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| - With the unexciting and unrevealing name and the tiled "pizza" and "pasta" words in the decor, we weren't expecting anything but to keep walking on past as we skimmed Market Street Caffe's menu while staying recently at the Monte Carlo hotel. It was the antipasti bar that caught our eye, pleased our palate, and brought back memories of excellent pizzerie in Italy. That our meal was so unexpectedly near-authentic and pleasing for its simplicity in a city so inauthentic and overblown I had to bump this review up a star.
For about $20 a person, not including drinks, we each enjoyed our own wood fired pizza and a couple trips to the antipasti bar. (Though one can make as many trips to the antipasti bar as one pleases.) The "appetizer" vegetable dishes were very fresh-tasting and simple, with options from the light and refreshing, like fennel with grapefruit, to the more pungent, like roasted garlic with oil-cured olives, and many options in between. In the middle of February to enjoy produce that tasted this well was a sensual delight. The pizze were appropriately simple. If they could have delivered a thin Roman-style crust like we ordered, with the edges charred from the fire, I would have raved even more than I'm doing. Still, the Neopolitan-style crusted pizze were quite delicious in their simplicity contrasted against the vegetable delights from the bar.
Given the many amazing gastronomically elite restaurants in this area of the Vegas Strip, it was a pleasure to enjoy such an unexpectedly satisfying if simple Italian meal to our senses for this price. Market Street Caffe, besides changing its name, could still improve in the little details --like the quality of the breadsticks, oil and balsamic that greet you as you sit down to a table-- to further make this a stellar gem of an eatery. Even still I will definitely visit again for its antipasti and pizze, and perhaps even to try its "fancier" dishes.
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