Friday, February 27, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Casa di Amore

Old School: Casa di Amore just screams old Vegas with its atmosphere and take on classic dishes

Casa di Amore has a simple, old-school feel, with brick-lined walls. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Could Casa di Amore be any more "Vegas"?

I was tipped to the place via a phone call from legendary lounge entertainer Cook E. Jarr. Word on the street is that it's an entertainers' hangout. The name of the restaurant translates, as a handout menu points out, to "House of Love." The words "And Video Poker Lounge" appear after "Italian-American Restaurant." It offers a full menu 24/7, plus limo service and live entertainment each and every night.

High concept? Try no concept. There's not a corporate suit in sight.

But Casa di Amore is Vegas, baby.

Given Las Vegas' history heavily laden with people whose surnames ended in vowels, and given that Italian is one of the most popular cuisines among American restaurants, it would follow that we'd have a pretty good share of decent Italian restaurants in Southern Nevada, and we do. (I don't, on the other hand, understand our dearth of Italian delis with a burly counterman marinating the mozzarella and slinging the bracciole, but I'm trying hard not to get off task here).

So, as I've pointed out in previous columns, it can be somewhat of a challenge for an Italian restaurant to distinguish itself from the crowd. A good red sauce is vitally important unless the place is strictly Northern Italian, and sometimes even then. (In the case of Casa di Amore, check.) A pleasant, fairly lively atmosphere that goes beyond plastic grapes and red-checked tablecloths helps. (Check, but don't expect anything fancy.) A server who's just surly enough to bring to mind somebody's Aunt Angie does, too (Check.) Another bonus is a menu that doesn't rely on the old formula of a couple of basic staples combined into a couple of dozen dishes.

Check in that category, too, although yes, you can get five kinds of pasta served with six sauce variations, and the old veal-piccata-veal Marsala-veal-Parmigiana-veal-Francaise quartet that dates back at least to the time of Julius Caesar, but you can also get such seldom-seen old-school classics as penne with escarole in olive oil and garlic, or even tripe, if you choose.

We didn't (check no to both). But pork chops with vinegar and peppers ($17.95); that's one we hadn't seen since Murray Hill. And it was quite a dish -- moist, succulent chops with lots of flavor on their own, gently burnished by a quick saute in olive oil and then graced with, as the menu said, "a tangy vinaigrette sauce." Tangy, indeed -- perfectly true to the spirit of the dish and the cuisine. Nice and punchy, with a perfect foil: potatoes roasted just until they begin to crackle.

Something else we hardly see any more: sauteed mushrooms ($7.95). Everybody wants to gild the lily these days, but good fresh mushrooms -- button, maybe cremini -- can be quite nice when prepared simply, and these were. Sauteed in a little olive oil, lots and lots of garlic and just enough bread crumbs and herbs (and a touch too much salt), they were served in great profusion and were nearly a meal in themselves.

A little too much salt, too, in the chicken pastina soup that was part of the soup-or-salad equation, but it was well flavored otherwise, with plenty of pastina, that tiny stuff they feed to Italian babies. The salad side of the deal was fresh, crisp and reasonably well varied.

We couldn't give Casa di Amore an adequate test drive without kicking the tires of the red sauce, and the baked mostaccioli ($12.95) seemed like a good choice. We've had lots and lots of variations of this dish over the years -- some of which failed miserably -- and this was one of the best. The hot-hot-hot pile of pasta was interwoven with just the right amount of mozzarella and ricotta, but what really made it succeed was the deeply steeped red sauce, with the kind of flavor that makes us think a sauce can have a soul, too.

Steamed mussels with marinara ($12.95) were fresh, and a dark-chocolate tartufo ($4.75) -- layers of gelato covered in chocolate, not to be confused with the aromatic fungus of the same name (the truffle) -- was suitably rich.

We left just as the music was starting, thinking we've been on a pretty good run lately.

If we had passed Big Ed Deline on the way out, it wouldn't have been surprising at all.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are unannounced and done anonymously at Review-Journal expense.