ELV note: The following article appears in today’s Grub Street, and can be accessed in its original form by clicking here. Or you can scroll down to read it and continue to the slideshow on the Grub Street site. Congrats to Comme Ça, Crystal Whitford (Spago) and Theresa Gwizdaloski (RM Seafood) for their recognition. (Their desserts are numbers 55-57 of the slide show.)

Crystal Whitford’s Amaretto Eskimo Pie at Spago

It’s time to think seriously about sweets: When Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and the doldrums of winter (even one this mild) have taken hold, there’s something about dessert that speaks to everyone. And these days, more than ever, pastry is getting the due that it deserves: Food & Wine is launching a search for the country’s best new pastry chef; Top Chef keeps churning out seasons of its pastry-only spinoff; Johnny Iuzzini and Michael Laiskonis were rightfully heralded as stars when they recently departed their respective restaurants; and every other show on TV is about cake wars. We won’t call it a sugar renaissance, because dessert never went away, but pastry is undeniably playing a larger part in the culinary conversation than it ever has before.

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ELV stumbled across an old issue of Las Vegas Life magazine last week — the February 1999 issue to be precise — and looked up an old article of his about the “Most Romantic Restaurants” in town for Valentine’s Day. Thirteen years ago, his top 10 spots for romantic dining were:

1) Suzette’s (In the Santa Fe Hotel – yes, this was our #1 romantic restaurants…yikes!)

2) Palace Court (In Caesars — still missed)

3) Top of the World (still spectacular)

4) Monte Carlo Room (the gourmet room in the Desert Inn)

5) Prime (which remains one of the most gorgeous restaurants anywhere – see above)

6) Aristocrat (anyone remember it?)

7) Ferraro’s (pink neon and all)

8) Terraza (Caesars – where Rao’s now sits)

9) Stefano’s (singing waiters and all)

10) Le Cirque (which shows we had some good taste and sense even then)

If you saw us on Wake Up with the Wagners last Friday, you saw our list of most romantic, price is no object places today now includes:

– miX

- Eiffel Tower Restaurant

- Twist by Pierre Gagnaire

- Picasso

- Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare

- Le Cirque

- Prime

- Sage

A list that has, on the whole, much better food and nary a sliver of pink neon in sight.

ELV note: The following article appears in this month’s issue of VEGAS magazine, and can be accessed in its original, on-line form by clicking here, or you can continue reading below. If you’re considering eating at ETR this Valentine’s Day, you’d be well-served to make your reservation immediately…which might already be too late. Keep in mind though, that the restaurant is also open for lunch, and might have tables available for a midday soirée a deux!

Sin City turns into the city of love every Valentine’s Day, when Vegas’s five-star dining establishments prepare special menus for couples from all over the country wanting une table pour deux. And no place hits all the right love notes better than Eiffel Tower Restaurant.

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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.

Click here to read our most recent interview in Business Insider about Vegas’ top tables for high rollers and other well-heeled gourmands.

As our loyal readers know, we could’ve easily listed 50, but the author, Matthew Kassel, wanted to keep the list within the range of lucky dice rolls.

FYI: this is the fourth interview/article we’ve done in the past couple of months for a national or international ‘zine about the fine dining scene in our humble burg. Each of them, including The Guardian in the United Kingdom, have wanted to know where the best and most expensive tables in in town are. No one was asking such questions two years ago.

Does this portend a possible resurgence of our fine dining scene? Are better times ahead? Can ELV look forward to more food and wine bacchanalian nights in his future — in the manner to which he has become accustomed?

Hope springs eternal.

ELV note: Click here to read this article in its original format, or scroll below to see what Brock, Jim and ELV thought were their top bites of 2011.

On the plate, it was a very good year. In revisiting their best bites of 2011, the Weekly food critics will get you salivating for 2012.

John Curtas

1. Oxtail Bucatini with Oxtail Sauce (Le Cirque, at Bellagio) This Gregory Pugin dish looks like a plain, savory custard but unspools to reveal bucatini strands hiding insanely rich braised oxtail. It’s a meat dish made by angels with a devilish calorie count, and it might be the biggest umami bomb of the year.

2. Roasted Sea Bass over Arugula (Due Forni, 3555 S. Town Center Dr.) Take a talented Italian chef (Carlos Buscaglia) and give him an 800 degree oven and a juicy piece of branzino—in a minute or two he can turn out a crispy, succulent seafood wonder, atop a bed of tangy arugula sprinkled with capers. The best off-Strip seafood dish I had this year.

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ELV note: This review appears in today’s edition of the Las Vegas Weekly. Click here to read it in its original format, or continue scrolling below.

Henderson, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the foodship Herrinterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new neighborhoods; to seek out new life-enhancing foods and civilized lunches; to boldly go where no sensible restaurant has gone before!

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ELV note: The following article appears in the current issue of VEGAS magazine that hit newsstands and mailboxes on Friday. Click here to read it in its original format (where you’ll see more tasty snaps of the restaurants and the food), or continuing scrolling below.

	Circo’s Champagne raspberry zabaione is a holiday favorite
	Langoustines with osetra caviar and apple-vodka geleé at Le Cirque

When Sirio Maccioni and his sons, Mario, Marco, and Mauro, took Steve Wynn up on his offer to open at Bellagio in 1998, they chose the opposite route of other celebrity chefs.

Instead of exaggerated, overblown versions of the restaurants that made them famous, they went small. In the case of Le Cirque, they asked hospitality designer Adam Tihany to create a tranquil jewel box amidst the casino cacophony. With Circo, they wanted it to be festive and fun, but on a personal scale, and nothing like the boisterous behemoths that then and now characterize many a Strip dining room. What Tihany dialed up were two of his greatest designs ever: two restaurants that remain, 13 years later, the most convivial places in Las Vegas to celebrate the holidays… or any occasion.

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John Tesar in happier days

Photo by Kevin Marple

Profanity? Violence? Bigotry? Pornographers? Drinking on the job? In restaurant kitchens?  This article in Dallas Magazine of a couple of months ago has it all, and paints John Tesar as a self-consumed chef with horns and a pitchfork, and  Anthony Boudain’s muse or bitch — depending on your perspective.

When he was manning the stoves as Rick Moonen’s #1 at RM Seafood between 2004-2006, we just thought of him as a soft-spoken guy who could cook the bejesus out of seafood.

Read the (long) article and decide for yourself — amidst the threats, tears and recriminations — just how bad a boy he is. You might also wonder about cooks and owners who get put off by ethnic slurs and cursing in kitchens (isn’t that par for the course?), and the ADD and self-destructiveness that drives so many people in the restaurant business.

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Merci beaucoup to www.egullet.org editor, regular Vegas visitor and Friend of ELV Jeff Meeker for sending us the article.

[Show as slideshow]

Hobnobbing with talented chefs and publishers of fancy food magazines is something ELV is uniquely suited for.

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