Stuzzichini are small bites or morsels of food served in wine bars throughout Italy. In Venice, they’re called cicchetti (chee-KET-tee) and are there basically to compliment the wine and encourage your thirst for more. Stuzzichini is derived from the verb: stuzzicare, which can mean “to tantalize.”
Continue reading “ONDA RISTORANTE – Stuzzichini + Free Wine!”
PART THREE – KICKIN’ IT NEW/OLD SCHOOL
The thing that struck us about Drago Centro — Celestino Drago’s new, northern Italian eatery smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles — besides the other-worldly pastas, the spot-on food and wine pairings of sommelier Michael Shearin, the packed house, cool design, and the smart move of having Matteo Ferdinandi (formerly of Spago Las Vegas) as Owner/Manager — was how inexpensive it was.
Appetizers ran $12-$20, pastas about the same, i.e., less than $20 a serving, mains were almost all well under $30, and the porter house for two (a steak that Las Vegans get routinely gouged for in excess of a hundred buckeroonies) was $75. And did we mention the place is on the ground floor of a fancy office building in downtown L.A.?
There are passion restaurants and there are money restaurants. Rarely do the twain ever meet, and asking them to do so in Las Vegas is like expecting a stripper to take a check.
A cynic would say all casino restaurants are only about numbers and cash, but Steve Wynn has tantalized us before with the prospect of great food, generated by a passionate chef, generating lots of dough in the High Mojave. For what was Alex Stratta’s Renoir in the Mirage but an attempt to blend haute cuisine with lowbrow gambling?
Then came the Bellagio in 1998 — a place that sold its soul to the celebrity chef devil (igniting that stampede in the process) — and which took a fair amount of heat from the national food press for pretending to be passionate about food even as its absentee chefs did little more than wave at their operations from 30,000 feet as they flew from coast to coast.