Ciao Bella!

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Ed. note: ELV – that notorious nosher of noodles, inveterate investigator of ingestion, and lover of all things Latin — will be out of the country for the next week re-calibrating his pasta palate. Three guesses as to the city he will be visiting…and the first two don’t count.

To say we are a tad bored with the Las Vegas food scene these days is an understatement. (Perhaps it’s a post-coital-like letdown after the recent publication of our book. (And by post-coital letdown we mean Anita Ekberg.)  Or maybe it’s just that we’ve eaten in every Las Vegas restaurant worth eating in so many times (see graphic to your immediate left) , there seems to be little point in revisiting any of them, unless there’s either a seasonal menu change, or a new chef.

Sadly, even seasonal menu changes fail to excite us, because usually only about 10% of the menu gets changed…because that’s the way the bean counters like it.

FWIW: The new Lucky Dragon Hotel and Casino does offer some respite from the tedium of our corporate/convention dining rooms. It may be tiny (203 rooms, 3 restaurants), but the F&B program is the real deal — bring superb dim sum and that wonderful gongfu tea ceremony to a niche casino that fills a niche in our need to eat legitimate Chinese food closer to the ELV palatial manse.

We will be reporting in depth on that dim sum (and the other food venues at Lucky Dragon, once we return.

In the meantime….

Arrivederci to our loyal readers (for the next week or so), and buon appetito to all. (We will resume our weekly postings on December 20.)

As usual, if you want to follow our travels, please join us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

 

The Return of Carla Pellegrino and BRATALIAN

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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!

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