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Lupo – Wolfgang Puck

Dinner in Vegas is always interesting, but we made it over to the Mandalay Bay Resort where we decided to eat at Wolfgang Puck‘s first Italian Restaurant called Trattoria del Lupo. We didn’t make any reservations, but the wait was about 30 minutes – which isn’t bad considering last time we went to Vegas, we had to have reservations for every dinner place we ate at – otherwise, they had nothing available! The dining room at Lupo was quite large, and they were able to squish a lot of tables in to accommodate a lot of seating.

Lupo - Patio dining at Mandalay Bay

Our first impression when we finally got in was it was quite dark and romantic. It was interesting as we sat at the tables behind the bar, and the hostess had to ull out the table to let us sit into the banquettes – and then after seated, they pushed the table back in.

Lupo - Breadsticks with white bean sauce and roasted garlic in evoo

The service was great, and after we were seated, we were brought our drinks and awesome Breadsticks. The breadsticks were really thin and long, and from the look, you can immediately tell they were home-made. These long crispy breadsticks was accompanied with roasted garlic and olive oil dip and white bean sauce. It was really fun to break off pieces of this delicious bread and dip into either sauce.

Lupo - Bucatini all Amatriciana

The dinner entrees was excellent! I ordered the Bucatini all’ “Amatriciana” which was house made pasta with roasted onions, pancetta, tomatoes, chili flakes, basil and pecorino. Pecorino would be sheep or ewe’s milk cheese (a hard cheese), and even though I thought it would be strong, they didn’t use a lot, so the dish was perfectly balanced, especially with the saltiness of the pancetta. This dish was excellent, the texture of the pasta was really good, and all the ingredients was fresh – and the plate of pasta just seemed really light. It was one of the best pasta dishes I’ve had in a long time – if not ever!

Lupo - Scialatielli

The other entrees we enjoyed was Scialatielli “Ai Quattro Passi” which was also house made thick noodle pasta but with “Quattro Passi”, sausage bolognese, cream, basil and Parmesan cheese. This is a much heavier pasta dish that really fills you right up – not only was it a nice meaty dish with the sausage bolognese, but it had a nice thick cream sauce. The flavours of the meat sauce was so hearty and excellent, it really was a dish to remember!

Lupo - Lamb loin

Finally, the last dish was not a pasta dish, but it was Filetto d’Agnello which was marinated bone-in lamb loin with garlic spinach, chanterelle mushrooms, tomatoes and Gorgonzola cheese.

Overall, we were extremely satisfied with Lupo and will be returning in the near future as they were able to provide us with great food, great service and all for a really great price! We were really shocked about the quality and the portion size from Lupo, so we have no negative thoughts to tell you about!

Lupo (Mandalay Bay) on Urbanspoon

Trattoria del Lupo

3950 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas
(702) 740-5522

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Giorgio’s Trattoria – Banff, Alberta

Giorgio’s is a really good location for Italian cuisine in Banff, AB. It is located right on Main Street, which makes it really convenient if you’re just walking up and down the street trying to find something really good at a reasonable price. Sure, I haven’t been there for awhile now, but I remember my dinner well — so it was really a positive experience that is memorable.

I love shrimp and I ordered the Seafood Linguine, and as you can tell, it’s quite large in portion as I’ve eaten some before the picture was taken. The shrimp wasn’t bad at all, but it’s not the best either! You can see it as they do camouflage with the tomato sauce!

Very memorable, we had the braised rabbit, which doesn’t seem like they have that item anymore. It was really soft, tender, fall of the bone and juicy!! It was something I would have had again, but now we’ll try to find braised rabbit at other locations.

Giorgio’s Trattoria
219 Banff Avnue
Banff, AB

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Chianti Cafe – Calgary, Alberta

I went to try Chianti Cafe after picking up a good friend from the airport. She wanted to try a good Italian place, and I was here a few years ago, and it seemed to have gone downhill…

We ordered Calamari to share, and it was decent. It was quite crispy and breaded nicely.

I had penne al pacifico – which was basically smoked salmon with sun dried tomatoes on penne pasta. It was an interested texture of smoked salmon and the pasta was less than al dente, as it had quite a bit of crunch in the centre of the pasta. It wasn’t unbearable, but it wasn’t preferred.

We also had a Piatto Combinato Veal medallions with peaches, mangos in a cream sauce served with penne in fresh spinach & tomato sauce. That I heard was quite tasty.

Our last dish that we ordered was the linguini Kitsilano which was Italian sausage, mushrooms, green peppers, tomato sauce with linguini. It was a decent dish.

Overall, I think it was just the texture of the smoked salmon which probably made my dish seem to fail, and made the rest of my dish seem to be a disappointment, especially considering the other 2 entrees were fine. The calamari was really good too, and they only used the body of the squid, so it was all in ring forms. It was deep fried in oil that seemed to be quite dirty, but the overall taste was good.

Chianti Cafe

2805 32 Ave NE
Calgary, AB