While many Downtown Las Vegas Casino Hotels have been slowly updating themselves, the El Cortez–one of the oldest, in continual operation since the ’40s–has done a particularly good job of reclaiming past glories while inserting bits of hip modernism. Here’s my most recent report, as a guest blogger on About.com, as well as some extra [...]

I’ll be honest: in years of covering the Vegas dining scene, I’ve really only experienced a couple handfuls of restaurants off-Strip (or more specifically, outside a casino resort) worth writing about. Granted, that is probably on par with what you might expect of an average Southwest city even if it didn’t have a foodie-frustrating overload of fine dining right in the middle of it. But particularly in Vegas, most anyone with serious chef talent is going to want to be on the Strip. That’s where most of the money is, easy or hard.

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For most of 2009, I have been reviewing some of the best and most beloved restaurants on the Strip for Las Vegas Magazine, a high-end tourist guide that is distributed exclusively to hotel rooms.

Two of my favorite reviews are for the fine dining at Nove Italiano in Palms and Valentino in the Venetian.
And here’s a [...]