The wine bar concept has been around Vegas for a few years, but now, with the opening of Nora's Wine Bar & Osteria in Summerlin, it suddenly seems like the hot commodity in town.
You all know the wine bar. It's a place where wines by the glass, usually trendoid wines from boutique producers in Sicily or New Zealand, are ordered with zeal, the food being somewhat of an afterthought. When long departed Master Sommelier Barry Larvin opened The Wine Cellar at the Rio, you'd get flights of wine—and fancy—with maybe some paté and cheese and a few hunks of dreary baguette. If you were lucky.
That's changed. Giovanni Mauro, proprietor of the popular Nora's Cuisine on Flamingo, is the heart and brains behind this latest effort. July is traditionally slow as a restaurant month in Vegas, the time when you can basically get a table anywhere in town. Not so here. I've been here three times midweek, and lines were out the door each night.
Why the sudden surge in popularity? It could be a strategic location, across from Boca Park, center stage in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Vegas. Or it could be this cooking, small plates ideal for grazing, prepared by Executive Chef Phil Kaufman, with a healthy assist from owner Mauro.
But I'm guessing that it's an idea whose time has come, and that, until now, no one has done it quite this well. Take the dining room, the right size for socializing, equipped with a granite-topped bar, tables covered in butcher paper, elegant leather chairs. One wall has a mural of an Italian village. The color scheme is soft beige, like a Tuscan sunset.
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And the wine selection, compiled by Lee Ann Kaufman, the chef's sommelier wife, is a tour de force. For one thing, Nora's uses the latest technology to dispense them, from a contraption called an Enomatic (there are six of them).
Picture a metal box that has temperature and humidity controls, with room for eight bottles. The wines are visible through a glass window, automatically dispensed by the ounce, with the per-ounce price digitally displayed above the bottle. Insert a credit card, and tell the machine how many ounces you want. Wines ranged, one evening, from Feudo Arancio, a Sicilian white, $3.10 for three ounces, to Bond "Melbury," a Napa red, $57.84 for a similarly sized pour.
No matter how well-oiled you get, there's no reason to leave hungry. The menu is clever, filled with plates for sharing that hit most of the current foodie buttons. That Art Deco machine by the kitchen is a 1927 Berkel, ideal for thinly slicing Paul Bertolli's (a California chef) excellent cold cuts. You'll find them on the artisan meat platter, fare such as prosciutto and culatello.
There is also a bruschetta menu, with choices like fresh tomato and basil, chicken livers, and sardines in olive oil, lemon and orange, all keeping company on top of the obligatory rounds of toasted Italian bread. And the rest of the menu is more big city than old Vegas. Mauro has installed a mesquite grill, a wood-burning oven for pizzas, and a few other kitchen tricks.
An interesting choice from the small bites section of the menu is dates, here stuffed with cubes of Parmesan cheese and wrapped with bacon. Panelle are triangles of deep-fried chickpea flour—tasty but on the heavy side. Polpette agro dolce are sweet-and-sour meatballs, with a sauce that is three parts vinegar to one part sugar.
Nora's Cuisine is famous for good pizzas, but I like them here even better, thanks to the wood-burning oven. The crust is thin to medium and has a powerful crunch. Salmon pizza seems more Spago than Summerlin, but this version is fine. The grilled-mushroom pizza has both porcini and portabella mushrooms in abundance.
I didn't care for my pasta a forno, a weighty casserole topped with immense globes of ricotta cheese. And spaghetti alla bottarga, while delicious thanks to a generous amount of the bottarga (cured tuna roe), could have been less salty. But I loved the lamb, a trio of wood-infused chops gently brushed with a red-wine reduction; the Ensign, the 16-ounce bone-in filet mignon, is flat out one of the best steaks in town.
Two more dishes not to miss here are farro e cingiale, made from spelt-flour pasta, sauced with a wild boar ragu; and grilled prawns, a Tuscan-inspired dish consisting of the prawns, shells on, done with cannellini beans and a mint-pesto sauce.