| rev:text
| - Before we get to food or ambiance, first you have to find the place - which is buried in the maze of the Venetian / Palazzo Canal Shops. I have been to the real Venice many times and I swear it is easier to find your way around there than it is around the Canal Shops. At least the real Venice has guidebooks with maps. It would be helpful if Buddy V's website would at least give a clue, like saying "We are on the second floor, about 30 yards down a hallway from Barney's New York, and overlooking the porte cochère facing the Strip." Would that be so hard?
So, anyway, after a few wrong turns and roaming around for 10 minutes I'm a little grumpy but we find the restaurant. My first impression is that someone crossed a mob restaurant from Jersey with a Chuck-E-Cheese. Very bright. Very loud. Very crowded. Lots of kids. Hard chairs at the tables, although the booths looked comfortable. (The booths were all full at 6:00 p.m. on a Wednesday. Whatever criticisms I have about this place, they sure don't seem to be keeping the customers away.)
The wait staff was attentive. Drinks came quickly (I needed one), along with a piece of foccacia bread and some olive oil and vinegar for dipping. We were here for restaurant week, which meant ordering off of the prix fixe menu. I started with Grandma's Meatballs; they were not the best I've had. They had a kind of a light, mousse consistency and not much (if any?) sauce. Well, I've never understood the iconography of "Grandma" as the pinnacle of the culinary arts anyway. Personally, I'm more impressed by training at the Culinary Institute of America and a few years working in a Michellin starred restaurant, but hey - maybe your Grandma was a better cook than mine.
My entree was the roasted sea bass, and that was a very nice piece of fish. I also had a side of Mac & Cheese Carbonara, which was excellent, My wife had a Cesar Salad and a pasta entree, and she enjoyed them both very much. For dessert we each tried the cannoli, which was kind of mediocre. That surprised me, since Buddy V is known, first and foremost, as baker.
The $40 prix fixe menu was a good bargain, although the prices on the main menu were definitely creeping into the "fine dining" range. Oh, it's not Sinatra or Giada's by a couple of hundred dollars, but it wasn't priced as a family restaurant either, even though it felt more like a family restaurant.
So, time for the trek back to the parking lot. At least we didn't get lost this time, and the Venetian is one of the few Strip hotels that still provides free parking - hat tip to Sheldon Adelson for that.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)