Category: Wine

GIORGIO RISTORANTE…and Piero Selvaggio

When Piero Selvaggio first opened Valentino in Santa Monica in 1972, he will tell you he knew very little about Italian food and absolutely nothing about Italian wine. By the time he and Chef Luciano Pellegrini opened Valentino in The Venetian nine years ago, ELV (and many others) will tell you he was widely considered the best Italian restaurateur in America, and that probably no one, outside of Italy, knows more about Italian wine.

Selvaggio’s personal and professional pilgrimage began on the southeastern coast of Sicily. He and his family moved to Brooklyn in 1963, and six years later, he was a very young man with a lot of ambition and no prospects. So where did he head? Well, to Las Vegas of course! Yes, even in 1969 it seems Vegas was the land of plenty for expatriates and nomads looking to make their mark on the world. As the French would say: plus la change, plus la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

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Clark County Corkage Crackdown?

It was reported to ELV yesterday that the ban on bringing your own wine into restaurants (in exchange for the payment of a corkage fee), has now spread into Clark County, i.e. every restaurant south of Sahara Avenue. Meaning: the Strip and all points south.

According to our source, the management of The Tillerman on East Flamingo informed diners that Clark County considers it illegal to allow patrons to bring their own bottles of wine into county restaurants. ELV has not confirmed this with Clark County enforcement officers (as we did with the City of Las Vegas officials months ago), but if the County is enforcing this ban, it means that a lot of prominent oenophiles are going to be most unhappy when they seek to open that long-held bottle of ’59 La Tache at Delmonico to celebrate their latest stock split….or more accurately these days — to drown their sorrows.

ELV will be checking with Clark County in the coming week to determine its official position on this critical issue to the health and welfare of our general, classified-growth-swilling populace.

TWIN CREEKS STEAKHOUSE

When you get John C. Dupont talking about the art of cocktail mixing — not something hard to do — he becomes a proselytizer, a teacher, a raconteur and a pal all at once. He’ll explain to you the finer points of bourbon making, what makes a good vermouth, and how he developed his “New World” cocktail recipe (he wanted to force every bar in America to buy a second bottle of Galliano) at the drop of a hat. But he also wants you to leave his bar a smarter drinker than when you walked in. From the arcane to the practical (e.g. what type of ice to shake or stir into what type of drink), he is there to help…and an education never felt so good.

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