Category: Food

Greek Food Festival Coming Up!

In two weeks, Las Vegas’s best Greek restaurant will open for only three days.

It’s about the only time all year ELV gets excited about Greek food (along with when he gets invited to a relative’s house)  and he will be tending bar (and over-serving ouzoritas to himself) next |Friday night if you’d like to drop by.

Speaking of getting excited, there is nothing, NOTHING exciting or interesting about the Vegas food scene these days — which is the reason our website posts have been few and far between. (When we can work up the enthusiasm to write about it, we’ll give you our less-than-enthusiastic take on Echo & Rig.)

In the meantime, we’ll look forward to gorging ourselves on  Las Vegas’s  best Greek cooking, Friday-Sunday, Sept. 27-29.

Kali orixi!

ART OF FLAVORS is Open!

Through these doors on Las Vegas Boulevard South:

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….standing  in the shadow of both the Olympic Garden strip club (literally) and the Luv-it-Custard ice cream stand (figuratively), lies the best goddamned gelato ever to melt on a Las Vegas sidewalk.

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The brainchild of pastry chef Desyreé G. Alberganti, these luscious concoctions are all made on premises, with all natural flavors, no additives, and a ton of passion — passion (and intensity) you can taste with every silky smooth spoonful.

It is gelato so good that we at ELV think it could soon challenge Luv-it for frozen dessert fabulousness on this little corner of our humble burg. (Truth be told, Luv-it-Custard hasn’t been the same ever since the original owner stopped manning the booth a few years ago. Now, it’s run by a bunch of teenagers and it tastes (and feels) generic.)

There’s nothing generic about AoFG, however, and after one bite of the cioccalato di pepperocino (chocolate spiced with the back-of-the-throat warming glow of peppers), you’ll be tempted to abandon that forlorn little shed around the corner forever.

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Yeah, it’s that good.

ART OF FLAVORS GELATO

1616 Las Vegas Blvd. South #130

Las Vegas, NV 89104

702.569.3636

Celebrity Chef Takedown – OTTO ENOTECA

ELV note: We’ve been consistently disappointed by Mario Batali’s more affordable offering at the Venetian ever since it opened. (A lunch there a little over a year ago had us longing for the enforced mediocrity of Canaletto — literally a stone’s throw away in the same shopping mall.) After a succession of paltry and pathetic pasta performances, we had a face to face with Molto Mario and his partner Joe Bastianich last fall and gave them details. In return, they made all the right noises and assured us that things would change. By the looks of things, they haven’t. Below, uber-foodie and Official Friend of Eating Las Vegas David Ross explains (in a tone more reasonable and less hyperbolic/venomous than you are probably used to at this web address) why this is just another celebrity chef money machine — to be avoided by anyone with anything but a company credit card and low expectations. (ELV wonders if, with their busy schedules, Mario and Joe ever actually taste their restaurant’s food)

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A partnership between Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, (you know his Mother, Lydia, she cooks Italian on PBS), Otto Enoteca should be a soft introduction to guests of the marriage between Italian wine and quality ingredients crafted into familiar, yet authentic dishes. That’s one of the better aspects of what this restaurant should be. Yet the expectations of dining in the restaurant of a former “Iron Chef” is quickly tempered by reality. Otto Enoteca is both the best and worst of the Celebrity Chef culture in Las Vegas.

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