Category: Reviews

HIMALAYAN CUISINE (or: Poundin’ Brewskis With Rajan)

Actually, “poundin’ ” is a lie. In fact, it’s as far from the truth as a truth about beer drinking can get.

Because when you drink beer with Rajan O. Dhungana, you do everything but pound. You sip. You savor. You discuss and you analyze. And while all of this is going on, there’s a fair amount of contemplation as well. Not contemplation in the “how drunk am I getting?” sense, but lots of thought about natural yeasts, bottle conditioning, triple fermentation, sediments and other sexy suds stuff.

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NOVE – Cicchetti, Chicks & More…

NOVE is such a great restaurant, it’s a shame no one is paying attention to it — even the people who eat there. That’s because usually they’re too busy looking at themselves and each other — before they hit the Playboy Club, Ghost Bar, or Simon Poolside — places whose raison d’etre has more to do with hot chicks than “cicchetti.”

The precision of Chef de Cucina Geno Bernardo’s cooking, and the Palm’s crowds that ignore it, also remind us that the restaurants of Las Vegas are so much better than they have to be.

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CAFE BA BA REEBA – Tapas Tales

It was probably unfair to visit Cafe Ba Ba Reeba two days after returning from munching on tapas prepared by three of the finest chefs of Spain — Alfonso Beltran, Paxti Bergara and Jose Manuel Crespo. Crespo, for one, has published a book on the elevation of the traditional Spanish tortilla de patatas and its many variations, and Begara, for another, has won a “Best Tapas” award in Spain. All of them dazzled the crowds at the CIA’s World’s Of Flavor Conference with an array of small plates you usually won’t find outside of San Sebastian.

But with tastes sharpened and senses heightened, we kept an open mind and went to the Fashion Show Mall last week for a lunch of small plates — as opposed to a small plate lunch. And what we found was food as solid as it has always been at this Lettuce Entertain You outpost.

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