive chef Candace Ochoa), impeccable service and super-sharp management remain intact. Like the entire Strip, Bazaar Meat has weathered quite a storm, and still operates in choppy seas, but through it all, José has kept his Spanish flag flying high.

HALL OF FAME AWARD

Restaurant Guy Savoy

Guy Savoy Fine Dining Las Vegas
Haute dining on a whole different level

Since opening in May, 2006, Guy Savoy’s straight-from-Paris masterpiece, has loomed like a chapel of fine dining over the Las Vegas Strip. Its splendor announces itself from the huge double doors that greet you at the entrance, leading to a dining room with a ceiling reaching even higher, resulting in muted conversations and hushed tones meant to show proper respect to the surroundings and not give offense to the food. The cathedral metaphor is apt since the French treat their cuisine as a religion, and their greatest restaurants (even in offshoot form) are temples of the culinary arts. There are only a handful of restaurants in America where reverential attention is paid to what’s on the plate, and Restaurant Guy Savoy, in Caesars Palace, is one of them.

What Guy Savoy meant to our dining scene cannot be overstated: When he arrived with his brigade de cuisine fifteen years ago, it confirmed Las Vegas stature as a world-class dining destination, one that even the supercilious French had brought to their bosom. In planting his flag here, he, along with compatriots Joël Robuchon, and Pierre Gagnaire (two other titans of gastronomy), recognized our tourist industry as an eager market for their impeccable cooking, with a restaurant scene (and talent) on par with much larger cities with much deeper culinary traditions. Even if you have never eaten here or can’t imagine doing so, having the world’s best in our own backyard created a climate of excellence that raised everyone’s eyebrows and standards.

The significance of their arrival was felt for over a decade. International acclaim, national media, food festivals, awards, and other world-renowned chefs followed. Suddenly, people from all over the world were coming here just to eat, and our very own French Revolution from 2005-2009 was the reason for it. Savoy’s influence has been unmistakable, but what garners him Hall of Fame status is doing it so well for so long. Through the Great Recession and now a pandemic, this dining room has never faltered, turning out food very close to what you will find in France, albeit without the cost of a round-trip plane ticket. When everyone was still on their heels from shutdowns in mid-2020, Caesars Palace made the bold move to reopen this dining room, and was rewarded with an avalanche of reservations — pent-up demand for one of Las Vegas’s most expensive meals — cooking that sets a world standard, the ultimate haute cuisine experience, from one of the world’s greatest chefs — proving how important this restaurant has been, and will continue to be, to Las Vegas’s culinary reputation.

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR

Cipriani

Image

Cipriani is neither new nor cutting edge nor unique to Las Vegas. Nevertheless, it represents something very special to our restaurant scene: an outpost of a luxury brand displaying a style of dining that seemed in danger of extinction just a few years ago. In an era overrun with casual gastropubs, a retro-chic restaurant trading in classic Venetian recipes might have seemed as out of place as Dolce & Gabbana at a beer bash. But open it did, in late 2018, appealing to locals and tourists alike looking for something more refined than formulaic Italian. Then Covid hit, and Cipriani (pronuounced CHEEP-ree-ah-nee), became more than just a restaurant — it was a lifeboat and a beacon to all seeking a good meal on the Strip —  a lunch and dinner stalwart, open every day, keeping hopes alive that Las Vegas might yet return to its former glory.

For a restaurant tracing its origins to 1931, the cuisine is remarkably timeless: simple, sophisticated northern fare with nary a garlic clove in sight. In place of tomato sauce and cheese you get refinement: top-shelf salumi, carpaccio (invented by founder Giuseppe Cipriani in 1933), spoon-tender baby artichokes, baked tagliolini with ham, and pastas in celebration of rich noodles, not in disguise of them. The unsung heroes of the menu are the meats (including the elusive fegato alla Veneziana – a liver dish so coveted by organ eaters it is almost mythical), pizzas (expensive but worth it), and vanilla gelato so good it ought to come with a warning label: “in case of addiction, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Image
Tiramisu

And then there is the service: snappy barkeeps (always ready with a Bellini), crackerjack waiters, and sharply-dressed managers, all at the top of their game. The staff does everything from cosseting celebrities (yes, that was Jay-Z and Beyoncé making an entrance) to boning fish, dividing up desserts, and speaking multiple languages (the Cipriani brand is huge with international gastronomes).  Here it all flows effortlessly — old school attentiveness, done with understated flair in synchronicity with the posh surroundings.

More than anything else, this ristorante signifies a return to a time when atmosphere and elegance went knife and fork with good food. When classic cooking was the rule, and meals were something to be celebrated with family and friends in high style. Everything old is new again, the saying goes, and Cipriani is taking us back to the future with the most stylish Italian in town.

Image

Vincenzo il Grande

Things Will Never Be the Same

Ed. note: The following essay appears in this month’s Desert Companion magazine. Click here to read it in its original format.

We seemed invincible once, didn’t we? Thirty years of ever-expanding prosperity will do that to you. Having survived Gulf wars, dot-com busts, recessions, mass shootings and depressions, it was a cinch the public’s appetite for all things Las Vegas was insatiable. Since 1994, we had seen one restaurant boom after another: celebrity chefs, the French Revolution of the early aughts, Chinatown’s twenty year expansion, Downtown’s resurgence — all of it  gave us rabid restaurant revelers a false sense of security. A cocky confidence that the crowds would flock and the champagne would always flow.

And then we were floored by a Covid left hook no one saw coming. Poleaxed, cold-cocked, out on our feet.  In an instant, literally, thirty years of progress hit the mat. To keep the metaphor going, we’ve now lifted ourselves to the ropes for a standing eight count. The question remains whether we can recover and still go the distance, or take one more punch and suffer a brutal TKO.

There was an eeriness to everything in those early months, as if a relative had died, or we were living in a bad dream. A sense of loss and apology filled the air. Like someone knocked unconscious (or awakening from a nightmare), our first instincts were to reassure ourselves. Restaurants were there to feed and help us back to our feet and the feelings were mutual. Reassurances and gratitude were the watchwords whenever you picked up a pizza or grabbed take-out from a chef struggling to make sense of it all.

Then, as quick as an unseen uppercut, the mood turned surly and defensive. The moment restaurants were given the go-ahead to start seating people again, the battle lines were drawn. It took some weeks to build the trenches, but by July, what began as a “we’re all in this together” fight for survival devolved into a multi-front war pitting survivalists on all sides against each other.  Mutual support evaporated as tensions arose between those needing to make a living and those who saw epidemic death around every corner.  Caught in the middle were the patrons: people who just wanted to go out, take advantage of our incredible restaurant scene and have a good time. Suddenly, everyone felt uncomfortable, and in a matter of a few calamitous weeks, dining out in America went from “we’re here to have a good time” to “let’s all struggle to get through this’ — not exactly a recipe for a good time, which is, after all, the whole point of eating out.

Reduced hours and crowds meant shorter menus, since every restaurant in town was forced to narrow its food options. No one seemed to mind, since anyone taking the time to dine out was simply happy the place was open. But if you sum it all up — the rules, the emptiness, the fear, the feeling of everyone being on guard — it’s a wonder anyone bothered going out at all. But going out to eat is what we do, because it is fun, convenient and delicious, and because we are human.

As Las Vegas’s most intrepid gastronaut, I’ve had to curb my voracious appetite more than anyone. Overnight my routine went from visiting ten restaurants a week to a mere few. Even in places where I’m on a first-name basis with the staff, the experience is as suppressed as the voices of the waiters. Instead of concentrating on hospitality, the singular focus is now on following all the rules. All of which makes you appreciate how the charm of restaurants stems from the sincerity of those serving you — something hard to notice when you can’t see their face.

Nowhere are these feelings more acute than on the Strip. “Las Vegas needs conventions to survive,” says Gino Ferraro, facing the simplest of facts. “If the hotels suffer, we suffer.” He’s owned Ferraro’s Italian Restaurant and Wine Bar since 1985 and will be the first to tell you how thin the margins are for success in the business. Restaurants are in your blood more than your bank account, and micromanaging, cutting costs, and (hopefully) another year of government assistance are what he sees as keys to their survival. “Good restaurants will survive, but there’s no doubt there will be less of them.”

Unlike the free-standing Ferraro’s, the Strip is different. There, the restaurants are amenities — like stores in a mall if you will — and from Sunday-Thursday (when the conventions arrived) they used to thrive. These days, like Ferraro’s, they still pack ’em in on weekends, but almost all are closed Monday-Wednesday. This doesn’t mean the food or the service has suffered, far from it, only that everyone is hanging on by their fingernails, and this anxiety is palpable when you walk through the doors. The staffs are almost too welcoming, which is nice, but you can sense the fear and it’s not pretty, and it is not going away for many months to come.

As Vegas slowly re-opens, one thing you can no longer take for granted is that each hotel will have a full compliment of dining options, from the most modest to world famous. If I had to make a prediction, it would be that a year from now, some hotels may field a smaller team of culinary superstars, and their bench will not be as deep, and those stars will have another season of wear and tear on them without any talented rookies to come along and take their place.

Long before the shutdown, there were signs we had reached peak Vegas and things were starting to wane. Some fancy French venues were showing their age, the Venetian/Palazzo (with its panoply of dining options), seemed overstuffed, and rumblings were heard that even the indefatigable David Chang had lost his fastball. The same could be said for the whole celebrity-chef-thing, which was starting to feel very end-of-last-century by the end of last year. The Palms’ murderer’s row of newly-minted sluggers was mired in a slump, and our gleaming, big box, pan-Asian eye-candy (Tao, Hakkasan) were not shining as bright as they once did.

The stakes are much higher when you consider the reputation of Las Vegas as a whole. Survey the landscape these days and all you can ask is, how much of this damage is permanent? It took from 1989-2019 to take Las Vegas from “The Town That Taste Forgot” to a world class, destination dining capital — a claim to fame like no other — where an entire planet of gastronomic delights, cooked by some of the best chefs in the business, was concentrated among a dozen swanky, closely-packed hotels. Now, what are we? A convention city with no conventions? A tourist mecca three days a week? Can we recapture this lost ground, or is some of it gone forever? Everyone is asking but no one has the answers.

Perhaps a culling of the herd was already in the works and all Covid did was accelerate the process. Are the big money restaurant days over? Certainly until those conventions return, and no one is predicting that until next year, at the earliest. If that’s the case, it will be a leaner/meaner gastronomic world that awaits us down the road — not the cornucopia of choices laid before you every night, no matter what style of food struck your fancy. The fallout will include the casinos playing it safe; not throwing money at chefs like they once did, and sticking with the tried a true for awhile.  Less ambitious restaurant choices? Absolutely. It is impossible to imagine a single European concept making a splash like Joël Robuchon did in 2005, or any Food Network star getting the red carpet treatment just for slapping their name on a door. The era of Flay, Ramsay, Andrés and others is over, and the “next big thing” in Las Vegas dining won’t be a thing for a long time.

If the Strip’s prospects look bleak (at least in the short term), locally the resilience has been astounding. Neighborhood venues hunkered down like everyone else, but now seem poised for a resurgence at a much faster rate than anything happening in the hotels.  If the Strip resembles a pod of beached whales, struggling to get back in the water, then local restaurants are the more nimble pilot fish, darting about, servicing smaller crowds wherever they find them. Four new worthwhile venues are popping up downtown: upscale tacos at Letty’s, Yu-Or-Mi Sushi and Sake, Good Pie and the American gastro-pub Main Street Provisions, all in the Arts District. Off the Strip Mitsuo Endo has debuted his high-toned yakitori bar — Raku Toridokoro — to much acclaim, and brew pubs are multiplying everywhere faster than peanut butter stouts.

Chinatown — with its indomitable Asians at the helm — seems the least fazed by any of this, and Circa will spring to life before year’s end on Fremont Street, hoping to capture some of the hotel mojo sadly absent a few miles south. Going forward, some of these imposed restrictions will remain in place to ensure survival (more take-out, smaller menus, fewer staff), but the bottom line is look to the neighborhoods if you wish to recapture that rarest of sensations these days, a sense of normalcy.

Watching my favorites absorb these body blows has been like nursing a sick child who did nothing to deserve such a cruel fate. In a way it’s made me realize that’s what these restaurants have become to me over decades: a community of fledgling businesses I’ve supported and watched grow in a place no one thought possible. As social experiments go, the great public health shutdown of 2020 will be debated for years, but this much is true: Las Vegas restaurants were at their peak on March 15, 2020, and reaching that pinnacle is a mountain many of them will never again climb.