eddie d's does it right.

Update: Eddie D's has relocated to the southwest part of town.

Just make me a sandwich.

After all the decadent holiday eating, all the cookies, pies and sweets, all the expensive restaurant meals, there remains a substantial craving for something basic, something simple and satisfying. It's a sandwich. Meat, cheese and veggies matched up magically and piled inside a crusty, chewy roll. Is that so much to ask for? Not at Eddie D's Famous Italian Sandwiches, a new deli in northwest Vegas. The place is operated by a family of Jersey transplants. There's a deli case that contains all the imported ham, pepperoni, pastrami, dry cured capacola (they get all their meat from Thumann's) and other goodies you could want to take home, plus the family's own homemade meatballs, pasta, chicken or eggplant cutlets ... you want it, they got it.

And they know how to handle a sandwich. A regular is a choice of two meats (ham, turkey, corned beef, roast beef, Genoa salami, pepperoni, pastrami, soppressata, proscuitto, hot or sweet capacola), American, Provolone or Swiss cheese on a hard or soft roll, or white, rye or wheat bread, with your choice of hot or mild mustard, mayo, oil and vinegar, marinated tomatoes, onions, lettuce and hot or sweet peppers. That's a regular sandwich!

Pictured here is the slow cooked roast pork sandwich, shoulder meat cooked forever and seasoned slightly with provolone cheese on a hard roll. The roll sucks up all those savory-sweet juices, and by the last few bites it was something like a pork French dip; sandwich bliss. Other hot sandwiches include roast beef, a decent Philly cheese, chicken fried steak with sauteed onions or those tender, delicious meatballs. The menu also includes a selection of signature sandwiches named for Sopranos characters: the Furio is a flavor-packed pile of capacola, salami and an incredibly sharp Provolone, the Dante has prosciutto, fresh mozzarella and sweet roasted peppers. Long live the neighborhood deli.

julian serrano.

Not counting cafes and buffets and generally uninteresting things, there are 11 new restaurants inside Aria, the centerpiece of CityCenter. Some are truly new in that they represent the debut Las Vegas appearance of some high-profile chefs, but many are new offerings from chefs and restaurateurs who already have a strong presence on the Strip. Julian Serrano is one of those chefs, but his eponymous restaurant just a few feet away from Aria's lobby check-in is something else. Why? Because he is Spanish, and here at Aria he is serving Spanish food, a comfortable menu of hot and cold tapas, paella and more. These other familiar faces and dishes (Michael Mina doing fish, Jean-Georges Vongerichten doing steak) are just that -- familiar. Serrano's other Vegas restaurant is the acclaimed Picasso at Bellagio, where classic French is the focus. So now you know why there would be such excitement when a powerfully talented and proven chef gets to work on his native eats, not to mention the fact that Vegas has few Spanish restaurants.

Julian Serrano the restaurant is a lively, colorful, upscale space, highlighted by a rainbow mosaic of tile behind the bar and several cozy nooks throughout the dining room perfect for a group meal. The menu is two pages but the wine and cocktail list is a novel, full of what is likely the best selection of Spanish wine in the city. We sampled four different, brilliant drinks during our first meal and each was deliciously unique, including a spicy, sweet and fresh-tasting bloody mary, and red sangria with a complex cinnamon aftertaste. 

  

The vast majority of the menu are the small plates we have seen before at local restaurants like Firefly and Cafe Ba Ba Reeba. But they are executed with much more sophistication at Serrano. The stuffed date, everyone's favorite, is fried with a crunchy coating we could do without but full of smoky bacon flavor. Chicken croquetas, also fried crispy, are rich and cheesy, and the simple Patatas Bravas, fried diced potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce, don't seem all that simple anymore. All flavors are magnified at Serrano; this is tapas on a level Vegas hasn't seen. This is most evident in the most modest accompaniment to our meal, a small glass filled with a sweet and savory red pepper puree. It was the first thing I tasted and I couldn't decide whether to down it like a shot of vodka or pour it on everything else I'd be eating. It was a blast of pure, clean, vegetably wonder.

Elsewhere, a tenderloin of beef on toasted bread is topped with a melting slab of Brie and a nutty, caramel sauce. Sweet, roasted piquillo peppers are stuffed with creamy cheese and given a generous dose of that spicy tomato sauce. A single seared scallop floats on a rich island of garlicky romesco. When was the last time you wanted to order everything on the menu? There truly is no going wrong here.

Whether or not Aria and the rest of CityCenter will save our city, this resort is a terrific restaurant destination, and the urban/artsy theme is an enjoyable complement to these fresh culinary experiences. Everyone was wondering what CityCenter would feel and taste like, and the early impressions are nothing but positive. It's going to take that much longer to try all these new restaurants, because it will be difficult to choose any of them over the food at Julian Serrano.

lunching at enoteca san marco.

Update: The restaurant has changed it's name to Enoteca Otto.

Enoteca San Marco is the most approachable of superchef Mario Batali's three Vegas offerings. The newest, Carnevino, is a pricey Italian steakhouse in Palazzo, and the nicest, B&B, is the Vegas version of Batali's acclaimed NY spot Babbo, serving complex yet authentic cuisine from Venetian's casino-level restaurant row. ESM, just upstairs in the faux piazza of Venetian's Grand Canal Shoppes, offers that new Vegas classic of indoor alfresco dining. From this "patio," it's hard to ignore the European street performers, which could be good or bad for your dining experience. You could always seek refuge in the small but classy dining room.

The setting is perfect for the menu, which is designed to allow you to dabble in different wines (100 bottles under a hundred bucks), house-cured meats, imported Italian cheeses and interesting antipasti. You could spend forever on the cheeses, which are priced well for sampling at three for $14, five for $17, or seven for $21. Most of this artisanal formaggi won't be found elsewhere, so have fun tasting six-month old asiago or a two-year old parmagiano reggiano.

Perhaps due to the winter temperatures and hearty appetites they can create, we took the heavy road of pizza and pasta. Enoteca San Marco boasts an expansive selection of both, and a special pizza, pasta and salad option for every day of the week. On this Friday, the pasta of the day was linguine with veal bolognese, tasty enough, and the pizza of the day was a carbonara pie. After much debate, we chose pizza with chunks of pancetta, caramelized onions, tomato and Coach Farm goat cheese (pictured). The crust was thin and chewy, the tomato sauce was surprisingly sweet, but the ultra-creamy cheese took charge masterfully. Next time I'll go for the pizza Vongole, with mozzarella, clams and chili. For my filling entree, I devoured a plate of cavatappi pasta, perfectly al dente hollowed corkscrews, smothered in a rich lamb ragu with just enough mint to make things interesting (also pictured).

It's hard to order at Enoteca San Marco because everything appears so simple and appetizing. The menu is perfectly planned. It is the best place to munch bread, cheese and salami with loads of wine, and the Italian basics of salad, pizza and pasta are individually and artfully composed. And there's meat, too ... dinner options include grilled pork chop, braised pork shoulder with apple reduction, crispy duck, veal and ricotta meatballs, and the Tuscan fish stew Cacciuco. So the lesson is ... careful about which celebrity chefs you hate on, because some of them are really killing it.