ELV has been a pretty busy boy lately, whipping out articles left and right for a variety of traditional and on-line media. As we said in an earlier post, the national and international media has stopped assigning our dining scene to the warmed-over steam table, and everyone seems interested in Las Vegas again.

Click here to read our take on the current status of our dining scene — written for Real Eats, Barbara Fairchild’s newest, online food ‘zine.

…and because he taught us to cook — both in person and in his seminal La Technique et La Methode cookbooks.

Believe it or not, boning a whole chicken is not that hard. Just follow the master and you’ll be doing it blindfolded in no time.

When ELV lies around his humble abode thinking of things he loathes, many things come to mind, including:

- cupcakes,

- country music,

- people who are intolerant of other cultures,

- the Dutch,

- the novels of Jane Austen,

- men who wear shorts in public, and

- reality TV.

But most of all, he thinks about how much he hates sandwich shops.

Especially sandwich shops that want to franchise themselves selling “wraps,” “fresh made ingredients,” “pastas,” and “wholesome” this or that…when anyone with a sixth grade education knows everything is purchased from U. S. Foods or Sysco — and is packaged in such a way to get secretaries, soccer moms, hipsters and the biker crowd to mindlessly pay for pre-packaged dreck because they think they’re eating “light” and “healthy.”

Sandwich shops are loathsome creatures deserving opprobrium on a universal scale — fattening frauds masquerading as healthy alternatives to overeating.  We’ve had so many bad experiences over the years that when we see the words “salads, pastas and wraps” we get a case of the heebie jeebies.

You want a good sandwich? Make it at home. You want slimy meat and stale baked goods? Go to any place advertising “soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps.”

Case in point: Rachel’s Kitchen. Perennially packed with the iPod and Bluetooth crowd, chattering and clicking away while robotically ingesting sandwich “creations” with all of the soul of a spreadsheet. This is food as fuel and nothing else, and on that level it does the job the way all sandwich shops do — by combining pre-made provisions in familiar ways at cheap prices to appeal to customers who think about food the same way they do about washing their clothes. Sandwich shops depend on this “food is only fuel” crowd to fill their coffers, and daily besmirch a holy creation.

Case in point #2: Rachel’s unsmoked,  “smoked” pressed turkey sandwich — one bite of which told us all we needed to know about this filling station of a lunch spot.

Case in point #3: One chipped tooth on our hard-as-a-rock chocolate chip* cookie — which told us all we needed to know about this franchise-seller.

You have been warned.

RACHEL’S KITCHEN

3330 South Hualapai Dr.

Las Vegas, NV 89117

702.459.6789

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* Giving new meaning to the name.

Looking for some great last minute takeout for this Sunday — to munch on during that football game you might have heard something about?

Then you can’t beat one of Chris Herrin’s magnificent muffalettas (and macarons) from Bread & Butter…

…or some good ‘cue from Memphis Championship Barbecue…

…or a New York-sized pie from Anthony & Mario’s Broadway Pizzeria (within a stone’s throw of ELV’s humble abode)…

…or a sack of cheeseburgers and a Chili Mac from Steak ‘n Shake (In Sight It Must Be Right).

As usual, you’ll have to scroll down to the 36:18 mark to watch ELV stuffing his pie hole, and listen to him expound on our town’s best sandwich in the cheesy, meaty, spicy, overstuffed tones for which he is known!

Let’s accentuate the positive first, shall we?

The buns are nice, fresh, soft, slightly sweet and squishy, just the way they’re supposed to be.

They don’t put sesame seeds on them — another big plus.

They use good meat and season it properly.

That meat is cooked to medium (the way “the kitchen suggests it”) which is too much for us, but just fine for most folks.

Those burgers (9 oz.) are neither too big nor too small…and they’re priced right: $9. As one of our dining companions remarked: “It is a good burger, not life changing, but very nice for the price.”

We even liked the bbq pork sliders with their dousing in sauce and plenty-wet chipotle slaw. They won’t win any awards but are fun and filling as bar food goes. Even the arancini impressed; it being as light and tasty as any you’ll find in a decent Italian restaurant…even if they do incorporate truffle oil…something we’ll forgive in a burger joint.

The staff seems to be on its game, and has been from the get go, and after several trips here (two where we were “made,” one where we weren’t), we feel confident we can endorse the service as top notch.

Liquid refreshments of the adult variety are compelling and well priced. Trappist ales on tap share billing with $18 half bottles of Qupe syrah — both of which go splendidly with the food. (The Tobin James full bottle of cabernet sauvignon ($43) is also a relative bargain.)

Before you get to all of those goodies (including milkshakes made and garnished with an entire Hostess cupcake…yikes!) you’ll have to navigate the problematical floor plan. The design achieves what can only be called negative feng shui by mixing more metaphors than this website.  The hostess stand and foyer have the look of a fancy restaurant, behind which sits a milk shake bar of sorts that tries (and fails) to evoke a retro-50s soda fountain vibe. It fails mainly because it sits catty-corner to a real bar — the two of them bisecting the two dining areas. The effect creates an immediate sense of schizophrenia that challenges the patron: Am I in a groovy-cool, wholesome throwback diner, or an adult burger joint with serious beer and wine pretensions? Sitting in either space, you can feel the designer’s dilemma as they tried to combine the two concepts…and ended up flopping at both. None of this distracts from the food, but at times you wish it would.

The main culprits are the “Baltimore” fries, the signature “Double Helix Stuffed” burger, and steamed meatballs that were so unappetizing we couldn’t bring ourselves to post the picture of the grey blobs as they appeared. The fries, if left alone, are decent enough, but someone had the idea of covering them in both brown gravy and an extremely salty cheese sauce. The effect is to take a decent fried potato and turn it into a sloppy mess with zero visual appeal, and no tasteful one we can think of — unless gloppy brown sauce and over-salted cheese is your thing. The nachos were also a disaster — again suffering the indignity of a smothering cheese sauce (this time with black truffles!) — adding insult to injury with kalamata olives thrown in for those with a sodium chloride deficiency.

Finally, there is that signature burger. It tries to duplicate the success of the famous Daniel Boulud stuffed burger (sans foie gras), at half the size and price. Ours resembled a withered, grainy, brown baseball, with all the chew-a-bility of one left out in the sandlot too long. The braised short rib stuffing was akin to beef mush punctuated with un-masticate-able chunks o’ meat that would give shoe leather a run for its money. It is a disaster of a “signature” menu item, and should be deep-sixed as quickly as possible, lest it end up “signing” the death warrant for this place. — something we’ve told the management face to face.

There is good food at  Bottles & Burgers, you just have to look for it. Once the cooks stop gunking things up, and pare down the menu, and quit trying to copy a chef whose talents are far beyond their pay grade, this place could become a neighborhood institution. We’re rooting for it, but right now we can’t quite root for the food.

BOTTLES & BURGERS by Double Helix

In Tivoli Village

450 South Rampart Boulevard #120

Las Vegas, NV 89145

702.431.5453

www.tivolivillage.doublehelixwine.com

Dear ELV,

I love Italian food; for me it is the best food in the world. I feel that you can eat it every day a be very very happy. I like the fact that it simple and all based on great ingredients. Or at least it is in Italy.

I had the fortune to live and work in Italy and discover that Italian food is quite different then what is served here. Here we eat “Italo American” that for me is crap and has no tie to Italy at all.
I went to Parma ( or what ever it’s called) for lunch once because of your other good comments, and again, it was the usual ItaloAmerican Menu. The food was very average.

I spoke with Italian Chefs that work here in LV and they tell me that that they can’t really cook Italian because the clientele dose not want nor understand it. They are always asked to cook the same American Standards (fried calamari, linguini with clams, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken parmigiana..) so at the end they also loose passion and send out food that they would never ever serve in Italy. It’s almost like hiring an American Chef to work in Italy and have him cook Hotdogs because Italians think American Food is hotdogs and hamburgers.

So my question is: Would Las Vegas understand a real Italian restaurant? There are quite a few in San Francisco also many that are specialized in various Italian regions (Liguria, Lazio, Piedmonte, Sardinia). Or does the market only wants what we have.

I’m not surprised that you, ELV, avoid “Italian” restaurants, but sometimes I’m surprised by your reviews, like this one or Bacio at Tropicana, that are the same average ItaloAmerican…..crap?

Signed,

Totally Tired of Tepid Italian Tom

ELV responds:

Dear Teed Off,

Like you, we at ELV love Italian food, especially in Italy. In America (generally), all of the subtlety and nuance gets buried in a heap of “gravy,” cheese and other crude approximations of the real thing.

But this doesn’t mean it’s all “crap,” only that certain restaurants must be judged on their own terms. Regarding Parma, it seems to us that Chef Marc is trying to lighten things up a bit, and substitute “ingredient-forward” cooking for “sauce-forward” creations. (Perhaps we should have put this in the body of our article.) This is why we think it is worth a trip, although in no way does it compete with the finer Italian places on the Strip…and not even Marc claims it does.

Likewise, we’ve heard many an Italian  chef bemoan how the public just wears them down in its relentless quest for those “standards” that are done to death. (We call it the “Big Night Syndrome.”) Irene Virbila of the LATimes discussed this at length with Max and ELV on KNPR two years ago. Americans don’t want authentic Italian anymore than they want authentic Japanese or real, rustic French. Good Italian food only exists at all here because of our 40 million yearly visitors, and even with those numbers, there’s only a handful of restaurants serving anything close to the real thing.

The Las Vegas (read: local) market really doesn’t want anything more than the same old crappy sauces and cheese that Maggiano’s and Buca di Beppo churn out, and at least a couple of times a month we almost come to blows with good friends (some remarkably well-traveled and sophisticated) who rave to us about how much they love some crudely executed, hackneyed pasta at some lousy (but popular) local Italian joint. Piero’s is still in business fer chrissakes! And thriving! We rest our case.

Bottom line: If you want great Italian food, go to Italy; if you want good facsimiles of the real deal, go to Valentino, B & B or Circo; and if you want something better than the same old franchised, Sysco slop, give Parma/Pastavino a whirl. At least you know everything is made on the premises, and there’s a chef/owner around who takes no shortcuts.

Or get yourself a Marcella Hazan cookbook and learn about what makes this food so wonderful the old fashioned way: by cooking it yourself, the way we did 25 years ago.

Bolognese-i-ly yours,

Giovanni Curtas

Lobster bisque

No one loves to bag on bad Italian like ELV.

For twenty years we’ve maintained that you can throw anything on a noodle, smother it with cheap tomato sauce and cheese, and the world (or Americans at least) will beat a path to your door.

With a few exceptions, we avoid neighborhood Italian restaurants like Demi Moore does sobriety tests.

One of those exceptions is Parma by Chef Marc, a restaurant that, to these taste buds, just keeps getting better and better.

Pastas have always been its strong suit, but it was Marc’s lobster bisque that made us sit up and take notice last week. It was intensity in a cup. Full of lobster-ness without heaviness, classic in style and supremely slurp-worthy.

If you scroll through the pictures, you’ll also see a pristine red snapper over squid ink-infused polenta, a spaghetti cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper), and a skirt steak — all properly seasoned and cooked to a “t”.

From the looks of things last Tuesday night, we’re not the only ones who’s noticed how tasty this joint has become. The joint was jumpin’ (how many restaurants can say that on a Tuesday night?), as the pastas were flying out of the kitchen and Marc worked the room (and touched every table) like an old pro who knows how to keep his customers happy.

From the prices (everything priced in the teens to low 20s — i.e. a serious bargain) to the wine list (limited but also quite reasonable), everything about this place is designed to keep you happy. Except the name.

Yes, it seems Chef Marc, charming, hard-working guy that he is, loves to confuse people*….especially when it comes to what things are named…including him. The sign on the door (and the menu) says “Parma by Chef Marc”. Marc’s last name used to be Sgrizzi, then it was Ritz. Now it’s back to Sgrizzi. If you google “Parma Las Vegas” you get a website that says “Chef Marc’s Pastavino & Deli,” which also happens to be the sign you see from the road as you drive down Buffalo, yet the website address www.parmabychefmarc.com. Urbanspoon lists him under Chef Marc Parma, while Yelp calls it Chef Marc’s Pastavino.

Schizophrenic? A little. Perplexing? Yes. Forgivable? Absolutely…especially when a chef’s knack with gutsy Italian food (and certain soups) renders such imprecise nomenclature irrelevant to the enjoyment at hand.

ELV’s dinner for one, that was more like a dinner for three, came to $40 since Chef Sgrizzi or Ritz or Sgrizzi or whatever he’s calling himself these days didn’t charge for several items.

CHEF MARC’S PASTAVINO & DELI (we think)

7591 West Washington #110

Las Vegas, NV 89128-4342

702.233.6272

www.parmabychefmarc.com

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* What we have got here is what the Captain might call a “failure to communicate.”

Others enjoy meatless Mondays.

But around the ELV household, all-Asian Sundays reign supreme.

There’s never been any exact decision to do this, it just seems it’s worked out that way so many Sundays in a row that we now take eating Asian for granted on the last day of the week.

Take yesterday, for example. We just happened to be cruising down West Flamingo when the sign in front of the Palms Hotel said “Cathay House,” beckoning us like a juicy dumpling waiting to be slurped and savored.

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So, in we went, and what we found was rather strange. We say “rather strange” because the Cathay House is actually a forlorn little circular room in the back of the 24 hour coffee shop. You pretty much have to know is there or you’ll miss it.

In fact, that’s just what happened to us. We asked for a table at the hostess stand (right next to a sign that says “Cathay House” and were promptly seated at a counter in front of a bunch of television screens. Upon being handed the menu we saw it contained the usual coffee house fare — omelets, burgers, sandwiches — and started looking around. Only then did we notice the back room  — with no hostess stand of its own, mind you — where we wandered and waited until a person of vaguely Asian persuasion came up to us. We were then led to one of ten tables in the room and commenced the immediate satisfaction of ordering and eating the dim sum way.

How was the dim sum ELV, you ask?

Not that bad, but not that good either. And certainly not worth trying to find inside a hotel that’s hiding it.

So, consider our first Asian foray of this past Sunday and mild disappointment.

While we still digesting dumplings (not in the same league as China Mama’s or Beijing Noodle #9’s, BTW), we thought a movie might lift our spirits. Unfortunately, the one we chose — Red Tails — was every bit as tepid as the tofu and shrimp.

For the uninformed, there is a good movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, and it was made by HBO in 1996. If you want to learn about them, rent it through Netflix. If you want a typical George Lucas CGI-heavy production with corny dialogue, little or no character development and over-the-top, incredible (as used in the truest sense of the word), cartoon-y action sequences, they’ll gladly take your money at the Brendan Theaters. If such mindless drivel is your thing, then you are bound to enjoy an Aryan supremacist, with a scar no less, snarling: “Die you stupid Africans!” — which ELV is absolutely sure the German pilots were shouting –  as he hurls through the air at 400 mph, with a hail of .50 caliber bullets flying around him.

But we digress.

Such a disappointing movie making can make a feller mighty hungry, so we trundled down to Pho Old Saigon, which used to be Pho Thai Binh, for some Vietnamese noodles…

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…which were drearily the same as all other Vietnamese noodles we’ve ever had. And which means putting the same old same old in the same space makes no sense whatsoever. ELV has no idea why certain Asian locations specialize in one restaurant going out of business and then another, serving the exact same food, takes over the space. But it seems to happen with shocking regularity up, down, and around Spring Mountain Road.

This incarnation has the same decor and  menu (note: all Vietnamese restaurants have the exact same menu), and a similar, if not identical, helpful staff. The food is tasty in that exact same way all goi cuon is fresh and all pho noodle soups are loaded with too many noodles and too many items and the whole enterprise looks and tastes and feels exactly like the identical restaurant that wasn’t even there a year and apparently failed before making way for another identical spot of almost to-the-ingredient duplication of the exact same food to take its place in hopes that it will succeed with the exact same formula that didn’t work for the other guys.

Got that?

Well, we don’t, and want to know what the hell is going on?

Why does one place think it can succeed where others have clearly failed with the same friggin’ food??

And why the f*ck do they hide the f*cking dim sum (even dim sum as mediocre as this) inside a f*cking coffee shop???

It’s enough to make you want to go out and machine gun some scarfaced Nazi.

Both meals came to around $30.

CATHAY HOUSE

Hidden inside the Palms Hotel and Casino

4321 West Flamingo Road

Las Vegas, NV 89146

PHO OLD SAIGON

4631 West Spring Mountain Road

Las Vegas, NV 89103

702.413.6666 (It even has the same phone # as Pho Thai Binh)

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Those who doubt Vietnamese places have identical menus/preparations/lack of imagination, click here to hear Ira Glass’ humorous take on the similarity and inscrutability of Asian menu wars. Many thanks to loyal readers Rudy and Emmanuel for backing us up on this!

Cafe de Japon, on Spring Mountain Road, needs a better sign.

But it doesn’t need better food, decor or coffee.

Everything about Kiichi-san’s cafe is charming and criminally cheap.

And tasty.

Darn tasty.

So tasty, in fact, that we at ELV think there should be a line out the door for his spicy curry beef and an albacore tataki — specialties that would be twice as expensive two miles east and not a penny better for it.

Not to mention a killer hamburger steak with gravy (that the Burger Maven heartily approved of) and something called chicken “Doria,” consisting of delicately fried chicken strips over rice and onions.

This is Japanese kissaten food, to be sure, but there is nothing unrecognizable to any American palate, unless it is the waving bonito flakes on some items, and the care and skill used to prepare the dishes.

The only thing that’s wrong with the place is the sign. It sort of blends in to the building during the day, and isn’t visible from the side of the road, nor can you see it if you’re driving west on Spring Mountain Road.

Of course, none of these handicaps hurt Raku, so maybe we shouldn’t despair.

And if we do, there’s always a filter coffee and some cheesecake here to cheer us up.

CAFE de JAPON

5300 Spring Mountain Road #101

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.431.8038

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Answer: There is no scene from Tampopo — the greatest food movie of all time.

Why is it the greatest food movie of all time, ELV?

We’re glad you asked that question.

Tampopo is the greatest food movie of all time because it is utterly, completely, hysterically and unapologetically a movie about food and our relationship to it. None of the other movies (as gorgeous and appetite-inducing as they may be), can make that claim.

Observe here, here, and especially here.