Category: Events

It’s Restaurant Week 2014!

Be there or be Three Square!

ELV’s Top Picks for Restaurant Week:

1) Eiffel Tower Restaurant – $30.14 Lunch

2) Buddy V’s – $20.14 Lunch; $30.14 Dinner

3) Delmonico – $30.14 Lunch

4) MOzen Bistro – $30.14 Lunch; $40.14 Dinner

5) Morel’s Steakhouse & Bistro – $20.14 Breakfast; $30.14 Lunch; $50.14 Dinner

Other denoted notables for delicious deals and dynamite dining:

Table 10

AquaKnox

Poppy Den

Empress Court

Hakkasan

Honey Salt

Lawry’s The Prime Rib

Rick Moonen’s Rm Seafood

Todd’s Unique

Verandah – Four Seasons Hotel

Stewart+Ogden – The Grand Hotel Downtown

Mesa Grill

Hank’s Fine Steaks and Martinis at Green Valley Ranch Resort

Culinary Dropout

Bar + Bistro


Happy Chinese New Year!

ELV update: Since posting this review, we’ve returned to 1900 Asian Cuisine twice and encountered laughably poor service on both occasions, as documented in our “Letters of the Month-Hospitality Hell” post above. (It was atrocious even as measured against the relatively low bar set by ethnic Chinese restaurants in general.) As a result of these unfortunate experiences — ranging from a non-existent waitstaff to half our order being unavailable or forgotten about — we can no longer recommend the restaurant. For the masochists among you, read on and let us know if things change.

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In celebration of the Year of the Horse, we at ELV thought we’d do a little celebrating of our own by proclaiming the the new holder of the coveted “Best Chinese Restaurant in Town” title.

Continue reading “Happy Chinese New Year!”

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.