There's something alchemical about pasta. It's a scant collection of basic elements – flour, water, maybe a little olive oil or egg yolk – that is transformed by mixing into manifold shapes. From childhood elbow maccheroni and ribbon-like fettucine to delicate capellini strands and stout tubular rigatoni on, pasta is the ferry for a universe of sauces.
And while most pasta is plain, there are those elevated varieties infused with the colors and flavor nuances of 
spinach, tarragon, beet root and so forth. There is also a variety of colored pasta which passes into the realm of art – squid ink pasta, or al nero.
There is a charming little restaurant in Vegas that serves up pasta al nero – The Pasta Shop and Ristorante. I had read well over a year ago that this locals' nook on eastern Tropicana has a house specialty, shrimp with saffron sauce on squid ink noodles. For some reason, I only made it to this cute establishment a few weeks ago. Of course I went for the squid ink.
Deeply hued by the sepia squirts of tentacled Spanish octopi, squid and cuttlefish, the Pasta Shop's variety has a midnight purple hue and a faint taste of the sea, or a hint more precisely. Along with the velvety saffron sauce, with its slightly floral aroma, the shrimp in this dish are nestled in a gorgeous table tableau. I enjoyed my pasta with a small Cesar salad starter, toasted ciabatta and a glass of pinot grigio.
The pasta was prepared by co-owner and chef David Alenik.
The interior of the Pasta Shop is vibrant with contemporary art by Alenik's wife, and is a sight to enjoy. Along with zebra-striped table cloths and glass-adorned salt and pepper shakers, the Pasta Shop is funky in the good way.
It's also truly Italian in interior character 
and charm. On my first visit, I watched three parties arrive to be greeted and embraced by chef. They were longtime friends/customers or new friends made on the spot. This is a rare quality of service and welcome in Vegas' dining spectrum.
The Pasta Shop is also a pasta factory, and sells fresh goods to numerous restaurants along The Strip.
Chef David let me come back later to watch him prepare fresh batches of noodle for that evening's service. He uses a pasta machine from Italy. It's a piece of fine engineering, even for its functional, industrial form.
I held one of the brass dies that pasta dough is pushed through to make rigatoni. It was a solid piece of milled metal that must have weighed six or seven pounds. It was impressive. I enjoyed learning that the Pasta Shop uses fine semolina flour milled from hard wheat best grown in Montana and North Dakota (Italians import tons of this domestic farinaceous product). After that, only water and egg enter the Pasta Shop's basic pasta dough – unless spinach, herbs or that Spanish sepia is added like a magical, transmuting potion.
I wish I had a plate of that shrimp and squid ink pasta as I write. It's the new black.
The Pasta Shop and Ristorante
2495 East Tropicana Avenue
451.1893
pastashop.com
Crustacean attack!
Out of curiosity at its self-explanatory name, I stopped into Hot N Juicy Crawfish.
This is a low-key, hyper-informal place indeed – short of eating a bowl of etouffee with a spoon, this place is all about finger food. Make that finger, fist, arm, face, clothing and furniture food.
The restaurant's tables are all covered in swaths of white plastic sheeting weighed down by paper towel dispensers. Its menu is focused on Louisiana and Cajun-style crawfish, crabs and shrimp. (There are sport bar foods like chicken fingers, fries, etc.)
You order by the pound, and when your choices arrive, they are steaming inside plastic bags, even corn cob and red potato sides. You choose from a number of spices blends, from Juicy Cajun to lemon pepper. Then you untie the bags and dig in. Armed with a shell cracker, you disassemble crab bodies and claws,
digging for the meat. With the eponymous crawfish, you pull off and peel the tails, finger out small but heavily flavored morsels of tail meat. You can even suck the critters' heads for scant juices, as the pros do.
This joint sure does pack in the flavor – if you order garlic butter, be prepared to find more than liberal levels of diced allium bulb coating the crustaceans and the inside of the sack.
I'll have to admit, I got covered in crawfish and crab juice, including my glasses. I feel like I used more than the normal share of paper towels. I was a total neophyte and I am sure it showed.
On a wall, dozens of signed Polaroids show happy crawfish consumers. It's definitely a place for super fans of the crawfish and bayou-style binging with good buddies.
I can’t recommend Hot N Juicy Crawfish as a good place for a first date, a business lunch, or as a place to take a fussy eater, but if you're game for getting juiced up, this might just be, ahem, your bag.
Hot N Juicy Crawfish
4810 Spring Mountain Rd.
891-8889
myspace.com/hotnjuicy_crawfish
(This blog was mixed, kneaded and extruded with the help of Sirius Radio's “Left of Center” show featuring interviews with Maynard James Keenan of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, recorded at his vineyard. Where's my vineyard, dude?)