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Pere and I spent Easter weekend in Las Vegas. After catching a 7:30 showing of Mystere, we were hungry and looking for something decent to eat. Being that it was around 10pm on a Friday night and we had no reservations, we weren't too hopeful we would find anything worthwhile. Well, we were wrong.

First thing's first. We aren't easily impressed. We do a lot of cooking at home, and we think we're pretty good at it. That said, we generally aren't impressed by restaurants when we feel that we could easily cook the same dish at the same level or better than we are served. Back to the story.

On the way back to our hotel, we decided to take a stroll through the MGM Grand to see if there was anything worth visiting. After looking over all of the restaurants in the place, we decided to give Fiamma Trattoria a try. If you aren't up on the Las Vegas dining scene, Vegas has basically become a haven for almost every celebrity chef in America. Fiamma Tratorria in the MGM Grand is a recreation of the experience that is New York restaurateur Stephen Hanson's Fiamma Osteria in New York. There's also another Fiamma Trattoria near where I live in Scottsdale, Arizona that I plan to visit when I get the chance. I've got some definite opinions on this trend, and I'll be posting a separate entry on this later. For now, though, I'll concentrate on our dinner in Las Vegas.

Lucky for us, we were seated almost immediately. The design and decor of the restaurant was top notch. Being an interior designer, Pere always looks at the places we dine with a critical eye. Fiamma Trattoria passed the test.

We started our meal with cocktails - espresso martinis to be exact. Well concocted, although a bit too much whipped cream. Made us think of dessert as opposed to aperitifs. From there, we shared an order of calamari with two dipping sauces. The first sauce, a salsa rosa was particularly nice. The flavors were well balanced with just a hint of spiciness. The second sauce was a preserved lemon sauce. I have a particular fondness for preserved lemons as I've taken to making them from the lemons we grow in our yard in Arizona.

For our main courses, Pere had the penne with prosciutto, peas and truffle butter. I had a few bites, and found it pretty good for rigatoni, which I must admit is not a dish I tend to order. I had the lobster gnocchi. The gnocchi was home made, as I would expect it to be and was perfectly cooked. The bowl came with a healthy serving of the dumplings with a nice chunk of lobster meat on top. Balanced with the creamy sauce, this was exactly what I was hoping for.

We complemented the meal with a bottle of unremarkable pinot grigio. Pere is partial to whites, which I don't mind. Since I was planning to have a nice cabernet with dinner on Saturday, I figured it was a good idea to go with the white tonight.

We were both too stuffed to do dessert, and Pere still had a good bit of her espresso martini left, so I decided to just sit back and enjoy a nice scotch to finish off a pretty decent spur of the moment meal. Macallan 12 year, neat was the perfect ending.