Tag: Desert Companion Magazine

New Restaurant of the Year – SPARROW + WOLF

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If you’re going to judge the New Restaurant of the Year based upon the splash it made, no one did a bigger cannonball in our restaurant pool than Sparrow + Wolf. After leaving the Strip and wandering in the desert for a few years, Chef Brian Howard found a home smack dab in the middle of Chinatown, and from day one he’s been pulling in locals and tourists with a protein-rich menu that demands you pay attention. Never before has Chinatown, much less the rest of Las Vegas, seen things like clams casino with an uni hollandaise, beef cheek and bone marrow dumplings, and halibut in a white Alabama bbq sauce, and our restaurant scene will never be the same again.

It’s that influence — along with the groovy cool vibe, inventive cocktails, and spot-on service — that will probably prove to be Howard’s legacy. By going so far out on a limb — with his menu, his concept, and his location — he has established a template for chefs who want to break with the corporate culture and do it their way. His is not cooking that bows to any convention (sweetbreads wrapped in grilled romaine with smoked bacon is not exactly grandma-friendly), but it is squarely aimed at the GenX/Millennial customers — those who have come of restaurant-age in the age of the internet. They are the customers who will drive the restaurant business for the next twenty years, and the S+W menu taps right into the zeitgeist.

Whether you’re looking for a fusion homage to the neighborhood (udon Bolognese), hearth-baked bread or coal-roasted beets, Howard has you covered. That he can squeeze so many flavors into such a modest space is a testament to passion and planning. That his intended audience responded immediately bodes well for the future of chef-driven restaurants. I don’t know if Las Vegas has enough dedicated foodies to support other young chefs trying to do what Sparrow+Wolf has pulled off, but its success is a mighty good start for the future of good eating.

SPARROW + WOLF

4480 Spring Mountain Road

702.790.2147

http://sparrowandwolflv.com/

Chef of the Year – Francesco Di Caudo at FERRARO’S

Francesco Di Cundo

How do you take a venerable, very good local restaurant and make it great? Should a local’s favorite eatery even try to mess with success? Shouldn’t it leave well enough alone, especially when it’s been serving solid renditions of Italian food for over thirty years?

There is no magic formula for upping a restaurant game, and an argument can be made not to fiddle with a good formula. And when you’re dealing with a place as iconic as Ferraro’s Italian Restaurant & Wine Bar, you run the risk of alienating customers if you change so much as the breadbasket. That being said, there can be no progress without change, and the change the Ferraro family effected by putting Francesco Di Caudo in the kitchen in 2015 has paid big dividends for them, while not disturbing what has kept this place at the top of the Italian food chain since 1985.

Di Caudo is a Sicilian by birth (born at the foot of Mount Etna), but his training took him all over Italy until he arrived in Las Vegas over a decade ago. Stints at Circo and Sinatra no doubt prepared him for a life of leading corporate kitchens, but when he landed at Ferraro’s doorstep, they had to know there was a show pony in their midst who was dying to strut his stuff. Taking over an operation as famous for its osso buco as its wine cellar had to be a balancing act, but Di Caudo has managed to incorporate such push-the-envelope dishes as risotto roccaverano (risotto with Rabiola cheese, lamb ragu and pistachio-coffee dust), with such classics as the house-made salsiccia Calabrese (spicy sausage), without losing a customer….while gaining a lot more.

The trippa satriano is about as old school as you can get, but when paired with Di Caudo’s sea urchin pasta in a ginger-carrot sauce, or new-age beef tartare, you have the best of old and new Italy all in one meal. The Ferraro’s crowd has always been a meat-loving one, but the things Di Caudo does with black bass and salt cod are now enticing true gastronomes, as well as the conventioneer crowd.

Making an established kitchen sing a new tune while still playing the golden oldies is a remarkable feat. Ferraro’s is better than ever in 2017, and that is quite an accomplishment for the restaurant, for Francesco Di Caudo, and for the whole Ferraro family.

FERRARO’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT & WINE BAR

4480 Paradise Road

702.364.5300

http://ferraroslasvegas.com/

Big Week

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This is shaping up like a big week. Or maybe just a Big Night.

But you need to be paying attention, especially if you’re a chef or restaurant owner.

Because through timing, sheer luck and/or mere coincidence, both the newest edition of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants and the 2016 Desert Companion Restaurant Awards are set to hit the newsstands sometime in the next few days.

Needless to say, there are a few surprises in store. From who’s in to who’s out, to who made the Top 10 to who rates the top toque as Chef of the Year, these are our highly vetted, contumaciously chosen, carefully conceived categorical champions.

We at ELV are sworn to secrecy until they officially get published, so until that happens, we intend to maintain radio silence.

That is all.