North Italia — Restaurant in Las Vegas

I am not a fan of chain restaurants. But I am in love with this one: North Italia. I was actually shocked it was not chef owned. 🎈 Why? Because the food, the decor and the service are all at the top of their game. The dining room is upscale rustic. The food is both classic and inventive. And the service is attentive. Plus it has a kewl outdoor bar. 🍺 Every time I eat here I vow the next time I come I am only going to eat appetizers and dessert because they are so scrumptious. But how can I not have a pizza 🍕 or those heavenly scallops? North Italia has a happy hour where the food specials are delicious. It's Monday through Friday from 3 to 6. The best deals are the margherita pizza for just $10 and the bottle & board, which includes a choice of pizza, bruschetta or the chef's board plus a bottle of the featured red or white wine 🍷, all for just $28. I try to show up for happy hour and order my pizza and then stay for dinner. You know the Dalai Lama says to eat early! For appetizers, I like the crispy calamari and the black mussels. The calamari, bathed in a grilled lemon 🍋 vinaigrette, are indeed crispy. Not a whisper of oil anywhere. The mussels are steamed in the traditional garlic, white wine and herbs. But these are spiked with spicy salumi. The flavors hit you like a hot poker. But my favorite appetizer is the white truffle garlic bread. 🥖 It arrives in a heap. The toasted bread is covered in house-made ricotta, mozzarella and burrata cheeses 🧀. They look like the snow on top of a snow-covered mountain. 🏔 But the creamy cheeses add a richness to the crunchy bread already drenched in garlic. I keep it simple with the simple salad. The salad is a mash of greens dotted with baby tomatoes 🍅, then dusted with pine nuts and then doused in a tangy gorgonzola vinaigrette. The saltiness of the cheese adds spice to the simplicity. My doctor says I have to eat something with leaves every day. So there you are! I've only had the margherita pizza 🍕 at happy hour prices. I really like the buttery crust. Not too thick, not too crispy. Just right. I am a simple spaghetti and meatballs person, but my friends persuaded me to try the strozzapreti. It's rich enough to cause cardiac clogging 🧈but I don't care! Juicy chunks of white meat chicken sit atop flat noodles. Then roasted mushrooms , spinach and pine nuts join the party. All are bathed in a parmesan cream sauce I could drink. If you love fish, the two best offerings are the grilled branzino and the diver scallops. The banzino is grilled with no sauce except the restaurant's hallmark charred lemon butter. So the sweet flavor of the flesh swims through. But the veggies surrounding the fillet are boisterous. They include roasted fennel, broccolini, cauliflower and cipollini. Ying and yang-both equally delicious. I adore the diver scallops. How do they get so sweet without any sugar? An existential question, I know. They arrive in a riot of roasted corn 🌽, asparagus and shallots. Everything sits on a bed of cheesy parmesan risotto. Grand! The best dessert in Las Vegas, nay, the planet, is the bombolini. 🥯 They are Italian doughnuts fried to perfection and then rolled in sugar. But they soak in a foundation of tangy meyer lemon curd and vanilla mascarpone. You have not been to heaven until you have tried these. Next time I go I vow not to share! Except in summer, try to eat outside. The restaurant has a wonderful covered outdoor patio. There's a ceramic-tiled outdoor fire place that really does look Mediterranean. A fire roars all fall and winter. A painting of a dock leading out to sea can make you think you are seaside if you've had one too many. The dining room is trendy AND comfortable. The tables are far enough apart you can't always hear what's going on at the table next to you. The only bad thing about North Italia is that it's so popular. ☺ If you don't have a reservation, you can wait forever...assuming you can get in at all. Don't plan on just dropping in if you want to savor...

This restaurant is confused. It has the quality food of a fine dining establishment with the service and atmosphere of a casual eatery. The food is delicious. The pasta is fresh, and that makes all the difference. Pair that with a great sauce, and overall we had an enjoyable dinner. If I start nit picking, there was a piece of rice in the arancini that was slightly undercooked, and the short rib, although tender, was slightly dried out on the edges. Food otherwise is 5 star. This was juxtaposed with casual service. The staff is friendly, accommodating, and overall made dinner pleasurable. There are just a few service tips that would take it to above and beyond. This restaurant functions with the three "departments" (for lack of a better word). There is the wait staff, kitchen staff, and bar staff. By having each work independently, things never lined up. Case in point, the server put in the mains and the wine selection for that part of the meal, but the food runner and the bar staff did not coordinate so that the new wine arrived and was ready when the food came out of the kitchen. Instead, the food arrived, then about 10min later the wine glasses, and another 5min before the wine bottle. Fortunately the stoneware bowls kept the food hot. Second tip would be the lemon served with the water. After the first guest used a wedge, they removed the remaining pieces from the table before everyone had some. Also, after the meal, plates were cleared before all guests were done eating. They seemed unprepared when we requested an ice bucket for the white wine bottle served with the starters. I also lost count of the number of times the host walked by updating their reservation tablet with each table's progress. One of the only Italian restaurants I know that does not start with a bread and oil "pre-starter" palate cleanser. Bread and oil is available as a starter on the menu. Overall we enjoyed the evening and will...

It started out very promising with the chef's board appetizer plate which was delicious. But that was about the only thing positive. The cauliflower appetizer was more broccoli than cauliflower. I ordered the prosciutto pizza, and that was about the worst pizza I have eaten all over the world. It was undercooked to the point that the dough was raw , and dripping in grease/oil, apart from the toppings looking put on there with no care. The other two types of pizza we had ordered we ok, no wow factor here either. It's not about calling yourself "italian fusion" and don't expect traditional italian pizza, it's about the quality of your food no matter what you call yourself. After I sent back the pizza my server gave me the look like "how dare you criticize our food" and offered to select something else. As everyone was already eating and I did not want to wait another half hour to get another pizza I opted for the rustic tomato soup. Not sure what was "rustic" about it. It was a very acidy tomato creme soup with two soaggy croutons and a little cheese - would have expected tomato chunks if called rustic, maybe some fresh basil. It was like campbell's a little thickened and refined. As desert we had an Afogato and the server tried to make us think " it's the best since sliced bread" , well i'ts a scoop of vanilla icecream with some espresso beans and an espresso on the side -nothing "wow" here either. So all four people not wowed with the food. They took off the pizza but charged for the soup - that should have not happened after you ruined the Saturday evening diner already. The inside seating was very loud and noisy, sat right next to a rack with dishes that kept being stacked up. The server was too much - overpraising everything with "yummy goodness" etc. like this was world class dining, which it is definitely not. Spending almost $200 for 4 people eating pizza you can definitely expect something...