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| - My experience with Italian restaurants is that the best ones are not overseen by some chef wanting to make his or her mark on the cuisine, but by an immigrant who had spent the majority of his or her life feeding the family, and now that the kids are grown, has taken those skills to care for the restaurant's patrons. These establishments are usually holes in the wall, garlic and tomato-scented spots inserted into strip malls between a convenience store and a dry cleaners.
With that in mind, I chose Battista's Hole in the Wall when I went out to dinner with a group of convention-goers in Las Vegas last week.
First off, this place is FUN! The walls were as crowded as the restaurant itself with pictures of Las Vegas royalty from years past. Trinkets and chotchkies hung in the room's nooks and crannies. Entering this restaurant is to enter the home of a person devoted to living life around the dining table, for that is where the day begins, pauses for respite, and ends.
Once seated, a stern waiter placed carafes of wine on our table, announcing that the wine and garlic bread are free, and the menus are on the wall. And indeed they were, but we hadn't noticed them until this fellow had called them to our attention.
During our meal, a petite octogenarian traversed the dining room with an accordion as big as he (if not bigger), playing various tunes on request and hamming it up for the crowded tables. He focused on the pretty lady at our table and played her the tarantella, pausing to point at the black buttons on the left hand of the accordion to passionately cry: "The BASS! Nobody plays BASS anymore!" This was indeed dinner and a show.
I had the cannelloni. It was OK. The accompanying spinach reminded me of frozen spinach, the kind that came out of a box and most of us generally detested as kids. A similar complaint came from another member of the group, who'd had the salmon and expressed concern that it had freezer burn. I'm not an expert in meat, so perhaps group-think has since led me to believe that the meat in my cannelloni was similarly spiced.
Another member of the group called the cappacino that the restaurant gives for free at the end of the meal: "truck stop cappacino," referring to the machines that make it. It's no Starbucks drink, and it does taste like hot chocolate, which is why I liked it.
Would I come here if I were dining alone? No. Would I come here with my date? Not a chance. This restaurant is not suited for such moments in our lives, neither where food nor ambiance are concerned. However: would I come here with a bunch of acquaintances who want to have a good time and perhaps eat a little food in the process? Sure. Battista's Hole in the Wall drops the pretentions of normal dining, challenges us to not take things as seriously as we normally do, and pay attention to those oft-ignored things that we rely upon throughout life.
For, in the words of the restaurant's owner: "The BASS! Oh, NOBODY plays the BASS anymore!"
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