Category: Reviews

My Year of Dining Deliciously

2016 will go down as one of the most eventful years of my life. Getting married took the cake, of course, but publishing two editions of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants (Huntington Press) was quite the undertaking as well. Factor in trips to Atlanta, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Napa Valley, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Austin, Texas, and Rome (Italy, not Georgia) and you have one whale of a rotation around the sun. Through it all, I managed to eat over two hundred meals in local restaurants. Here are the best of the best that I tasted in the past twelve months:

Wine List of the Year – Aureole (see above). Not only is it the broadest and deepest list in town, it’s also back to being on the printed page, making it a joy to peruse. Would that all those damned, dastardly digital lists be consigned to the techie hell from whence they came. Digital wine lists tried to solve a problem that wasn’t there. And people ended up ordering less wine, because they’re so cumbersome to use. A pox, a pox I say, on all digital wine lists. End of rant.

Cocktail Bar of the Year – Libertine Social

Pasta of the Year – (tie) Carbone; Carnevino; Ferraro’s

Burger of the Year – Libertine Social; runner up – Gordon Ramsay Steak

Steak of the Year – (tie) porterhouse at CUT; aged rib eye at Bazaar Meat

Fish Dish of the Year – Scorpina (scorpion fish) at Estiatorio Milos

Sommelier of the Year – Chloe Helfand at Bazaar Meat

Pizza of the Year – Due Forni; runner-up – Evel Pie

Downtown Restaurant of the Year – Le Pho

Chinese Restaurant of the Year – Chengdu Taste

Thai Restaurant of the Year – Ocha Thai

Vietnamese Restaurant of the Year – Pho Annie

Korean Restaurant of the Year – Magal Korean BBQ

Japanese Restaurant of the Year – (tie) Yui Edomae Sushi, Hiroyoshi, Yuzu Japanese Kitchen

Fabulous Frenchies of the Year – Nothing can top the lip-smacking delights that Rosallie Le French Cafe, Delices Gourmands French Bakery and Eatt Healthy Food brought to the ‘burbs.

Dim Sum of the Year – No contest: Pearl Ocean at the brand new Lucky Dragon Hotel and Casino.

Coffee Bar of the Year – The just-opened Vesta Coffee Roasters is giving the term “fresh roasted” a whole new meaning.

Appetizer of the Year – “Ham ‘n Eggs” at ‘e’ by José Andrés

Entrée of the Year – Crispy Lamb Belly with Pomegranates and Peas at Sage
 Desserts of the Year – Whatever Mio Ogasawara is whipping up that night at Sweets Raku
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-HSUguPRx_wU/VD7m-LIJ1KI/AAAAAAAABNw/bgELMe18R2U/s640/blogger-image-1358069386.jpg

Meals of the Year – Yuzu Japanese Kitchen; Yui Edomae Sushi; Twist by Pierre Gagnaire; Delmonico; L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon; Bazaar Meat; CUT; Sage; ‘e’ by José Andrés; B&B Ristorante; Yonaka; Strip Steak; Ferraro’s; Carbone; Chengdu Taste; Raku.

Chef of the Year – Steve Benjamin at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. No one does it better, or has for as long, as Stevie B.

Restaurant of the Year – Bazaar Meat. Fork–droppingly delicious is how I often describe a dish (or a meal) that knocks me out with its intensity and perfection. I dropped my fork a lot this year at Bazaar Meat.

(Here’s to you José, and to the best damn steakhouse in America)

The Return of Carla Pellegrino and BRATALIAN

http://www.reviewjournal.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/media/web1_carlapellegrino_7154325.jpg?itok=_HiGrMwV

Carla Pellegrino is a force of nature.  She is half Brazilian, half Italian and all about food as a metaphor for love. Anyone who’s ever spent even five minutes with her knows that she wears her heart on her sleeve, and that her heart is also in the kitchen. These days, after a two year absence to Miami, both her sleeves and her soul are cooking up a storm at Bratalian – a Neapolitan gem of a restaurant that has returned from the brink and, once again, gives everyone in the neighborhood a reason to go out to eat.

Within weeks of coming back to town last summer, after her south Florida sojourn, Carla learned that her restaurant had been wrecked by a truck driving through its front window. (Luckily, it was closed at the time.) What she hoped would be a few weeks of repairs turned into two and half months, and it wasn’t until late October that Henderson could once again taste the best Italian food ever to grace its borders.

Since coming to Las Vegas in 2009 (to open Rao’s in Caesars Palace with her then-husband Frank Pellegrino) Carla has enriched our culinary scene, and swum against the tide of boring, corporate restaurants  that line Eastern Boulevard – places serving  food that tastes like it was cooked up by a bunch of accountants.  She is a hands-on, classically trained chef whose stunning good looks belie a passion for food and a finely-tuned palate.  From your first bites – be they of a textbook-perfect Caprese salad or gorgeous tortellini en brodo – you will know that you are no longer in franchise-land.  Her spaghetti al’aglio, olio & peperocino (with garlic, peppers and oil) is a study in the art of pasta minimalism, and just one of many that will have you dropping your fork in appreciation.

Protein lovers will have no complaints either, as the hot and sweet sausages and veal scallopini alla saltimbocca take a back seat to no one’s. Saltimbocca means “jump in the mouth” and that’s exactly what this thinly pounded veal chop does, dripping as it is with sage, prosciutto and melted mozzarella. When it’s on the menu, don’t miss the baked lobster “oreganata” – a split beauty of a crustacean beast, packed with oregano-scented stuffing. Look around the quaint space and you can almost imagine that you’re dining in a tucked-away trattoria in Naples (replete with laundry hanging from the ceiling). Close your eyes and you’ll taste Italian food the way it’s supposed to be: made with love, respect, and good groceries.

Welcome back, Carla!

BRATALIAN

10740 South Eastern Ave. #155

Henderson, NV 89052

702.454.0104

http://www.bratalian.com/

 

EATING LAS VEGAS 2017 is Here!

It’s here and you know you want it. You know you need it. You know you gotta gotta have it.

And it just-hit-the-shelves. like yesterday: The 5th edition of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants – a concise, literate, irreverent, honest, meticulously researched tome that tells you where you should be eating and drinking in Las Vegas right now….and for the next year.

Everything you’ve come to know and love about Las Vegas’s only definitive dining guide is here:

  • The Top 10 (with several surprises in store)
  • The Rest of the Best (with 13 new entries added just since last Spring)
  • Chinatown (Updated and expanded with almost 20 pages of recommendations of where to get your Asian on.)
  • Steakhouses (Why we’re becoming the center of the steakhouse universe + our top 10 + shout outs to all the usual suspects.)
  • A new “French” section (Did you know there were 16 great French places in town? Neither did I until I wrote the darn thing.)
  • 17 Mexican joints rate a wave; 28 Italian ones do.
  • Expanded “Desserts” section
  • “Sushi” now merits its own chapter.
  • A fun and fascinating foreword by fantastic foodie Barbara “Babs” Fairchild.
  • 8 full pages of “Cheap Eats” (Done under duress by yours truly; thank god for Mitchell Wilburn and Greg Thilmont.)
  • “Drinking Las Vegas” now gets a serious section, with Thilmont and young Wilburn weighing in on everything from coffee culture, to brewpubs to dive bars. (Cooler, more sober heads prevailed and they left the wine recommendations to me.)
  • And my favorite section of all, soon to become a fan favorite: “JOHN CURTAS’ BOTTOM 10”! Rather than give away too much, we’ll just quote our introduction to the chapter and let you find out for yourself who won this race to the bottom.

Do you enjoy overpriced tourist traps? Tired food? Dated decor? Giving hard earned dollars to celebrity chefs who are phoning it in? Then Las Vegas has you covered too! Not only does Sin City boast dozens of the world’s greatest restaurants, it also hosts more htan a few half-baked concepts, licensing deals with “name” chefs, and sad old warhorses, all of which exist to separate the gullible from their cash. Proceed to any of these at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

We at ELV are warning you:

Buy this book here or here…

….or BY SIMPLY CLICKING ON THE PICTURE TO YOUR LEFT!

How simple can it be?

Do it now….to avoid that most dreaded of all eating-out fates: dining in Tourist Trap or  Celebrity Chef Hell.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

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

P.S. They make great stocking stuffers for the restaurant goer in your life….which is like everybody these days, isn’t it?